"4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days:" A Review of a Very Difficult Movie

Sometimes when you are a critic is that you run across a movie that is profoundly difficult to watch. Sure, the movie is astonishingly well-acted and well-directed, but the story itself is so disturbing and things going on in the movie are so amazingly bad that it's a generally unpleasant experience. There are at least two movies, in my own personal view, that I have only been able to watch once, but found them so good and so intense I have been unable to watch again. The first is "Schindler's List" and the second is "Dead Man Walking" and both of those movies left me emotionally draines and exhausted to the point I would probably never be able to watch them again.

The Romanian movie "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days" is not really in the pantheon of either of those two movies. However, it is a movie of amazing power, amazing tension and suspense, but it is also so uncomfortable at times that you have to turn away from the screen. So, how on earth do you actually recommend a movie like that? Hey, this movie is great, but you will be so uncomfortable watching it, you may not want to look at the screen!

For help with this I did something that most critics (or people like me who just fancies himself one) don't do. I turned to look at other critics and how they were reviewing this movie. At the website Rotten Tomatoes, it has an overwelming 95% recommendation rating. That is an amazing feature in this day and age. A.O. Scott of the New York Times picked this movie as his absolute favorite of 2007. However, the one review that seemed to sum up how I felt about this movie came from a review in Entertainment Weekly which said, "Nothing good happens in this movie."

The plot itself is very simple. It takes place in 1987 in the last days of the communist regime in the country of Romania. The civilization is an amazing culture of survival, black market buying and bartering to have the same products and things as Western people. Abortions are illegal and one of the main character, Gabita, has gotten herself pregnant. Her roommate at the university, Otilia, has helped her arrange for an illegal abortion. What happens next is a white-knuckle, agonizing story of how the two girls attempt to pull it off.

The story is told from the point of view of Otilia. She is resourceful, attractive and smart. Gabita is almost like a little child. She borders, in my opinion, on being mentally retarded. She is unable to remember anything, lies constantly, and then does nothing but impose more and more unreasonable demands on Otilia.

We follow Otilia as she secures a room at a hotel. Then she has to go and meet Mr. Bebe, the man who will perform the abortion. Then we follow her later when she has to make a disposal of something that may just leave your stomach churning. In the meantime, Mr. Bebe turns out to be a combination of a monster and a savior. In a sense he makes the two women sell their souls in order to perform this operation. This is where things get very uncomfortable. I found my own jaw open and a powerful urge to turn away from the screen the first time at this point.

The movie is shown, at times, using that familiar shaky camera that we have seen from too many young directors these days. Cristian Mungiu is the director and unlike in the movie "Cloverfield" this method does not make you sick to your stomach. Here, it seems to work and we truly feel like we are really and sincerely in the middle of this story and in the life of these two young girls. At times, however, Mungiu knows when the let the camera just sit there and take in what's happening. There is an amazing scene as Otilia goes to her boyfriend's home for a dinner to celebrate his mother's birthday. The camera keeps her right in the center of the frame for an amazingly long time. She says almost nothing, but watch her face as the people around her, all wealthy and successful intelectuals and doctors, say insulting things about her and the people she grew up with in the country. It is an amazing performance.

This movie was well received at film festivals throughout 2007. Some are saying it was truly robbed by not getting a nomination for Best Foreign Film by the Academy. Some also feel that the main actress who plays Otilia, Anamaria Marinca, should have gotten a nomination for Best Actress. I can definitely see the argument for both of those nominations. It is a powerful film and I look forward to further work from Mingiu. Marinca manages to hold he center of the movie and is on the screen almost throughout the entire film, and she does a remarkable job of holding this film together and keeping us caring long after we want to stop looking.

So, can I recommend those movie to the average movie goer? I have a hard time doing that. The audiences that have made the two "National Treasure" movies huge successes will not like this movie. Not only is it in Romanian and subtitled, but it is a movie that does not end the way mos American audiences would like and it is a painful film to watch. For those who are fascinated by filmmaking, and students of film and movie-snobs, I can wholeheartedly recommend this movie. It is very well made, it is amazingy well-acted, and the story is compelling, suspensful and shocking.