News & Notes — Interview: Ioana Uricaru on Beyond The Hills
-By Barry Snyder
Ever since the great pulse of youthful rebelliousness and cinematic innovation emerging in France in the late 1950’s was tagged La Nouvelle Vague, journalists have been irresistibly drawn to the figure of waves to mark whatever new surge of cinematic activity is perceived to be rising in some unexpected place around the globe. There have been “new waves” coming from Australia, Iran, Hong Kong, and Mexico, a lengthening list to which we now have to add, unexpectedly, the otherwise little known Eastern European country of Romania. The world at large became aware of something special going on there with the international success of Cristi Puiu’s 2005 The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, and the newest new wave was consecrated when Cristian Mungiu’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days won the Palm d’Or at the 2007 Cannes International Film Festival. For most moviegoers, it is Mungiu’s devastating portrait of two students trying to arrange for an abortion in the final year’s of the Ceausescu dictatorship that remains the face of the cinematic phenomena known as the New Romanian Cinema.
Mungiu’s Beyond the Hills is only his second film since the success of Four Months. In 2009 Mungiu wrote and produced Tales from the Golden Age, an omnibus filmcomprised of five darkly comic and surreal films about life in “Golden Age” of Nicolae Ceasusecu’s reign, and directed by among others, director and screenwriter Ioana Uricaru. Now an Assistant Director of Film and Media Culture at Middlebury College, Uricaru grew up during the period of the communist dictatorship evoked by the film, and experienced first hand the violent anti-government uprising that brought Ceausescu’s reign to an end in 1989 and the traumatic transition that lay in its wake. Uricaru’s professional relationship with Mungiu continues with his latest film, on which Uricaru is credited as script consultant, and at the shooting of which she was present for much of the production. Uricaru’s position in the constellation of the Romanian filmmakers that make up the Romanian New Wave puts her in the perfect position to comment on what is going on inside that world, and her scholarly takes on that subject has been published in The Velvet Light Trap, Film Quarterly, and The Blackwell Companion to Eastern European Cinema. I caught up with Uricaru while she was on vacation on the Black Sea, and asked her help in understanding the New Wave, Mungiu’s style, and the religious setting and themes of Beyond the Hills. Our discussion began with the question of whether government support for filmmaking in Romania, a more positive artifact of Europe’s socialist legacy, might help account for the surge in Romanian filmmaking and its appearance at international film festivals.
IU: The policy in Romania is a kind of conscious policy that most European countries have. There is a system of grants and loans without interest that only have to be reimbursed if the movie makes a profit. If you don’t reimburse it the government owns the film. It’s not that great an investment for the government, in such cases, although anybody who makes a film would like to retain the rights to the film, so there’s an incentive for the production company to actually try to repay the loan. Many of them have. This is the way it works in most European countries. The government gives out the grants that are not supposed to cover more than a certain percent of the budgets (I think 50% is maximum) and you, the filmmaker, are supposed to get the rest of the money from other sources. But it’s very competitive and at some point it becomes a little bit the same companies getting the grants over and over, and very difficult for a new company to get into the game.
BS: Can this policy be credited with facilitating the increase in production of films that we’re seeing coming out of Romania?
IU: Because of this system, a certain kind of filmmaking is made possible. In the U.S., when you’re looking for money for films, some of the hot property that you can offer when you pitch your project is a big actor or star cinematographer who is attached to it. In Romania, the only factors that enter in are the record of the production company and the reputation of the director and the quality of the screenplay. So what’s really paramount for getting investment in the U.S. doesn’t matter at all (in Romania). The good thing is you’re not restricted; once you got the money, you can do whatever you want with it, so long as you shoot the script that is submitted and use the director that was attached with it in the first place. On the other hand, it’s strange to work this way, because it’s so different from the way it’s done in the U.S.
BS: But doesn’t that represent a deliberate effort on behalf of the government to foster film production? Isn’t that a good thing?
IU: It’s funny. We really don’t like to say that the government is fostering anything. What they did is base legislation on the French legislation, and the French legislation indeed was made consciously to foster Francophone film, French filmmaking, and also to encourage foreign films with a French connection to be made in France. So inevitably, by basing our legislation on their legislation, it kind of came out as promoting film production. But I wouldn’t say that in applying it, the government necessarily takes that kind of care. They slashed the funding several times and don’t really abide by their own rules. They’re supposed to have two competitions every year but they only have one. So it’s not like they’re actually preoccupied with actually fostering film production. But it’s complicated.
