4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days, Mungiu Cristian, 2007, commentary, narrative, social context, historical context, Romanian art film, illegal abortion, abortion, Nicolae Ceausescu, Romanian movie, Decree 770, childbirth, gynecological examinations, Romanian New Wave, oppressive nation, contraception, illegal contraception, Communist Romania, women, Romania
The film, "4 months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days", by Mungiu Cristian opens on a fish tank resting on a table clustered with newspapers, dishes, and a smoking cigarette burning on an ashtray. And as a hand reaches out for the smoke, the picture pulls back in a sharp movement and reveals two undergraduate students within a cramped domicile. Anamaria Marina (Otilia), has agreed to assist her dear friend Laura Vasiliu (Gabita) with an illegal abortion. The setting of the film, is 1987 Romania, at the height of Ceausescu Nicolae's dictatorship, and precisely two years before the collapse of the regime.
[...] Eggert, B. (2020, May 30) Months Weeks, and 2 Days. DeepFocusReview. https://deepfocusreview.com/definitives/4-months-3-weeks-and-2-days/Godeanu-Kenworthy, O., & Popescu-Sandu, O. (2014). From minimalist representation to excessive interpretation: Contextualizing 4 Months Weeks, and 2 Days. Journal of European Studies, 225-248. Gradea, A. [...]
[...] Parvulescu, C. (2009). The cold world behind the window: 4 Months Weeks, and 2 Days and Romanian cinema's return to real-existing communism. Jump cut Wilson, E. (2008) Months Weeks and 2 Days: an "abortion movie"?. Film Quarterly, 18-23. [...]
[...] In essence, the film, months Weeks, and 2 Days", reveals the implications of State authority that involve the power to manipulate and control private spaces of human life (Godeanu-Kenworthy & Popescu-Sandu, 2014). Cristian criticizes how the policies of Communist Romania stretched from personal freedoms to the bodies of women and beyond, many times with dehumanizing and desperate effects. However realistic and specific Mungiu's film may seem, the movie remains brilliantly particular about the methods of storytelling, making the narration urgent outside of the context of Romania. [...]
[...] C. (2018). A psychoanalytical approach to Cristian Mungiu's 4 Months Weeks and 2 Days. Journal of European Studies, 295-307. Palmer-Mehta, V., & Haliliuc, A. (2011). The performance of silence in Cristian Mungiu's 4 Months Weeks, and 2 Days. Text and Performance Quarterly, 111-129. [...]
[...] The idea of maintaining control for some women meant the abandonment of newborns at medical facilities and some other women turned to illegal abortions (Wilson, 2008). Ideally, women who wished to become more than mothers or subjects of the regime were left with few alternatives. Extensive population studies from the period reported that many women succumbed to back-alley abortions between the Romanian revolution of 1989 and the time of Decree 770. Cazan proposed that for many of the state's women, abortion got perceived as the act of rebellion against the tyrannical political authority of the country - courageous and conscious "dissident citizenship" that sought to take back their bodies in defiance of the regime that tried to define their choices and bodies as national spaces (Eggert, 2020). [...]
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