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4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
This is the movie which won The
GoldenPalm at Cannes Film Festival – 2008; The Best European Film and The Best European Director at the European Film Awards. Most people said that this was a „political” choice, as Romania is part now of the EU, but I think this is only the so-called „mioritical” envy always present in Romania. Why do I think so? Because the movie is really exceptional due both to the subject and by the manner in which Cristian Mungiu, its director, presented it. The story is very simple: during the Communist regime in Romania, when abortions were forbidden by law, a young woman decides to make an illegal abortion (as all women used to do then, by the way). With the help of her friends, she finds a guy who used to do that. The method was an empiric and brutal one, but it was used by almost all the women at that time, because it worked in most cases. As a method of „payment”, the man rapes the two girls (the student and her room mate) in a sordid hotel room and after that he does his job. The young woman aborts the foetus and everything is ok for her. Well... I must confess that while watching this movie, I experienced a strange feeling: I was sent back in time... in that gloomy age and I almost „lived” for some seconds there: I had the same sensations... the same feelings... as long, long time ago... Why? Because the movie is so realistic! No imagery, no falsity: just the naked truth, exactly how things happened at that epoch. It may impress a lot the Westerners by its images.... but I must say that it is almost nothing as compared to the feelings experienced by people who lived that experience. The silence of the two main female characters.... the moving of the camera... the coldness of the environment... the lack of feelings and the rudeness of the man who made a way of earning money from such an activity.... well... all surround the watchers and make us feel ourselves in the center of the action, as if we are the eyewitnesses of a real drama which is going to take place in front of our eyes. The climax of the movie is the bloody foetus displayed in front of our eyes as a proof of a possible life, which will be never lived. The foetus was 4 months, 3 weeks and 3 days old.
Published: March 08, 2008