There is a lot of foreign production in Romania. Romania is the capital of advertising. A lot of companies shoot commercials for products in eastern Romania, really big companies, from Coca Cola and Procter and Gamble. They shoot in Romania and the commercials are dubbed and show up on TV in eastern European and Balkan countries. There’s also lower B-grade “runaway” production. We therefore have wonderful professional crews, because people work constantly. There’s talent and infrastructure and production is very well supported, but not necessarily for art house filmmaking. And the problem is that when you hire these people to shoot your little low-budget art house films, you have to pay them the rates that Coca Cola pays them, so that’s a little problematic. But crews and equipment are really top-notch.
BS: Is there a state film school in Romania and does that help account for so much of the professional filmmaking going on there?
IU: There used to be only one state film academy, but now there’s a couple private schools as well. I don’t know much about them. The state academy mainly trains directors and cinematographers, and now editors. Most of the directors of the New Wave, including Cristian Mungui and myself, went to the school.
BS: I was just reading about the so-called New Wave and was interested to find out that there’s a difference between the kind of films being seen inside Romania and what’s being shown and celebrated on the international art house circuit.
IA: This is one of the problems, one of the things that is painful for filmmakers, that their films are much more appreciated abroad. Very few people go and see them in the cinemas inside Romania, and even if they do, I have to say there’s not much appreciation, outside of film critics or the rarified upper echelon, the intelligentsia. With the public, there’s a little bit of “We don’t really like to see these films. They’re too dark. We want entertainment. Why can’t we make films like the Americans?” Generally speaking, Romania has very very low attendance in the theaters. Very few people go to see movies and there are very few screens. And the competition from American blockbuster films is huge.
BS: What’s your take, then, on what’s seen as this collective movement referred to as the Romanian New Wave?
IU: From what I know, the directors who are supposed to be part of it don’t actually identify with being part of a movement. They didn’t get together and say “let’s make films.” There was no manifesto. Although they collaborate (they show each other scripts and they show each other shots, sometimes) that’s mostly because of personal friendships. So, it is interesting how this emerged. Sometimes it’s the critics who create this.
But of course there are a lot of things that many of these films do have in common. One thing is a preoccupation with reality, having an approach that is a little different from what cinema usually does, and a desire to get as close to reality as possible. Hence the long takes in real time and attention to detail and trying to find the meaning, to let the meaning emerge from what is happening, instead of imposing the meaning. This is very deceptive, because obviously, when you shoot the film, you control everything. You do impose the meaning. But I know that people are interested in getting closer to reality and making films that manage to glean something from reality rather than making things up.
BS: The interest in realism in these films has been much noted and commented on. An analysis of the Romanian New Wave I found on the Left Field Cinema website looks at the realist turn you historically find in many national cinemas, like in Britain in the 1950’s, 15 years after World War II, and in Italy before that, and conjectures that it seems to inevitably follow in the wake of a national trauma.
IU: I think it’s very fair to say that emerging from a national, historical trauma, emerging from 14 years of Communist dictatorship, really had an impact. We lived in a fake environment for so long. The media and cultural products, especially, were pure propaganda. We felt all the time that we were lied to. What people see in movies- that was not what happened to us. You get this very acute sense that you’re being lied to all the time, and it’s not like this, you know, this is not how its like in real life. But at some point, that kind of erupted, I guess. It took almost 15 years of disorientation, until somebody said, “Let’s put on the screen what actually happens, because nobody does that. Let’s do it differently. Let’s show something that’s really happening, really interesting, that shows how we really feel.” We have this idea that films have to present a version of reality.
Another thing that’s characteristic of the Romanian New Wave, if you want to call it that, is a preoccupation with the individual, with personal experience: really focusing on how it’s like to live, how it’s like to be this person, which is also a response to having lived for 14 years in a world where you’re told constantly that you do not matter as a person, that all that matters is that you’re part of the machinery, part of society, that you serve the purpose, that you accomplish a goal. You as a person don’t matter. So this is another part of the filmmakers’ reaction, saying: let’s look at the person. How does it really feel? How does it hurt? Rather than thinking of people as part of a society or part of a political system.
