4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days, 1 Review

by Memo Salazar

…and with a clever title like that, we’re off to a great film review. Last year’s Palme d’Or winner, Christian Mungiu’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days is truly an amazing film. Shot in a simple, elegant neorealist style, 4 Months is a story about a 1987 Romania- communist, harsh, bleak. With beautifully long takes and honest, straightforward dialogue, 4 Months gives us a flavor of daily life for Gabita and Otilia (a pair of female college students) so convincing that by the time we slip into the film’s main focus (illegal abortions during the communist era) we feel quite familiar with the rhythm of their life, so foreign to Americans, where scoring a pack of Kent cigarettes is both difficult and essential in maintaining some semblance of humanity in this otherwise grey world. The film’s subtlety lies in the background details; in their dorm, the girls’ cheap, plastic dining tablecloth is so old, the top of it has faded to pure whiteness- only the sides reveal the pattern it once had. It’s the kind of thing you only notice if you’re paying attention, because the film never once cuts away to close-ups of anything; it doesn’t tell you where to look, or what to think- it leaves that kind of thing up to you. Characters look inside briefcases and bathrooms, but their facial expression provides our only hint as to what they may have seen.

The historical background, which I was not privy to at the time of the screening, is that Romania banned all abortions in 1966, resulting in a vast population increase just a few years later. Those that sought an abortion anyway had to do so illegally, to the point that, two decades later, more than 500,000 women had died from the dangerous, illegal procedure. In this context, 4 Months is clearly a political film, showing the stark reality of what women had to go through due to this political mandate. But the film is also a statement on morality, and how it goes by the wayside when people are forced to deal with the practical realities of getting by in such a harsh, uncompassionate world. 4 Months does not judge, but it certainly does not shy away from presenting the consequences of both ill-conceived law and personal choices, providing a lot of food for thought without any easy answers. The characters are neither praised nor scorned; they are simply acting out within a given paradigm. We sympathize with the protagonists without ever losing sight of their own shortcomings. Gabita, especially, displays a naive, irresponsible nature which is clearly portrayed as such; any empathy we might feel for her situation is matched by our frustration and anger at her unnecessarily bonehead decisions, who’s consequences extended far beyond her own life’s suffering. Some reviewers, like The New York Press‘ Armond White, trashed this film for taking abortion lightly and presenting the girls as some kind of feminist heroes. Clearly, he was so wrapped up in his own issues with abortion (and with conjuring up as many pop-culture references as he could muster for his precious review) that he forgot to pay attention to the actual film, which does nothing of the sort. 4 Months is honest and fair to its subject and theme.

Ultimately, though, 4 Months is much more than a political statement. It is a snapshot of human life, albeit an unjoyful one, proving how visual a simple, character-driven, dialogue-heavy movie can be. I found myself wishing I understood Romanian in order to avoid reading the subtitles during an extremely long, single-shot scene at a birthday dinner party. Watching Otilia’s worried face as she sits, surrounded by an older generation of gabbing adults oblivious to her current ordeal is riveting. The contrast between their superficial, well-meaning banter and the harsh experience reflected in Otilia’s face is about as visual a scene as anything Hollywood could ever churn out, with only a fraction of the typical Hollywood budget. 4 Months’ minimalist, efficient elegance is a genuine cinematic treat, even if it does come encased in one of the most depressing subjects a film could hope to deal with. Sorry, Armond, this one did deserve Cannes’ top prize.

Tags: 4 months, abortion, cannes, christian mungiu, cinema, communism, foreign film, neo-realism, romania