Cristian Mungiu interview
I sat down yesterday afternoon with Cristian Mungiu, the 39 year-old Romanian director of the undeniably brilliant and masterful 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days. I finally saw the Palme d'or winner a couple of weeks ago and was convinced right away it's all but certain to take the Best Foreign Language Oscar next February. It shows that Mungiu knows exactly what he's doing mise en scene-wise. This fact is fully underlined in conversation.
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days director Cristian Mungiu in Almond Room at Four Seasons hotel -- Friday, 11.2.07, 3:55 pm
Calm, confident and obviously whip-smart, Mungiu speaks with a vast English vocabulary and a very faint accent. He's a believer in pared-down, less-is-more realism, and he knows how to explain his cinematic aesthetic in a very clean and concise way. He listens carefully and knows his stuff. I could talk to Mungiu for days. The same "instant comfort" thing happens whenever I meet a good director from any culture.
A recently-announced European Film Awards nominee for Best Film, 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days will show at 6:45 pm this evening at the AFI Film Fest. The show is sold-out but there's always the scalper option.
Mungiu said he next plans to produce an anthology film or two with fellow Romanian directors. He's also intends 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days to be the first part of a trilogy about life in Communist Romania called The Golden Age. He says he's also intending to shoot a film about the last 48 hours in the life of Romania's long-time dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, who was overthrown and executed in December 1989.
As there are very few cinemas in Romania, Mungiu organized a travelling cinematic caravan around the country last summer (in the wake of his Cannes Film Festival triumph) in order to show 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days to the citizenry. He shot a documentary about the experience, and promised yesterday I'd be given a chance to see an early cut of it on Monday. Mungiu wants to include the doc on the 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days DVD.
"Anyone who sees this film and doesn't feel shaken and humbled has a major aesthetic blockage thing going on," I wrote about 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days on 10.23. "There are times when viewers saying 'good film but too depressing' can't be and must not be tolerated. This is one of those burn-through movies that says basic things in ways that make other filmmakers say, 'Why didn't I think of that?' (Or, in the Mike Nichols-Giuseppe Rotunno sense, 'Why didn't I revisit that?')"
IFC Films will release 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days in early January after the awards and nominations will have accumulated.
Posted by Jeffrey Wells on November 3, 2007 at 10:12 AM
comment #1
Noel Murray
says ...
Jeff, if you haven't seen the other two acclaimed films to emerge from this new Romanian wave -- THE DEATH OF MR. LAZARESCU and 12:08 EAST OF BUCHAREST -- you should make the time. They all three share similar qualities: refined naturalistic acting, tightly controlled mise-en-scene, and a slow-burning intensity. Both 12:08 and LAZARESCU are a slow in the early going -- by design -- but patience pays off in the second half of both. I think 4 MONTHS is the best of the bunch, but LAZARESCU made my Top 10 last year, and 12:08 would make this year's list if this year weren't so stuffed with great films already.
Posted by Noel Murray
at November 3, 2007 10:36 AM
comment #2
JD
says ...
Nice interview, Jeff. Good to see you've discovered another corner of the cinematic landscape, formerly dismissed by you as "elitist." Now go find a screening of Silent Light. Not only is it one of the year's best films, but it still doesn't have US distribution (as far as I know) and could use your help. You've said in the past that you admire the work of Robert Bresson and Carlos Reygadas may be his generation's Bresson.
Posted by JD
at November 3, 2007 12:21 PM
comment #3
gruver1
says ...
Sorry, but I didn't like Carlos Reygadas' blowjob film at all. I was repelled by the idea of spending time with that pot-bellied peon who'd gotten himself involved in that kidnapping. I recognized how some would point to this film and say "another Bresson!," but I think we can just let Bresson be Bresson on his own terms, and politely ask that Reygadas stand up for himself and earn his own distinctions based on his own vision.
Posted by gruver1
at November 3, 2007 12:50 PM
comment #4
JD
says ...
I didn't particularly "like" Battle in Heaven either -- though it sounds like you're choosing not to engage with the film's ideas simply because of its (very deliberately) grotesque, confrontational surface -- but that's a whole other argument. Silent Light is a radically different film. You'd be hard-pressed to guess that they were directed by the same filmmaker. It's odd that, even while Jeff criticizes people like Wes Anderson for making films that are similar to one another, he ignores the work of other filmmakers because he can't imagine that a filmmaker could change.
Posted by JD
at November 3, 2007 1:30 PM
comment #5
gruver1
says ...
Wels to JD: Filmmakers don't change, as a rule. Not the good ones, at least. As a rule, they tend to make the same film over and over. You're telling me Reygadas is some kind of shape-shifter?
Posted by gruver1
at November 3, 2007 2:03 PM