It was actually released on June 10, but as it’s featured in my MSN column this week, I’m happy to celebrate Cristian Mungiu’s beautiful and harrowing 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days as the DVD of the week. There’s no need to add to what I’ve already written on the film – both on this site and in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (I also interviewed the director earlier this year here) – but for those who have still not heard about the film, it’s about a college girl arranging an illegal abortion for her roommate in the last days of the Ceausescu dictatorship in Romania and is a grueling and deeply affecting human drama and a powerful portrait of life in an oppressive society.

Anamaria Marinca is heartbreaking as the young woman who hardens herself to help her friend (Laura Vasiliu) get through a devastating ordeal. Mungiu wields the camera with blunt power and subtle discretion , yet through it all, Mungiu finds strength and perseverance and commitment under the desperation, a small miracle in such circumstances, and a magnificent reward in such an exquisite film.

I review the film in my MSN DVD column here.

UPDATE – 6/17/08: After reviewing the DVD (complete with interviews and documentary) and posting the review, I discovered the disc was pulled from release. For whatever reason, I do not know, but the studio never even bothered to update me on the status. I found out from Michael Atkinson at IFC, via GreenCine Daily.

UPDATE #2 – 6/17/08: After making a few inquiries, I was informed that the disc is being made available exclusively through Borders for a window of time (I was not told how long). Sure enough, a quick search found this page at Borders, proclaiming it as an exclusive. No cover art, however.

UPDATE #3 – 6/18/08: The DVD publicist has informed me that the DVD will be widely available in October. Until then, it is exclusively available through Borders Books, in store and online.

Also new this week is Criterion’s release of Claude Sautet’s directorial debut, the tough, lean, smart crime drama Classe Tous Risques. Read more »

I’ve written on 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and in my blog below, I featured it in my Top Ten List, and on Wednesday, February 6, I had the good fortune to interview the film’s writer/director/producer, Cristian Mungiu (pronounced Muhn-jhoo, with a soft “j”), by phone. He was in Budapest, I was in Seattle, and the whole thing came together at the last minute, arranged by the folks at IFC Films (which is distributing the film stateside) and Landmark Theaters (which is showing the film in Seattle). I was supposed to get 10 or 15 minutes. Mungiu gave me almost half an hour of his time. Highlights of that interview ran in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in Friday’s edition. Here is the complete interview.

Why the subject of abortion in the communist era, or at least the story of two young women facing the ordeal of an illegal abortion in that era?

Cristian Mungiu

Honestly, I never start from a subject and I haven’t started from a subject here. I only knew something when I started, that I wanted to tell a story from my twenties, so basically I was looking for a story that would be relevant for my twenties and for that period and for the generation to which I belong. I kind of belong to a special generation in Romania. I was born in 1968 and this makes me part of the baby boom that was generated in Romania because of this law from 1966 that banned abortion in Romania. It was a Ceausescu decree. And this generated a baby boom from 1967 to 1972. And all of a sudden there was a huge generation of children. And way later on, talking to these people when I was in my thirties, when I was cruising the world with my first film (“Occident,” 2002), I discovered that there’s a certain solidarity among these people and they would like to see a story about themselves onscreen at some point. So I knew that I wanted to tell a story that would be relevant to them. I was trying to remember stories from that period because I always start from a true story, I don’t make up things, and then I ran into this girl again that had told me this story some fifteen years ago. And I had this revelation, in a sense, that for a generation that came into this world because abortion was banned, that would be a very relevant story. But it’s important to say that for me, the film speaks to much more than just abortion. It’s not only about abortion, it’s about decision-making and having to take the responsibilities of your decisions and about friendship and a lot for me about compromises and freedom during communist times.

I see responsibility as a major part of the film. Otilia takes the responsibility of making everything happen upon herself because her pregnant friend, Gabita, completely falls apart when it comes to facing the arrangements of getting an abortion.

Yes, it’s true.

Was that something from you story or did that evolve as you wrote the story and it took on a life of its own?

Honestly, it came from the real story, but at the same time, I wanted to portray two different attitudes belonging to the period regarding the way in which people would cope with things. Read more »

Cristian Mungiu’s beautiful and harrowing 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days won the Palm D’or at Cannes and Best Film at the European Film Awards, yet didn’t even make the short list for Best Foreign Language Film nominations. I can’t fathom this defiant snubbing of such a powerful and provocative film, unless it has something to do with the subject matter.

In this socialist state, the culture has devolved into barter. Everything is a negotiation, from getting a hotel room to bribing a ticket inspector on the bus, with cigarettes proffered as signals to begin negotiations and left as tips. College students Otilia and Gabita learn that when the stakes get higher – and things don’t get much heavier than an abortion, which is illegal in 1987 Romania – the costs go way beyond bribes and under-the-table payments.

It’s a devastating ordeal by itself and the film doesn’t pretend otherwise, but the whole subterranean aspect of this underground operation, with the surreptitious bookings and secret meetings under the snooping noses of hotel clerks collecting ID cards and taking names, gives it the stakes of an espionage drama behind the iron curtain. It’s only the chillingly mundane atmosphere and the snide civil servant attitude of the players that tells us this is the everyday reality of life here.

The long takes are not of the dazzlingly dramatic and cinematically acrobatic variety, that whisk the viewer into the thrill of the momentum and beauty of the composition. Mungiu uses the camera to focus our attention Read more »

I’ve contributed Top Ten lists to four different organizations already: MSN, IndieWire, the Village Voice/LA Weekly 2007 Film Poll, and Senses of Cinema (not yet published as of this writing). The process has remained fluid throughout, and not just due to differing rules for the different groups. I’ve allowed myself to challenge my own evaluations, and the reasons behind them, for each list, shifting films up and down the list, swapping out different titles in the final spots, rethinking what it is that makes a “best film,” and understanding what I want to represent as “cinema” with such a list.

That ends with this, my final list, the one that I prepare for my annual “Top Ten” event, a small party/debate that I have been hosting for a few film critic friends of mine for ten years now. It’s by design a small gathering of people I enjoy talking to and arguing with, who take movies seriously and are articulate enough to make a discussion not just lively, but invigorating and challenging. The results of that event will follow in a later posting. Here is the list I presented at the event, supplemented with notes, comments, runners-up, and links to reviews and other writings (where available).

1. No Country For Old Men (Ethan and Joel Coen)
A model of simple, strong, evocative storytelling pared down to the bone and character and meaning radiating from every image, every movement, and every moment, “No Country” is cinema in every sense of the word. Part of the thrill is the feeling that it’s all spinning out of your grasp, it’s rushing out of control, in a film that refuses to rush anything. You never feel it’s out of the control of the Coens, whose methodical deliberateness tracks every detail of the story, and Roger Deakins delivers simple and stark images, a desert that sometimes feels like it’s lawless frontier. As the film unfolds, it becomes clear that Josh Brolin’s Llewelyn Moss may seem smart, but is just smart enough to outrun the trouble dogging his trail, a minor league talent in a major league showdown. The Coens don’t offer that comforting sense of cosmic justice or thematic completeness that most crime movies provide, even those films about chaotic situations where the violence spills out of the confines of the protagonists. And that’s the point. There are no random elements, just those details we don’t know, and that’s far more dangerous. Tommy Lee Jones’ character, Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, retires because, he says, no longer understands the kind of violence and characters that he faces with the explosion of the drug trade through the borders. The Coens (and McCarthy’s story) remind us that it’s not the violence that’s changed, only the players.

My Seattle P-I review of No Country For Old Men is here.

2. Into the Wild (Sean Penn) Read more »