Four Months, Three Weeks, and Two Days till the Birth of Death
Although abortion is a taboo topic in many nations as well as it is illegal in others; the controversial subject is very real, and to capture it on film would adhere to Bazin’s ontological theories. Ontology is the study of the nature of being, and according to Bazin the art of cinema is through reality. Bazin outlined the ontological foundations of the art of cinema in his magazine the Cahiers du Cinema (Cinema Notebooks). Cristian Mungiu creates a world in which the audience is quickly engaged and immersed in the lives of Gabita and Otilia, and Mungiu adheres to Bazin’s ontological theories through his long takes, the capture of impoverished characters, deep focus, and minimalistic cuts; to capture the space and the illusion of real time. In Ladri di Biciclette and Umberto D by Vittorio De Sica, two very powerful neo-realistic films and tearjerkers about the poverty in Italy, after World War II. De Sica’s characters are very heart felt and honest while the people around them push the characters to the very edge of sanity and judgment of values, but as sad and as powerful as these films are; they are not tragic unlike the film by Mungiu. Mungui uses the classic theories of Bazin as well as inspired shots of De Sica, to captivate and capture a very powerful subject matter, and the emotional rollercoaster of the decision to abort the birth of a child; due, to an unwanted pregnancy.
In Four Months, Three Weeks, and Two Days by Cristian Mungiu, fulfills Bazin’s theory of “Cinema pur (pure cinema),” because the issues of an unplanned pregnancy and then the decision of abortion with a back alley logic; is not only powerful, but utterly disturbing. The subject matter and the lives of the characters create a spectacle of epic proportion. Mungiu’s technique of hand held camera use is extraordinary because of his long unflinching takes and slow paced tracking to capture every minor as well as major detail, but Mungiu uses limited cutting to capture the sense of time. He also uses the close up to maximize the focus of certain objects. For example, in Four Months, Three Weeks, and Two Days, Otilia opens Mr. Bebe’s suitcase and the camera is zoomed in on the instruments in the case, and she pulls out a switchblade; popping out the blade, she tries to push it back in, and she takes it because Mr. Bebe has returned from the restroom. In that scene one begins to wonder what kind of doctor, Mr. Bebe is, if he is a doctor at all or just a street thug.
The decision made by an impoverished female scholar to abort her child, and even though, the tragic death of an unwanted child is documented within the narrative; the camera seems like it is breathing and alive because it is handheld. The audience feels like they are traveling with the characters or like hidden voyeurs trapped in the room with Otilia and Gabita with the time that is set and even though, the camera’s wide angle lens picks up the entire space of the dorm or space of the room; one gets a sense of claustrophobia. In the following passage Bazin discusses how the camera is a nonliving agent that is used only to capture and reproduce the moment in time and space:
“For the first time, between the originating object and its reproduction there intervenes only the instrumentality of a nonliving agent. For the first time, the image of the world is formed automatically, without the creative intervention of man…All the arts are based on the presence of man, only photography derives an advantage from his absence. Photography affects us like a phenomenon in nature, like a flower or a snowflake whose vegetable or earthly origins are an inseparable part of their beauty (What is Cinema?, p. 13).”
Bazin seems to be rationalizing the use of technology to capture reality on film in the above passage. Although Bazin struggles with the idea of technology and its advancements; he will never truly know how his theories on pure cinema and ontology have evolved as well as the advancement of technology to capture the aesthetic value of contemporary neo-realism. Technology strives for advancement to capture the description of reality through binary information like the media of High Definition and Digital stream, for example. Film is very honest, since the technique of its reproduction and replication was analogue, but technology has advanced into a realm of digital. The true performance that used to be recorded is now a clear description, and not of the actual, but this does not hinder or take away from the production of Mungiu’s film, rather, it has in some way enhanced the quality of the film while maintaining the integrity of Bazin’s vision of naturalism and neo-realism.
