Charlie Faulkner
Blog Post 2 (Substitute Assignment For 2nd PIFF screening)
The Palme d’Or is the highest prize possible at the Cannes film festival, and with such a title, there is an establishment of a great deal of prestige and symbolic capital gained from receiving the award. In the theroizations of Pierre Bourdieu, “festivals [such as Cannes are] important sites of cultural legitimization” (Valck, 108). Meaning, that the Palme d’Or canonizes and honors certain films as having significant value and exceptional quality. The 2007 winner of the Palme d’Or was the film 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days directed by Cristian Mungiu. This film is an essential piece of Romanian cinema; this powerful piece of cinema illustrates a narrative of two women (college roommates Otilia and Găbița) living in the repressive society that existed under the extremely oppressive regime in Romania during the 1980’s.
The film follows the experience of the unmistakably challenging journey to attempt to recieve a back alley abortion in a time where it is highly illegal. This devastating and intense story focuses on the remarkable courage of women to take control over their own body and autonomy under a period of immense oppression and dominance from the government. The friendship and solidarity between these two women is put to the test by the incredulously impossible challenges to achieve what is necessary. Every moment of this film develops an intense and visceral sensation of tension. Throughout every sequence, every moment you cannot help but hold your breath as the anxiety builds and builds. The film is filled with many long takes that absorb you into their situation and ensures that you are feeling the intensity of their situation in a way that is completely and powerfully immersive. Told over the course of 24 hours, we are with these characters and embedded into their narrative. Even when the main characters fall outside the frame we can hear the actions taking place in other rooms beyond what is seen which too adds to the sensations of captivating feeling of being truly there. We are forced to linger in so many uncomfortable points of view. Whether it’s the POV of Găbița’s legs spread wide after the procedure as she is forced to remain still while the doctor and Otilia freely move about the room, the body of the fetus lying on the bathroom floor as Otilia and Găbița talk in the other room, or the dismal, flickering hotel lobby where Otilia attempts to collect herself after her terrifying journey of disposing the remains of the fetus, these sequences induce and further our anxiety and most importantly force us to look. There is power in being forced into a long take, we have no way to escape what is on screen, instead we must linger in that moment and feel the weight of it.
The dinner scene is truly a stand out in the film and is one of the longest takes in the runtime. The suffocating tension and endlessly overlapping dialogue as Otilia sits there numb and riddled with guilt and fear knowing the dangers her best friend is going through at that exact moment. There is no cross cutting between the two scenes, which adds to the intensity. We know exactly where Găbița is and what she is undergoing, but we have no ability (as does Otilia) to know exactly how she is doing or at what stage she is at in the process. We are forced to look at this lengthy sequence while our minds, just like Otilia’s, are constantly fixated on Găbița. Otilia’s words are constantly ignored and drowned out by the rest of her boyfriend’s family which leads to many empty gazes as her distress is presented in the form of a vacant and dazed glance. The audience then is directed into the headspace of Otilia and we experience the turmoil she is under. The space is also heavily constricted, the framing is tightly focused so that all the people at the dinner table are taking up the frame some even being just outside of it (other than their hands), the space feels suffocating and because it is a long take it feels as if we have no room to breathe. This too creates a way for us to enter the headspace of Otilia.
The film ends with an excruciatingly silent dinner with Otilia and Găbița after the two have agreed to never speak of what happened again. They sit together in that palpable silence, unable to properly process all that they have had to live through in the past 24 hours. The camera holds on the two of them sitting there, unable to lock eyes with one another. And at the very last seconds of the film, the fourth wall breaks (for the first and only time), as Otilia looks directly into the camera before a quick cut to black. After all this time being immersed into this day with these characters and their struggles, her acknowledging look to the camera forces the audience to process what they have undergone because they will forever be unable to.
PSU School of Film @ PIFF 