GRADUATION (2016)
Directed by Christian
Mungíu
Voodoo Films, 128
minutes, Not-rated.
In Hungarian (and
some English) with subtitles
★★★ ½
This small film—released as Baccalaureate in Europe— slipped under the radar in U.S. markets,
but it won a few prizes at Cannes. I'm not sure I'd have sent anyone to the
winners' podium, but the film is certainly worth a download or DVD rental.
Forget that it's a subtitled film. Instead, ask yourself a
very North American question: What would you do to assure your child's place in
a great college? Would you call in favors? Would you consider cheating? Now
let's take it to another level. What if you determined that getting into a good
university was your daughter's ticket to escape an untenable present and a dree
future?
This is the dilemma facing 49-year-old physician Romeo Aldea.
He and his wife, Magda, left Western Europe to return to Romania shortly after
it tossed off communism in 1990. They arrived full of idealism and hope, but
those dreams died as communism merely gave way to authoritarian capitalist
thuggery. To put it in perspective, more than two million people have left Romania since it joined the
European Union in 2007—and this is a nation whose communist dictator, Nicolae
Ceauçescu, was considered among the worst!
The Aldeas' Transylvania town is rundown and dysfunctional,
cynicism reigns, corruption is rampant, and the pall of resignation hangs over
the citizenry. Good jobs are rare—and being a doctor isn't one of them. Perhaps
the only thing deader than the town is the Aldea's marriage. Eighteen-year-old
Eliza, though, is brilliant. She has been provisionally accepted to Cambridge
and needs only to score a 90 on one of her final exams—and the English test is
in the bag.
Or, at least it should be. On the cusp of her exams, Eliza
is assaulted. Though she fends off her attacker, her struggle leaves her with a
massive flexible arm cast—on the side with which she writes, of course. Romania
isn't a bureaucratic communist state any more; it's a bureaucratic capitalist state. Rules are rules; Eliza
cannot reschedule her exams, nor is she supposed to get extra time to complete
them. So what would you do to try to help her? Who do you know who could fix
the situation?
This is the
gist of the central dilemma. I'll leave it to you to see how it plays
out—though I will note that I found the film's resolution way too pat. It also
takes some of the sting out if you know that if Eliza stays in Romania, she
will attend Cluj University, which is very highly regarded. But let me discuss
instead some of the things that are very good about the movie. First, it
explodes our notion of what the fall of communism meant in Romania. Maybe
communism was supposed to mean one for all, but Romanian capitalism has become—in
director Mungíu's depiction—all for none.
Second, there are some fine performances, starting with that
of Adrian Titieni as Romeo. He gives us something seldom see on the screen: a
helicopter dad. And, nope, this isn't any sort of glorification of Superdad;
his helicoptering is just as horrific as female versions. Titieni plays the
role well; he also shows he various ways in which one who wishes to be a
"good" man can be tempted, as well as the inability of a parent to
let go and acknowledge his offspring as an adult. Lia Bugnar has a nearly silent
role as Magda, but she doesn't need to speak: her physical presence says it
all. If you wanted to display the very essence of a person hollowed out by
hopelessness, you could do worse than look at scenes in which the gaunt Bognar
sits smoking in the kitchen, staring at nothing. Also noteworthy is Mălina
Manovici, who plays a 35-year-old single mother. Her story parallels with
Romeo's in that she too is trying to determine what she can do for her child in
the face of difficult circumstances.
Maria Drăguș plays Eliza. I gather she's an emerging star in
Europe, though I wouldn't say she's more than adequate in this movie. She's
sort of the flip side of the movie; that is, the parts that are merely okay
rather than compelling. Overall, though, this is a solid film. It's also one
that takes you to places you'll probably not see on your own. And maybe its
lesson is that it's not like where you live, but you probably share more in
common with folks living there than you might assume.
Rob Weir
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