The dark days of communist Romania.
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While scientists and ethicists (mostly men) strive to determine when ending a pregnancy becomes murder, for people the world over (mostly women) abortion is a much more complicated reality. For those who have faced this decision-and their numbers are many-the experience is infinitely different from that of armchair ethicists.
The new Romanian film,
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
, transports the audience to communist Romania in the late 1980s, during the last years of the totalitarian rule of Nicolae Ceausescu and into the lives of two young women, one of whom prepares for an illegal abortion. Ceausescu's repressive regime outlawed abortion, with harsh penalties for anyone involved, so that the state would have a plentiful supply of future workers. When people reached adulthood, they were sent to toil where the state deemed them necessary.
Writer/director Cristian Mungiu's mobile, mercilessly observant camera follows the pragmatic and resolute Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) as she helps her willow-willed college roommate, Gabriela (Laura Vasiliu), procure the abortion. Though 4 Months, with its extremely natural dialogue, lighting and on-location shooting, is aesthetically composed like so many hyper-realist European films, it's subtly structured like a thriller. It is, therefore, best to know very little going in. Be prepared for this:
4 Months
is brilliant, but it is also brutal and absolutely harrowing.
While
4 Months
reminds viewers of the results of criminalizing abortion, it isn't a message film about abortion. Yes, an abortion is the film's central event. But in many ways, the film is about how people cope when they ***image1***live in a dehumanizing system, one that sees them as cogs in the telos of state power. This theme is similar to that of last year's Foreign Language Oscar winner,
The Lives of Others
, which might explain why this winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes failed to even be nominated by the Academy. The Academy's neglect of
4 Months
is a mistake you should not repeat. It is certainly one of the finest and most important films to emerge in 2007.
