Romania, the intriguing land
In this article I would like to discuss the way in which people’s view of Romania has been changing in recent years in many parts thanks to the “new wave” created by Romanian award winning movies.
The Romanian New Wave is defined as a genre of realist and often minimalist films made in Romania since the mid-aughts, starting with “Trafic,” a short movie that depicts the escape from mundane life by director Cătălin Mitulescu. The movie won the Short Film Palme d'Or at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival. With Cristi Puiu's “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu,” in 2006, a movie about the ways in which a healthcare system fails a dying man, movie that took the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes and two years later with Cristian Mungiu who won the Palme d'Or for his period abortion drama “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days;” a Romanian New Wave appreciation seems to have started according to some critics such as Stephanie Cornfield. Romanian directors have been winning awards left and right ever since. The most recent movies that qualify in this category are “Graduation” by Cristian Mungiu and “Sieranevada” by Cristi Puiu.
The fact that the movies are so well appreciated shows that people like the complicated view of life that can stem from the imagination of Romanian directors. In my opinion, Romanian movies often depict events in a seemingly mundane fashion. They go about the events as a person moves through life. They entrap you in the story just as a novel often does; they pray on your life experience. When I watch a Romanian movie, I sometimes feel like a peasant looking on the street to see what is happening in my environment, trying to gossip. The characters are often vaguer and more complicated, harder to read. What do they feel? Why do they do that? What is happening?
I have grown up watching more foreign movies as compared to local ones, as such, recent Romanian movies intrigue me as well. In my view, characters in popular American movies often present emotions singularly. By this I mean, they show one emotion in its different variants, while some of the Romanian movies I have seen show the more complicated side of emotions, conflicting emotions resulting in a rather normal looking character.
Cristian Mungiu said in an interview: “We live in a world and society that is not very moral but is made up of people who believe they are moral.” And I believe this is what strikes me the most about this “new wave;” how they normalize mental instability in an imperfect society trying to be moral. I have recently read that, prefect metal sanity is not normal; usually, someone goes through at least one mentally straining episode in his or her life.
This appreciation of Romanian movies breaks xenophobic barriers; reminds people that we are all, in the end, human; and that, in Romania as well, there are people like in any other corner of the earth; people struggling with life.
