Whenever abortion is a major plot point in a film, it’s natural for viewers to try to immediately suss out the perspective of the filmmaker—whose propaganda are they about to endure? But in the case of 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days, Romanian writer/director Cristian Mungiu never seems like he’s trying to win audiences over to a particular way of thinking.
“I knew from the beginning that I wanted the film to just stay a film, and I wanted to tell a story,” he says. “I hope that the story is going to be important for some people, and [that] it’s going to, I don’t know, make them think. But I never wanted to pass any kind of judgment. I just relate what I remember to be the truth from that period, hoping that it’s universal enough for people even today to think about it and make their own conclusions.”
The film follows two roommates at a Romanian university in the late ’80s, a period when abortion was outlawed and both the underground physicians and the women they serviced faced stiff jail sentences for terminating pregnancies. It’s a story based on true events that were recounted to Mungiu 15 years ago, and one that touches him personally.
“I was born in 1968 as a result of this law that interdicted abortion in Romania, and this is something that our parents would never hide from us. So, all of a sudden, I was one of the very many children of this baby-booming Romania.”
Leading up to the illicit operation, the characters are frustrated at every turn—from trying to buy cigarettes to making a hotel reservation—with the oppressiveness of the last days of Communism growing more palpable with each moment. Still, there’s humanity even in those responsible for the worst abuses of power, reflecting Mungiu’s view of this period in Romanian history.
“I don’t like having black and white characters; positive and negative guys. I’ve never met anybody who is like a complete moron or very stupid. No, people do good things and bad things, and overall [the abortionist in the film] is not a positive character. He’s doing a lousy thing in the film, but still it doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have a mother and that society treats him badly. It’s very likely … he feels inclined to treat the others badly because this was a time when this is the way you were treated by everybody that had authority.”
Mungiu plans to further explore this period with both features and shorts in a series he calls Tales From the Golden Age, an ironic reference to the last 15 years of Nicolae Ceauescu’s rule—and he’ll leave the judgments to his ever-growing audience.
