Romanian films of the 1980s inspired Cristian Mungiu, writer and director of 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, to make movies. He couldn't stand watching them.
The commentary-filled cinema made under the Communist regime seemed necessary and helpful at the time, but when filmmakers continued seeking refuge in intricate and metaphorical storytelling that forgot all about the audience into the 1990s, the style became an unwanted residue from the past, he said at the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival (台北金馬影展, TGHFF) earlier this week.
In recent years, there has been a renaissance in Romanian cinema. The generation that experienced the 1989 revolution in their early 20s has hit 40. In rebellion against tradition, directors have set out to share their stories, experiences and memories in a way that is honest, simple and realistic.
"We are successful because we are not imitating anyone else before us … . We are a new generation of directors who return to the story, realistic and inspired from life," said Mungiu.
When Mungiu's 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, a sober drama about two desperate college girls trying to get illegal abortions in 1980s Romania, won the Palme d'Or at Cannes this year, it marked yet another crowning moment of what has been dubbed the Romanian New Wave, a spate of films from the former Eastern bloc nation that have been acclaimed the world over.
The communist past, 1989 revolution and the turbulent transition to democracy are still dominant themes in the country's new wave films, but the director as a social commentator has been replaced by an invisible force behind realistic portraits of individual lives. "We don't talk about communism; we show how it was lived," Mungiu, who studied at the University of Film in Bucharest, explained.
The director, who strives to minimize his own presence in the film and let the stories unfold naturally, uses many of the tools now used to define Romanian New Wave: long takes, stationary cameras, attention to detail and natural performances and dialogues.
All of this recalls Italian neo-realist cinema of the 1940s, but to the emerging auteur, the articulation that requires the use of such styles seems to reflect a need to have conclusions, to define the essence of things. And that is different for everyone. New wave directors don't all belong to the same school, Mungiu said, and there is a variety of filmmaking styles within the movement.
"There does exist a sympathy for being minimalist, for not making a spectacle," said Mungiu, so he constantly questions each aspect of filmmaking, such as the use of music, which may come across as cheesy and conventional.
To many, the level of international acclaim Romanian New Wave films have achieved is astonishing, especially when Romania's feeble film industry is taken into account - in 2000, known as the "Zero Year" of Romanian cinema, not a single film was made.
Foreign productions taking advantage of the country's breathtaking landscapes suck up local talent with more lucrative pay.
The non-stop international recognition after Cristi Puiu's 2001 Stuff and Dough empowered younger filmmakers like Mungiu to talk more freely and demand to have cinema laws that allowed established filmmakers to decide who could sit on the film-funding committee revised. "It was when we were officially labeled as a generation," Mungiu recalled.
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