4 months, 3 weeks & 2 days

Written and directed by Cristian Mungiu

****

How far would you go for your friends?  The question’s almost a cliché now, but 4 months, 3 weeks & 2 days (4 luni, 3 saptamâni si 2 zile) brings new meaning to devoted.

Set in 1987, in the “Golden Age” of Ceauşescu’s communist Romania, the film spans a momentous day in the lives of two female students in Bucharest.  Meek young Gabriela is in trouble, and she’s booked an abortion, but the illegal procedure incurs heavy punishment if you’re caught.

Looking for help, she confides in her roommate Otilia, who takes pity on her desperate friend and throws herself into preparations.  In the course of the day, Otilia overcomes unforeseen obstacles, and slowly realises feckless Gabriela has mismanaged everything.  If the shadowy Dr Bebe will help at all, it’s going to be up to Otilia.

Harrowing but gripping, the film offers a look at the late 1980s in the poorest of the eastern bloc countries.  Painstaking care was taken to frame out modern development and film only buildings and props authentic to the period.  The result is a close up on the grey and cheerless landscapes of life behind the Iron Curtain.

Purposefully shot in an almost documentary style, director Cristian Mungiu says he tried to “focus on capturing emotion and truth.”  For this reason the film does not actually enter the abortion debate, but looks instead at the extreme lengths women would go to in order to secure a risky, outlawed and in many cases downright unsafe operation on the black market.

It’s not a film for the faint hearted.  There are disturbing scenes, and the drama plays out relentlessly, creating layers of tension with little release.  Yet it is a beautifully crafted film – perhaps one of the best of the year.  Stunning performances, especially from Anamaria Marinca as Otilia, engage us in the characters’ lives, and the familiar way we follow them around makes us almost complicit in their turmoil.

4 months, 3 weeks & 2 days is rumoured to be the first instalment in a planned trilogy from the same director, all about Romanian life under communism.  While this first part is hardly one I’d want to watch again, it’s going to remain high on my list of great films, and I will definitely be keeping an eye out for any follow ups.

This review was originally written for an online magazine, and is republished with permission.

Rain of the Children (2008)

Written and directed by Vincent Ward

*****

There are several adjectives impossible to avoid when attempting to describe Vincent Ward’s latest film.  Compelling is one, gripping another.  Perhaps most apt is haunting – this is an utterly absorbing, unforgettable and entirely New Zealand story of love, loss and survival across a tumultuous time in our history.

At the centre of the film is Puhi, a bent old woman of the Tuhoe iwi, who welcomed the then twenty one year old Ward into her remote home back in 1978.  Over the course of two years, he filmed her daily life for his award winning documentary on traditional Maori life, In Spring One Plants Alone.

Puhi died soon after he finished the documentary, but Ward never forgot the charismatic woman who called him her mokopuna mā (white grandchild.)  Sparked by his recollections of Puhi and thirty years worth of unanswered questions about her life, middle-aged Ward goes back to her home in the Uruwera ranges, aiming to uncover her story.

Blending footage from his original film, new interviews, fact finding missions and highly dramatic re-enactments in what he describes as “part folk tale, part ballad, part mystery story,” Ward creates a cinematically beautiful and at times dreamlike patchwork of fact, fiction, stories handed down and the opinions of those who remember Puhi - “the special one.”

Ward’s detective work is captivating, each answer begging another question about this singular woman.  Who was Puhi?  Why did she cling so strongly to her mentally ill adult son?  And why did she believe she was cursed?

The filmmaker behind Vigil, Map of the Human Heart and What Dreams May Come is no stranger to very human, emotional stories – but this is really something different, touted as “Vincent Ward’s most personal feature to date.”  In a tribute to Puhi and his treasured memories of her, Ward appears on camera and narrates the film, a touch which cements Rain of the Children as something very special from an already unique filmmaker.

Heartbreakingly sad, yet by turns enchanting, funny and endearing, this is a slice of a very different kind of life, leaving the audience with the conviction that there is nothing so extraordinary as the life lived by an ordinary woman.

This review was originally written for an online magazine, and is republished with permission.

The Counterfeiters

Written and directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky

****

An intriguing and dramatic thriller, this year’s winner of the Best Foreign Film Oscar is an Austrian/German co production with an all-star cast, telling a true story from the darkest time of their shared heritage.

Loveable rogue, consummate artist, crook and counterfeiter Saloman “Sally” Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics) is picked up by police in the dizzying whirl of thirties Berlin.  The Nazis have come to power and dark times are ahead.  Being Jewish, he is soon in the concentration camp system, marshalling his many talents to ensure his survival.

With an assortment of other skilled artists and craftsmen, Sally is transferred to a secure block in Sachsenhausen, outside Berlin.  The top secret Operation Bernhard is in full swing: isolated from the prisoners tortured just outside their walls, the group are treated well – as long as they are working hard, counterfeiting banknotes on an unimaginably large scale.

Quickly becoming a respected figure among his fellow inmates, Sally looks out for number one, his tough guy stance and chiselled face giving him a Bogart-like presence.  As a saboteur operates among them and the pressure mounts to produce the notes or lose their lives, Sally finds himself at the centre of a powerful battle of wills.  He is forced to weigh up the moral dilemmas of their work, walking the line between giving the Nazis what they want and taking action to prevent his captors gaining even one triumph.

It’s difficult subject matter, but The Counterfeiters succeeds brilliantly, by spotlighting the various ways the men in “the golden cage” try to reconcile their favoured treatment with the dire situation of fellow prisoners, the threat of death hanging over them with the shots being fired outside.

Don’t let subtitles scare you away from this one.  Fast paced and engaging, the film draws no conclusions, but will absorb you til the very end.

This review was originally written for an online magazine, and is republished with permission.