NYFF: Mungiu and 'Message'

From the 45th Annual New York Film Festival (Sept 28th through Oct 14th)

In the Q & A following the press screening of 4 Months 3 Weeks and 2 Days, the terrific Palme D'Or winner from Cannes, writer/director Cristian Mungiu was discussing why he makes commercials to pay the bills. (What !?! Art films don't pay...who knew?) He said:

I never wanted to make television because television is... uh... something else

I can't say that I knew exactly what he meant with that evasion but, curiously, I can say that I get it. But then I like to fill in blanks.

Mungiu wants us to do that anyway. Repeated attempts were made by the audience to pin the soft-spoken director down on the subtext, meaning, message and politics of 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. They wanted clarification because the movie obviously has more meat to its bone than its threadbare abortion plot suggests. His repeated refrain regarding "messages" delighted me...

I don't believe in this

This aversion to didacticism is one of the reasons that his movie is so damn good. It's also why it will never win the Foreign Film Oscar (though I hope its critical rep will force it into the shortlist)

updated: a few words about the lead performance by Anamaria Marinca