Mungiu’s film is very honest in the way he uses the classical theories of neo-realism and how he uses modern instruments to film its contemporary evolution. In the following passage by Bazin, he explains the validity and credibility of the photograph, and how the art of photography: “The objective nature of photography confers on it a quality of credibility absent from all other picture-making…We are forced to accept as real the existence of the object reproduced, actually represented, set before us that is to say, in time and space. Photography enjoys a certain advantage in virtue of this transference of reality from the thing to its reproduction” (What is Cinema?, p. 13). Bazin almost feels cheated if not for the evidence of photography; since it gives him a sense of verisimilitude. Bazin seems to be in search of honesty and truth with what he digests visually as well as the oratorical within the narrative of a film. Bazin wants to relive the moments with the characters with the setting and stage of reality. In Four Months, Three Weeks, and Two Days, the space feels tight and smothering. A lot of natural depth of field and deep focus is captured with the bird’s eye of the street; capturing, Otilia as she runs towards the train station, or the medium close up of Otilia and her boyfriend Ardi sitting on a window sill of a hallway while other college students walking up the flight of stairs fill the space of the background, and since the camera is capturing both of the main characters, the banister of the stairs in the background, and the depth of the hallway; the audience gets a sense of the size of the space. The scene is very small and yet very important because Otilia needs to borrow money from Ardi (her boyfriend), and at the same time Ardi needs Otilia to return the favor by picking up flowers for his mother since it is her birthday. The scene prepares the audience for the locations of her Otilia’s journey and more of the character’s personality traits are exposed.
The main characters of the film are very poor, hustling for a pack of smokes and borrowing money while living in a dorm at a college in post communist Romania. Bazin discusses the validity of communism in The Bicycle Thief in this following passage: “Its social message is not detached, it remains immanent in the event, but it is so clear that nobody can overlook it, still less take exception to it, since it never made explicitly a message” (What is Cinema? Vol. II, p. 51). Bazin explains how De Sica has captured the impoverish nation of Italy after World War II through the scenery of the streets and the workmen, and how they go about their lives to survive. Mungiu’s vision of post communist Romania is using the same principles as De Sica and as Bazin explained in his guidelines for ontology in cinema. Otilia and Gabita trade household goods like Nescafe for cigarettes or give their neighbors powdered milk to feed some cats; these characters are poor but they are also surviving, and they borrow money and repay it with the money they earn from grants. In the following passage, Andrew explains how camera is merely an instrument to record the events and the use of technology to create art as the audience perceives it to be: “We view cinema as we view reality but not because of the way it looks (it may look unreal) but because it was recorded mechanically. This inhuman portrait of the world intrigues us and makes of cinema and photography not the media of man but the media of nature” (Andrew, p.138). The media of nature is nothing more than a tool to capture it in time and space, but of only that moment that is trapped on the celluloid. The aesthetics of reality are captured and then played back so that others may indulge in that experience, but film is limited to the time that it has been used to record; sure, one can replay the event over and over again to relive that moment, but then reality loses its meaning every time the image and/or moment is played back. In the following passage by Andrew, he discusses how the audience perceives and intake the feelings of cinema: “With cinema, then, we are struck by two kinds of realistic feelings. First, cinema records the space of objects and between objects. Second, it does so automatically, that is, inhumanly” (Andrew, p.139). In the above passage Andrew clearly conveys the perception of realism in cinema. The brain reacts to the objects and images and places the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle into place to create meaning and understanding. No stone is left unturned; especially with the Mungiu’s film. The slow pace and long takes feed the the mind of the audience as well as fulfills the Bazin’s theories of his ontological guidelines. The time of the moment is not as natural or as spontaneous as the first time one immerses oneself in that captured moment of time and space, but rather fooling oneself for the sake of the illusion of self gratification and immersion of a false sense of reality. What is captured is pure for that moment, but the purity is lost the spectator who returns to the same reproduction of the same moment. That is the beauty of neo-realistic cinema. Before one sees the film a moment of anticipation and wonder arises, even during the spectacle of watching the film, but after the same feeling and sense of surprise is gone, but not of the experience.
That is why I disagree to a certain extent with what Andre Bazin on his arguments of realism, surrealism, and the use of montage, but I can grasp what he is trying to show with his arguments as well as an appreciation for what he has written. There are aesthetic values in his clarity and visions of ontology in cinema. One can only wonder what he would think if he were alive to see the genius of contemporary neo-realism such as the work of Four Months, Three Weeks, and Two Days by Cristian Mungiu.
Works Cited
Bazin, Andre. “The Ontology of the Photographic Image” and “The Evolution of the Language
Of Cinema,” Film Theory and Criticism. Ed. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. Oxford:
Oxford UP, 2004.
Bazin, Andre. “Bicycle Thief,” What is Cinema? Vol. II. Trans Hugh Gray. Berkely: UC Press,
1971.
Bazin, Andre. “Umberto D,” What is Cinema? Vol. II. Trans Hugh Gray. Berkely: UC Press,
1971.
Andrew, J. Dudley. The Major Film Theories. New York
Oxford University Press. 1976.
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