Four Months, Three Weeks and Two Days (in Romanian)
Rating = A-
It
takes a while after the movie starts
for it to become clear that the two college age women are heading for
an abortion for one of the women. The movie is probably viewed by some
as a movie about the difficulty of living in Romania just before the
fall of the Ceausescu regime. The movie is probably viewed by others
as a comment on the situation in a country where abortion is illegal.
(A little post movie research revealed that Ceausescu's policy was no
birth control, women must get pregnant, and high penalties for
abortions, as an effort to increase the country's population by 25
percent in a few years in order to increase the span of his socialism.) I suspect
the privations of living in a totalitarian regime with a ruined economy may not be
so different from how poor people must live in other countries, and
there have been many countries where both birth control and abortion (or certainly the latter) are
illegal. I see the movie primarily as the story of a young women who struggles successfully to get
by and live up to her commitments when everyone and everything else is making things (unbelievably) hard for her.
I probably need to see the film again to study the writing and film
making. It is very good, and I'm not sure how. The tension is
maintained at a (too) high (for my comfort) level with often minimal
apparent effort. I am reminded of “After the Wedding” and “Lives
of Others” (another repressive regime) for the level of tension that
is quietly generated.
[2008-03-22]