Hard to Watch, Impossible to Look Away

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days

(NR)

originally published April 16, 2008

Anamarica Marinca and Laura Vasiliu

In the 10 months, 2 weeks and 6 days since 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days became the first Romanian film to win the Palme d’Or at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival, the film has claimed nearly every award for which it has been nominated. (Of course, the Academy failed to even acknowledge the film as one of the year’s five best foreign films.) Writer-director Cristian Mungiu has crafted a horror film (in execution if not genre), unbelievable in its intensity and relentless in its pursuit of verisimilitude. In the terrifying, paranoid world of communist Romania circa 1987, two college students, Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) and Gabita (Laura Vasiliu), plan an overnight trip while in the midst of their final exams, but the trip is no vacation. The useless, thoughtless Gabita is pregnant and has arranged to have an illegal abortion. Having been given strict instructions by the rough practitioner, Bebe (Vlad Ivanov), Gabita has followed none of them, making this unbearably stressful criminal act even more difficult for her selfish self and her selfless friend.

The first in a series called Tales from the Golden Age, a project proposing to lift the veil from Romania’s communist history through subjective, urban legend (and without direct reference to communism or longtime ruler Nicolae Ceausescu), 4 Months is a powder keg filled with powerful, topical explosives. Its brutally honest depiction of an illegal abortion should give pause to pro-choicers and pro-lifers alike. The dangers - infection, blood loss, arrest - stunt the growth of any argument to criminalize the act here in the U.S., yet its utterly necessary, stomach churning money shot, which would not be out of place in a Takashi Miike film, should stun even the pro-est of choicers into silence. The film is so convincing, one wonders if Mungiu, making only his second feature film, quite knew what he had his hands on. The world he has created seems so very real; Marinca, his lead actress, ensures so with her bravura. Kudos also to Vasiliu; Gabita’s vacillating cowardice denies her any sympathy, drawing even more attention to Otilia’s saintliness and Marinca’s performance. The eloquent shot selection - static, long takes interspersed with shaky handheld sequences that would make The Bourne Supremacy queasy - and pregnant pauses which will make the sturdiest audience member squirm show a masterly understanding of world cinema (4 Months lives in a neighborhood far, far away from Hollywood’s blockbusters). Comparisons to Michael Haneke (Cache) are not far off, or undeserved, if Mungiu’s filmmaking skills can measure up to the 10-ton expectations now placed upon them. Flawless though it may be, the bleak film is not for everyone. 4 Months requires a filmgoer with tremendous stamina. But those viewers who brave the trip will bear witness to an unforgettable cinematic lesson in the social history of the recent past.

Drew Wheeler