A new wave implies an unexpected rush of something that is different or distinguished from what has come before. The French New Wave rejected classic cinema in favour of directorial authorship. The German New Wave was born from the artistic torpor of German cinema and saw the championing of creative integrity over commerciality. But what of the Romanian New Wave?
It is a term that seems to have appeared out of nowhere, reflecting the sudden stream of revelatory Romanian cinematic output. It comes more than a decade after the fall of communist dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu, in a country not known for its cinema. The large majority of these films seemed to have their baptism at Cannes and won an award or three. Many film critics point to the The Death of Mister Lazarescu (2005) as the start of it all, which won the Un Certain Regard award as well as a host of other awards at festivals around the world for its director Cristi Puiu, whose previous film Stuff and Dough also premiered at Cannes. The following year, Corneliu Porumboiu’s 12:08 East of Bucharest picked up more awards at Cannes, including the Golden Camera Award for cinematography. When Cristian Mungiu’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days won the Palm d’Or in 2007 all bets were off. Film academics saw a trend and ran with it. A new film movement was born, characterized by “intense realism, with an underlining vein of black humour.”[1]
Cristi Puiu, Corneliu Porumboiu and Cristian Mungiu
To understand these films as a group it is perhaps best to look at the films themselves. The Death of Mister Lazarescu was billed as a comedy in its international release, which is perhaps misleading. Over the course of a night we follow the trials and tribulations of a cantankerous, dying old man. He is taken from hospital to hospital, accused of being a drunk and turned away numerous times, despite requiring serious medical attention. Filmed from a distance, without the expected visual emotional indicators, the viewer is required to negotiate their own meaning. Puiu resists didactic directorial temptations and moral judgments. The approach provides an astonishingly authentic-feeling entry point into Romanian society and the legacy of its communist history. It informs and infuses every scene of the film even if Lazarescu is first and foremost a humane study of a universal experience- our inevitable movement towards death.
History is even more present in 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days, a film set in the dying days of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu’s rule. It tackles the issue of abortion in 1980s Romania, something Ceauşescu banned in a misguided attempt to curb the declining birth rate.[2] Make no mistake, this is not a ‘issue film’. Like Lazarescu, it declines the opportunity to assign any kind of higher judgement, instead showing us a brilliantly detailed moment in history and an incredibly complex human situation in all its dark, unseemly shades.
4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days
These films are certainly not without humour but would never be described as “feel good”. At the Sydney Film Festival in 2010, an audience member asked Daniel Mitulescu, producer of the superb Romanian prison drama If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle, whether there would be a Romanian film that showed the nation’s kinder side. His tart response, “this is not a tourism advertisement” is telling of a new national cinema re-inventing itself by negotiating the difficult stories of its past and present. Given that these films are hardly conducive to Romanian nation building, it also begs the question of where these filmmakers are getting the money to create their somewhat bleak visions.
Cristi Puiu co-funded the production company that made The Death of Mister Lazarescu’s to provide a space for auteur cinema in Romania. [3] Puiu, as well as other Romanian filmmakers of the “new wave”, have been in conflict with the Romanian Film Centre (CNC) over its allocation of funding and general administrative inefficiencies. Lazarescu was actually originally intended as part of a series of films made on miniscule budgets to prove that Romanians could make quality cinema without government funding. The CNC has been under the spotlight of controversy since its creation 2001, most recently in 2010 for new legislation that “removes film critics from input on what projects get funded and gives state cultural authorities enormous discretionary power.” [4]
In the meantime funding seems to be staying within Romania, “even if it [means] refusing money from a co-production.”[5] These filmmakers wish to maintain control of their work at all costs. What’s surprising is that despite the issues faced, there is a consistent stream of remarkable movies that continue to emerge onto the international festival circuit. How they will develop over time is uncertain. What is clear is that we are experiencing an unlikely renaissance of extraordinary but quiet neo-realist films which not only manage to provide pointed insight into a nation’s particular experiences but also the human one.
