Nr. 3 (24) anul VII / iulie-septembrie 2009 - ROMDIDAC

new Romanian identity is the construct of these filmmakers, who succeed
in meeting the expectations of the international market both artistically and
thematically. I will analyze the stylistic strategy of the hand-hold camera which
creates the illusion of unmediated reality as the main device of the docudrama,
the premise for its national and international success.
Documenting The End of an Era and the Beginning of Another
The realism of the two movies is unbearably shocking. Both 4 Months, 3
Weeks, and 2 Days and The Death of Mr. Lazarescu seem to have originated
from John Grierson’s definition of documentary as “creative treatment of
actuality,” 2 as well as from Robert Flaherty’s naturalistic examples. They were
both well known to Romanian directors as part of their academic curriculum
at the Bucharest Academy of Theatre and Film. Moreover, the two directors
strived very hard to have their films accepted at the British Film Festival, the
institution which awards the Grierson prize, which was, as they both declared
to Romanian press, their dearest target. Puiu and Mungiu pushed Grierson’s
aesthetic program further by transforming a documentary into a drama
emulating a documentary in order to allow interpretation by, and even a certain
level of intrusion of the director in presenting “the drama [which] is on your
doorstep wherever the slums are.” 3 Obviously they looked around, not far from
their Film Academy in Bucharest, and took the opportunity presented to them
to create feature films which document their haunting communist past.
Two Movies, the Same Story
Although 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days was released two years after
The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, it may be considered the opening part of a grand
national narrative in film format which Romanian contemporary movies have
constructed since 1990. In this grand Romanian narrative which begins, in
terms of fabula with the last two years of communism and ends with the 2008
McDonaldized Romania of the short film Megatron, the last success at Cannes;
The Death of Mr. Lazarescu might be placed somewhere in the muddiest part
of the process of transition to a democratic society. One may easily notice the
thematic coherence of the two movies that present individual case studies
from Romanian life, both consequences of communism.
4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days
The story in 4 Months was inspired by a college student’s confession
of abortion, one of the thousands who did so during that time. The note in
Mungiu’s production script that 500,000 women died because of unsuccessful
abortion 4 indicates his intention to recreate the terrible circumstances around
one of the cases. Two students, Gabriela and Otilia, have to pay an incredibly
shameful price for Gabriela’s illegal abortion. Besides the big money (the
equivalent of an engineer’s monthly wage), they have to have sex with the
male abortionist, supposedly a nurse. The film reconstructs the context of the
abortion in the best documentary style in an attempt to add the dimension
of authenticity to a story which deserves to be wrapped into its isomorphic
complexity.
Following Otilia, the camera records her “Odyssey” in Bucharest as she
becomes a feminine version of Leopold Bloom. She starts her journey on a
Winter day in the Polytechnic Institute dormitory. The slow rhythm with long
shots makes existence seem monotonous in locations ugly and unimportant,
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