European Films

 

This is part one of a two-part interview. Part two can be found here.

 

Because of its 60th anniversary this year, those accredited at the Cannes Film Festival got their festival catalogue in a colourful bag that featured the names of all the directors of the previous Palme d’Or winners. Almost all names still ring a bell to this day and after the festival I could not but wonder if Cristian Mungiu -- whose 4 luni, 3 saptamini si 2 zile (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days) won the festival’s 60th edition -- would be a name we would recognise in, say, thirty years. His film certainly made a considerable impact at the festival when it was presented on its first day and remained a clear favourite to win from that point on. Since Mungiu's film is only his second feature, it is perhaps a little too early to tell, though its mastery of content and form certainly spells a bright future for the Romanian-born cineaste. Boyd van Hoeij interviewed the director at the Transylvania International Film Festival, where 4 luni, 3 saptamini si 2 zile had its Romanian premiere; it will premiere in France and Italy at the end of August, ahead of its commercial premiere in Romania this autumn.

 

In a comfortable hotel in the northern city of Cluj, the home base of the Transylvanian Film Festival, Cristian Mungiu holds an audience with the international journalists attending. Just days earlier, the film had been presented to a Romanian audience for the first time and even before the film started, Mungiu got a standing ovation that lasted several minutes. It was a reception befitting the man whose film confirmed to the world what had been brewing in the Romanian film industry for the last couple of years: the emergence of a wave of new films of top quality. The films of the new Romanian cinema (such as Moartea domnului Lazarescu / The Death of Mr Lazarescu, A fost sau n-a fost? / 12:08 East of Bucharest) are emotionally honest, raw and hard-hitting portrayals of realities past and present, infused with an absorbing kind of gritty lyricism that sucks the viewer in and refuses to let go.

 

When I meet the director, he is comfortably seated in a leather armchair, the consummate professional after the fairground-meets-battlefield experience that is talking to journalists at Cannes. In the twenty minutes I have at my disposal, he carefully explains ideas that have been polished by the sudden rush of interest in his persona, his films and Romanian cinema in general. His English is measured but rich in vocabulary (he studied English literature at University before becoming interested in film) and he only needs the slightest prodding to come up with fully developed answers.

 

Certain topics are of course unavoidable. First up: the new wave of Romanian films that have been acclaimed the world over. "I am sure that I owe this success not only to the film -- though I am sure people like the film a lot, as well -- but it was prepared by [Romanian cinema’s] previous successes," says Mungiu, before giving a small history lesson on recent Romanian successes. The director concludes: "Logically, since this is my second film, it should have been in Un Certain Regard, but maybe in connection with the recent sympathy for Romanian cinema, they took this big step and put it in the Official Competition".

 

On the subject of the new generation of Romanian films and filmmakers, Mungiu continues: "I guess people tend to see us as a generation because we are from the same generation biologically. We are all somewhere between 35 and 40 and got this international recognition at the same time. But I don’t believe we belong to the same kind of school. The interesting thing about the Romanian filmmakers is that they don’t make the same kind of films. They don’t necessarily see film in the same way, which generates a lot of diversity in the films, which I like". Further analysing, the director adds: "Why it is happening here and now, that’s not an easy question. The most intelligent thing I have heard about this concerns the competition between these people. It’s competition in a very good sense: everybody tries to make a better film than the person before him. You have to keep up a certain standard if you are going to be compared with not only yourself but also with the others at the same time". 

 

Of course this is not the only reason. Says Mungiu: "There are some other things; one has to do with the financing system: basically it works better than ten years before. They give a chance to more people every year to make a first film. Then there is real preoccupation with people in cinema and filmmakers to have their own production houses. This is how they make sure that all the money that they raise is going to be for the film. We might have the disadvantage of working with small budgets, but still there is a big advantage about this: you have complete freedom. You can do whatever you want, you don’t have to explain anything to anyone. You make the decision you think is right for your film".

 

In terms of content, Mungiu explains the current similarities thus: "A common thing is that we are going back to telling stories as a reaction to the kind of films that were made in the early 1990s. People just realised that the spectatorship wants to see stories again and not your opinion as a filmmaker and no complicated metaphorical things about your vision.  So we should go back to telling very personal stories. I think it helps".

 

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days tells indeed a fairly straightforward story about two girls who try to arrange an abortion for one of them in communist-era Romania. But at the same time, like such films as Puiu’s Moartea domnului Lazarescu (The Death of Mr Lazarescu), about a drunkard’s last hours on earth, and Porumboiu’s A fost sau n-a fost? (12:08 East of Bucharest), which simply follows a televised debate about the Romanian revolution, the actual chronicle of events is but one of the levels on which the film works. They also seem to talk about greater ills of Romanian society, both in the past and in present, and on an even larger scale about the fragility, the capriciousness and sometimes even the hostility of human nature.  

 

The director agrees that 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days can be understood on several levels, but counters: "I don’t use any kind of magical realism. I’m not a fan of that kind of filmmaking. I think that if your film is going to talk in detail about life, then the complexity of life is going to be in there. I never try to write anything about the message of my film. I always stick to the story -- adding layers of truth to the story. Then the story develops and grows. It is not just a film about communism or abortion; I never said I wanted to do a film about this -- I just want to talk about my story. And now some people say it is a film about loneliness and solidarity, decision-making and responsibility…".