BS: I appreciate your caveat about realism in light of the fact that films are always constructed. But I always related to the ideal behind the realistic impulse, and really appreciate the films that take this tack. When watching a film like 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days I find something that’s very different from what we’ve gotten used to in the cinema, which is fast-paced action and fantastic situations and constant excitement and distraction. It’s something very special. What more can you tell us about this realistic approach and style?
IU: Well, I think, as a filmmaker, it’s very hard to do it, although it looks like its just people in front of the camera. It’s very hard to give up on, let’s say, the grammar of cinema, certain tools. It’s very hard to give up on the idea that, for example, you have to see a person’s face when they speak, give up on the idea that the camera has to get closer to the character when something important happens. Inevitably, you have to find a different way, find a different language, since you are giving up on the language that has been consecrated. So that’s what is exciting. Most of these Romanian films, especially the ones that rely on long takes and real time and all that, they try to work more with the staging, the cinematography, the blocking, and, of course, the actor’s performances, in order to direct attention and create a way of communicating without editing or the more artificial tools. It’s setting a more difficult standard because when you relinquish the traditional tools you need to find something else to create that intensity which is usually created through editing. To create it in a different way is a very tall order, very hard.
BS: What else can you tell us about Cristian Mungiu as a filmmaker and what he’s up to in Beyond the Hills?
IU: Mungiu is an auteur. He produces and writes and directs. So the film is very much his. He does exactly what he wants to do, so what you see is the work of an auteur. He discovers new actors. In Beyond the Hills, the two main actresses both studied acting at the Film Academy, but one of them is only a theater actress, and the other one was working as a journalist. So he discovered them and they both got the Best Actress award at Cannes. He plucked them out of anonymity and turned them into major actresses, which he did in his previous films as well.
BS: I would imagine the fact that these are actors without established screen personas and not trained in styles of acting that might come off as artificial helps facilitate the naturalism of Mungiu’s films.
IU: It’s very important for the actors to be very-well trained. The greatest compliment I received about the segment I directed of Tales from the Golden Age was, “Are those professional actors?” They are because you have to have excellent technique to deliver eight pages of dialogue. There’s no way you can do this if you don’t have people who are in complete control of what they’re doing and know exactly how to make a small adjustments here and there. So they have to be very professional and well-trained, but at the same time, as you said, they are not stuck in any kind of patterns about how the performance should be or mannerisms or anything like that. So, yes, he’s looking for the ideal combination of somebody who’s largely free of these patterns but somebody who has the technique to do what needs to be done: complicated blocking, a lot of dialogue, and so on.
Beyond the actors, Mungiu is very concerned with finding the right way to shoot a scene. Like many great filmmakers, he believes that there’s a right way to shoot a scene. The scene itself kind of asks for a place to put the camera, and a way to block it, that will make it reveal itself, so what you are looking at is the spirit of the scene- the perfect staging, the perfect blocking, the perfect camera position, that will reveal what the scene is about.
BS: On the one hand films in the realist tradition focus on the details of the singular realities of individuals. On the other hand, people want to read into them larger meanings. For example, many people want to see 4 Months as a commentary on legalized abortion. Is there a metaphoric or symbolic dimension to Beyond the Hills in your view?
IU: It’s interesting because I heard people interpreting 4 Months as an anti-abortion movie and others interpreting it as a pro-choice movie. It really depends on who sees it. I think that’s good. I think the whole point of that film is to raise question, and the big question is, what would you do if you were in that situation? Can you understand what it is like to be in that position, and how hard it is to make decisions?
I know for a fact that Cristian believes that finding a story in itself will start people to ask questions and come up with their own determinations. What happens on screen has to be emotionally relevant. I don’t think he has any claim that he can transmit meaning, like “This is a movie about this and this is what you should understand from it.” It is more important to have a story that will make people go “Wow!” and force them to think, to ask questions, to not sleep at night. It’s the opposite of a dogmatic approach, the opposite of trying to communicate messages.
It’s all in the details and the details are what usually fall through the crack in filmmaking because of the way films are made. You have the whole crew there and you need to get through the day and there’s not enough time and everybody has to be on the same page and you want to this and you’re told you can’t because of the light or whatever. And you kind of forget that the most important thing is that, you know, your character has to play with the bread crumbs on the table!
BS: So much screenwriting seems to be taught as if it’s a formula. But the result seems to be a very different kind of storytelling than the kind you find in films like 4 Months and Beyond the Hills.
