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

which belongs to all three styles. 1) It is a foreground of a documentary which
investigates anatomical details to produce a record of the real picture of a fetus,
for the first time shown in a Romanian pellicle. 2) It is a pictorially impressive
image in an art film, with a metaphoric reference to all the generations born
between 1966 and 1989, who were sentenced to a life of no choices, on the
one hand. On the other hand, it is a literary reference to one of the most famous
samizdat poems by Ana Blandiana, entitled Children’s Crusade.
Un întreg popor
Nenãscut încã
Dar condamnat la na[tere,
Foetus lângã foetus,
Un întreg popor
Care n-aude, nu vede, nu în]elege.
Dar înainteazã
Prin trupuri zvârcolite de femei,
Prin sânge de mame
Neîntrebate.
An entire people
Unborn yet
But still sentenced to birth,
Fetus near fetus,
An entire people
Who does not hear, see, nor understand,
But keeps moving
Inside tormented bodies of women,
Inside mothers’ blood,
Unasked. (my translation)
3) It is also the corpse at the end of the thriller in which the camera takes
delight in revealing the disgusting aborted shape.
Going back to the description of the documentary by Jack Ellis and Betsy
McLane one may check that Mungiu’s 4 Months meets all the standards of the
genre: “Documentaries distinguish themselves from fiction films through their
subjects; purposes, viewpoints and approaches; forms; production methods
and techniques; sorts of experiences they offer to the public” (2). The purpose
of Mungiu’s film is evident: the spectator has to realize that such dramas really
happened, that, although such episodes have not yet become part of the official
history, they must be considered under the “crimes of the communist regime.”
As for the viewpoint and approach, Mungiu’s declaration is self-explanatory:
“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
there. I always start from a true story, I don’t make up things, and I ran
into this girl again that had told me this story some 15 years ago. And I
had the revelation that for a generation that came into this world because
abortion was banned, that would be a very relevant story.”
Mungiu tells the story of his generation in an apparently objective manner.
However, the camera assumes the partial “ubiquity ” of a Secret Police
informant who often filled in the parts he/she did not witness directly. 5 The
fact that Mungiu and Oleg Muthu, his partner and editor, chose to record the
story according to a strategy which allowed them to emphasize the immobility of
the eye-witness (camera/informant) and the limited mobility of the characters,
who, although heard from another room, are not captured visually. Mungiu
explained this aesthetic decision in an interview in Observatorul cultural
∂Cultural Reporter] corroborating it with another series of tough decisions
to cut symbolic and explanatory scenes: He cut the scene in which Gabi
meets her father, which would have justified the girls determination to go on
with the abortion, as well as the last scene of the snowflakes covering the
dirty street of Bucharest. 6 The current final scene, the only one in which a
character (Otilia) looks directly in the camera, acknowledges the presence
of the Secret Police informant; there is no doubt that camera has played that
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