A Searing Drama With Superb Acting
Winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days is a powerful Romanian film that combines elements of dystopian thriller, realist drama and character study. The somber movie chronicles one long, miserable day in the life of Otilia, a young woman who lives in a police state. She helps her roommate get an illegal abortion, and grim things happen along the way. But ultimately the film is not completely downbeat because Otilia provides the kind of friendship we all long for, yet few of us are fortunate enough to ever have.
Writer-director Cristian Mungiu is a master at creating tension. This is a visceral movie we watch with a mounting sense of dread. Mungiu selects just the right banal details of the characters' daily lives to make the film seem realistic. The convincing naturalistic performances impart a feeling of authenticity. The story is deliberately paced and told with austere, disciplined camerawork and editing. The movie is neither preachy nor didactic, and Mungiu leaves it up to the viewer to figure out what everything might mean.
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days takes place on a winter's day in 1987 in a dreary unidentified Romanian city. At that time Romania was a repressive totalitarian state ruled by the dictator Ceausescu, and the country had strict laws prohibiting abortion that were vigorously enforced. But the movie isn't a work of social realism, nor does it have a slice-of-life narrative. Instead, it's an artfully structured, suspenseful story focusing on the personal journey of the heroine Otilia.
A Pivotal, Harrowing Day in a Young Woman's Life
The film opens in a university dorm room where there are two students, both about 23. One is Otilia (Anamaria Marinca in a brilliant performance), the other is Gabita (well acted by Laura Vasiliu). The pregnant Gabita has made a vague arrangement to have an abortion later in the day, and Otilia has agreed to help her friend. Both women know they could end up in prison.
Otilia soon discovers that Gabita has not been truthful about important details, but the heroine nonetheless perseveres and brings the pregnant woman and the abortionist together in a drab hotel room. As played by Vlad Ivanov, the abortionist is one of the slimiest scumbags in cinema history. However, he is the character who kicks the drama into high gear.
At one point Otilia reluctantly leaves Gabita alone for a while and goes to the celebration of her boyfriend's mother's 48th birthday. In a cinematic tour de force, Mungiu uses a seven-and-a-half-minute take to capture Otilia's agitation as she sits at a table, assailed by the prattle of the bourgeois guests. Then she and her boyfriend move to another room, where a seven-minute take shows them in a heated argument.
The great achievement of 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days is that it conveys the inner conflict of the central character. During the course of the movie, Otilia's relationships with her boyfriend and her best friend have been changed forever. By late evening of her long and dreadful day, Otilia is not the same as she was early that morning.
Bonus Materials
The 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days DVD provides about 49 minutes of extras. The best of these is the 25-minute interview with writer-director-producer Cristian Mungiu. He claims he based his screenplay on a real-life account an acquaintance told him. He decided early on not to use a musical score and to employ a visual style consisting of long takes, no close-ups and never lifting the camera to follow an actor. He says the rhythm of the final film was imposed by what the actors were doing, rather than by editing considerations.
Also interesting is the six-and-a-half-minute interview with cinematographer Oleg Mutu, who states that he tried to do everything as naturally as possible, but goes on to admit to using supplementary lighting. He mentions that his goal was to create an atmosphere, and the movie is in many ways reminiscent of film noir.
The 16-minute documentary "1 Month With 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days" is about a 30-day caravan tour to show the film in 15 Romanian towns that no longer have movie theaters. Romania has a population of around 20 million people, but the entire country has fewer than 50 movie theaters, although there used to be more.
DVD Details
Below I have listed all the details for the 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days DVD.
Release Date: June 17, 2008
Feature Film Runtime: 1 hour 52 minutes
MPAA Rating: Not Rated
Widescreen (1.85:1), Color
Romanian Stereo
English Subtitles
English for the Hearing Impaired
Spanish Subtitles
1 Month With 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (16 minutes)
An Interview With Writer-Director-Producer Cristian Mungiu (25 minutes)
An Interview With Cinematographer Oleg Mutu (6 1/2 minutes)
Trailer
