Superb Romanian film not easy to watch

Tag : Watch Machine


It's not Vince Vaughn's Wild West Comedy Show, but it's a welcomebit of levity for a film whose subject is an illegal abortionduring the bleakest years of Romania under Communist rule.Projectionists were imported from Germany; no domestic movie marketmeans no local sprocket wranglers. One of them compares portable 35mm systems to bread-baking -- a very old technology that stillworks and is inexpensive to boot.

In one theatre, they come upon an ancient projector called the T7,built like a tank. "Classic!" one of the Germans crows. "Soviet?"No, the machine's owner corrects him: "Romanian." It's so grimythat the film has to be cleaned between each showing, for fear thatdirt will destroy the print.

The tour ends with more than 17,000 people coming out to see thefilm.

4 Months is not an easy movie to watch. In Cannes, it earned thesobriquet "The Romanian abortion movie," and even the viewersinterviewed for the DVD's documentary provide such comments as"disturbing," "the word 'shocking' is too weak" and "this is not apleasing movie."

It is, however, a superb piece of filmmaking. It follows two youngwomen, one of them pregnant and as far along as the title, as theyseek out an illegal abortionist, rent a hotel room and perform thedeed. Oddly, the not-pregnant one seems more concerned, and doesmost of the legwork. She also has to attend a birthday party at herboyfriend's parents' house, an awkward gathering that skewers thepretensions of middle-class Romanians of the time.

Writer/director Cristian Mungiu was born in 1968 and came of ageduring the dark years at the end of the reign of Nicolae Ceausescu.In an interview on the DVD, he discusses his artistic choices, howthe film's simple, realistic look was the result of much trial anderror.

In the complex birthday-party scene, he realized early on that byblocking it with the actors seated around three sides of a table,he had unconsciously created a parody of Da Vinci's Last Supper.Putting the camera into the centre of the gathering helped capturethe chaos of the scene, although the long takes and overlappingdialogue meant it took five days to get it right.