4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days - An experience.

Dir: Cristian Mungiu

One will often find me searching things like “lesser known movies worth watching” or “high rated movies to watch”. Same went for yesterday. I searched one of such sentences on Google and came across a movie named ‘4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days’ – A Romanian Movie. Being a movie lover, language never felt like a barrier in case of movies. Movies to me, are a symbol of universality.

Now let us come to the movie. If you have not seen it, GO WATCH! Set in a back drop of communist Romania, this movie speaks the plight of the people living there. No matter how badly a government tries to instill a totalitarian regime, people will always find a way around it. This movie speaks of the time when even oranges and bananas were banned in Romania, let alone abortion. People were jailed and killed if found doing the illegal things. The movie shows how two women deal with an illegal abortion and goes through emotional turmoil. The movie is extremely realistic. The emotions, the aesthetics, the dialogues and every other little bit of it is wrapped around realism. This realism makes the movie more close to your heart as if you can feel exactly what the characters are going through. I mean, that’s what a movie should be, right?

After deciding to go for an abortion, a naïve simplistic and confused personality, Gabriela (Laura Vasiliu), fixes an appointment with an abortionist, Bebe (Vlad Ivanov), who is of course doing it illegally. She is being supported by her friend Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) to carry on the whole procedure. Otilia is portrayed as a street smart person who knows her way around “things”. Vlad Ivanov excellently portrayed Bebe as a manipulating person who gets whatever he wants. Each and every character of the movie is so wonderfully developed that one will ever doubt their existence in the real world even just for once. The movie shows the traumatizing experience of the two young ladies who has to go length for just an abortion. In the movie it can be seen how selfish and gruesome humans can be in this world. The movie beautifully portrays not just the trauma or the risk of getting caught but also the fight of two women to decide about their own body. It is not just the government to blame but the society to create a stigma around abortion that it even leaves the surest of the person confused in the end.

All praises apart, I personally felt that there could have been two places where improvements could have been made. Firstly, the length of Bebe’s presence. I would have loved to see more of him in the movie. His ability to craft words into his own favour was amazing. I don’t know what kind of person I am that wishes more screen time for a villain. But was he a villain or just any other tremendously opportunistic person? Secondly, the ending was surely vague. It seemed to me that the filmmaker ran out of energy to portray any more feelings in the end. But overall, if you still haven’t watched it, then please do so as soon as possible.

Disclaimer: All views are personal.