IU: Yes, although, when I teach screenwriting, there are some things I’m very adamant about, like it has to be interesting, it has to have suspense, you have to be surprised. But the way you solve the problem, or the way you ask the question, has to be original. It has to be dramatic, but the way you make the drama can be different from the way it is usually done. It’s funny, because my students start by really getting morose about me insisting on certain structural things. They think I’m trying to put them in a formula. And then they realize that if they abide by structural rules they will have so much more freedom to come up with new ideas to fill in that flesh that goes on the structure.
If you look at 4 Months, it has very dramatic stuff. It really abides by basic rules of drama. What one does with those rules, putting the flesh on the bones, is what makes the difference.
BS: Because people read that Beyond the Hills involves exorcism, they perhaps get the wrong impression about what kind of film they’re going to encounter. Can you tell us anything about the situation of religion in Romania, and about the story behind the film, that will help orient American audiences to the subject matter?
IU: The overwhelming majority of Romanians are Orthodox, which doesn’t necessarily mean they practice, but it’s kind of like the Greeks- it’s part of their national identity. We get baptized, we get married in church, we go to church from time to time. There are traditional things that need to be done because that’s what it means to be Romanian. So when I’m asked if Romanians are religious I don’t know what to answer.
Beyond the Hills is based on a real fact that had been covered by a journalist who investigated it. It’s based on a non-fiction work. The story is set in this small monastery that is not one-hundred percent sanctioned by the church yet. They are still waiting for the bishop to come and consecrate the church. And the priest is the kind that is not an apostate but not completely mainstream. He has his following and there is some conflict. It’s a very special world of the nuns and the priests and maybe it’s a little bit difficult for an audience not familiar with monasteries. It may look a little radical, like he’s crazy or something like that. But it’s a world with roots and heresies and people who subscribe to it unconditionally. And what they are doing is a service to a community, taking food to an orphanage, and taking care of people who need to be taken care of. So it’s not like a place of crazy people or anything like that.
I think there’s a risk for the community of nuns and priests in this film to come off as something from the Dark Ages, narrow-minded and fanatical. I think that it might be confusing for viewers (to understand), especially in America, where it’s mostly Protestant, and where Catholic monasteries are different from the Orthodox one, and where there hasn’t been a lot of contact with this kind of community where people really believe in what they’re doing, and where the monastery is a kind of refuge for people who don’t find a place in society, who are looking for some kind of peace, or a structure, a way to find meaning in their lives, without having to deal with the craziness of the outside world. I feel I should maybe call for a little bit of understanding. These are not crazy people who don’t understand what’s going on. They just made a decision to live in a certain way and when you decide that you have faith, that you have vocation, that you believe in God, and that this is the way you want to live, then you have to be consistent. Maybe an American audience can better understand the devotion of a Tibetan monk, a Buddhist monk.
BS: Is there a metaphysical dimension to the themes engaged by the film?
IU: The film definitely deals with the idea of faith, miracle, and, I want to say transcendence, but maybe that’s not the right word. But from a very human perspective, like, what does it mean for someone to have faith? How far do you go with your faith? How much do you alter reality because of your faith? The way Mungiu deals with religious questions is very similar to what the Polish director Kieslowski does in The Decalogue. He changes the parameters a bit and asks these very profound questions from a human perspective.
BS: Are there also dimensions to the film that relate to the larger social and historical situation of Romania, as in the other films associated with the Romanian New Wave?
IU: The film is still very much about people in a situation where you have to wonder, “What would I do, given the circumstances?” The people you see in the film, the people in religious community, but also the people in hospital, and in the outside world, are all confused. You’re confronted with this situation where this young woman doesn’t behave the way someone is expected to behave. So they’re all confronted with the question, “What do we do?” What do we do when something happens that is not what we’re used to and that we know how to handle? So the question is about the choices that all these people make in dealing with her. They all have good intentions. It’s hard to say who’s to blame for what happens. It’s one of the big questions in the film: Can you tell me who’s to blame here? Everybody seems to have a lot of good intentions given the circumstances, given what they’ve been told, what they’ve been taught, previous experiences.
We’re all doing what we think is right, honestly, sincerely. So what do you do when you do what you think is right and things turn out badly? You know? It’s one of those situations where the system breaks down and that is specific to Romania and other countries like Romania, but with respect, not to America, where things don’t really break down as bad. So the question is: what do you do when you live in a world where things don’t turn out the way you want them to?