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.
PHOTOS: HO YI, TAIPEI TIMES AND COURTESY OF TGHFF
"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to democracy are still dominant themes in the country's new wave films, but the director as a social commentator has been replaced by an invisible force behind realistic portraits of individual lives.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.
The gravest problem the new wave directors face, however, is the virtually non-existent national audience. The problem has nothing to do with movies being geared toward the foreign market and failing to connect Romanians, but the continuing drop in the number of movie theaters, from 450 in 1989 to less than 40 now, in a country of 20 million people.
Part of the blame for this goes to capitalism, specifically the availability of 50 channels on cable TV and many other choices of entertainment that eat away at the popularity of cinema.
The situation is exacerbated by the commentary-filled films that are still common and drive audiences away, and by the fact that movie theaters are the last vestiges of the communist regime.
"The lifestyle has changed. People now want to go to the mall, have a can of coke first, go shopping and then go to a movie. No one will ever want to go to the 1,000-seat [state-owned] theaters in the suburbs," said Mungiu.
Piracy and intellectual property theft also gets a big share of blame for endangering theaters. "It's popular to watch movies in Romania. It's just not popular to pay to watch them," Mungiu said.
To press the government to do something about the failing filmmaking infrastructure, Mungiu took the matter into his own hands by organizing a caravan tour of his Cannes-winning film to cities and towns that no longer have a theater.
The film has been watched by 70,000 people nationwide, a noteworthy accomplishment considering that the number of Romanians going to the theater to see Pixar's animated film Ratatouille was around 50,000, according to Mungiu.
After his victory in Cannes, offers from Hollywood flooded into Mungiu's life. The 39-year-old director, who started out as a teacher and journalist, confessed that his head spun at first, but to have total freedom and control over his art is still a top concern. "I have even been asked to make a film in Bollywood ... . Who knows, it may be a possibility," he said.
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days is scheduled to hit local theaters next Friday. To get a first-hand experience with the ongoing revolution in post-1989 Romanian cinema, check out TGHFF's program of Romanian New Wave films and the retrospective on Lucian Pintilie, the only Romanian director, Mungiu said, respected by the younger generation of filmmakers and whose 1968's Reconstruction is deemed the best film ever made under the communist regime.
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