R.M.N.

 

Writer/director Cristian Mungiu

R.M.N.            B                                                                                                                          aka: Rezonanță Magnetică Nucleară                                                                                                Romania  France  Belgium  Sweden  (125)  2022  ‘Scope  d: Cristian Mungiu

An overly dismal and grim film about racism and xenophobic hatred, which refuses to listen to reason and instead spreads its own toxic contamination wherever it appears, grounded in fearmongering, disguised as some kind of moral cleansing, but it’s a suffocating poison that is hard to eradicate, with Mungiu basing his film upon real events, the 2020 Ditrău xenophobic incident.  Nonetheless, while challenging the country’s post-dictatorship legacy, this comes across as heavy handed, taking shots at the West and the imposed regulations of the EU, in many ways resembling the lynch mob mentality of the Fritz Lang pre-war epic Fury (1936), but also Stuart Heisler’s Among the Living (1941) and William Wellman’s The Ox-Bow Incident (1943), films dealing with the murderous effects of lawlessness from a lynch mob mentality, where vigilante justice replaces any existing democracy, where ideals of justice are turned on its head.  Romania had a long history of bigotry against Gypsies, “whom we finally expelled,” completely driven out of the region, which the residents proudly report again and again, yet this film gets under the surface, with sinister implications, exploring the primal forces of animalism that exist in Eastern European countries, as animals have always had a place in Slavic imaginations, used either symbolically or in reality to better understand humans and the worlds they create, like the horses in Tarkovsky’s ANDREI RUBLEV (1966) and the wolves in František Vláčil’s Marketa Lazarová (1967), which traces back to Medieval paganist roots, or more recently the deer in Ildikó Enyedi’s On Body and Soul (Teströl és lélekröl) (2017), exploring the inner recesses of the subconscious realms.  In one evocative scene in this film there’s a holiday parade with men wearing bear costumes.  Only his fifth feature in twenty years, Mungiu sets this film in the heavily forested region of Transylvania, where hunting is synonymous with the predatory nature of man, viewed as a way of demonstrating control over the surrounding natural world, while also taming the wildness within, which is a way of historically existing in harmony.  But something upsets that natural order, where unleashed strands of xenophobic hatred turns man against man in an epic struggle between rational choices and animalistic instincts, as outside forces are viewed as inhuman, like an insidiuous infestation of rot and disease, believing it will upset the nationalistic “purity” of the region, where the objections always begin with “I have nothing against them, but…”, eventually leading to death threats.  In expressing the quickly spreading public outrage, the raucous town meeting at the end recalls Radu Jude’s Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (Babardeala cu bucluc sau porno balamuc) (2021), which succinctly summarizes the culture wars that are currently being fought in a number of Eastern European countries, with the urban elites defending all the achievements of liberal democracies since the 1990’s, yet there is also a regressive wing that prefers a heavier hand of authority, like Viktor Orbán’s Hungarian nationalism, opening the door for the more rigidly dogmatic politics from the communist era.  Romania is experiencing a far-right resurgence, but so is Poland, Italy, and France, allowing a regression into deep-seeded bigotry, Romanian village embroiled in racism scandal over Sri Lankan bakery workers YouTube (4:22).  While everyone should be proud of where they come from, this film presents its own unique challenges, with Mungiu viewed as radically innovative abroad, yet in Romania his views blend into the mainstream (Cristian Mungiu Talks R.M.N [Interview]).  Dark and deeply disturbing, shot in ‘Scope by cameraman Tudor Vladimir Panduru, this film initially screened in competition at Cannes in 2022, six years since his last film Graduation (Bacalaureat) (2016) won the Best Direction Prize, with Mungiu smacking us in the face with an overly pessimistic yet inevitable reality that is sweeping through Europe at the moment, fueled by extremist social media postings that specialize in fabrication and conspiracy theories, driving democracies to the brink of instability, where it can be hard to watch, but unfortunately it rings true.  

The title stands for Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) in Romanian, as if examining an internally growing, potentially life-threatening medical condition, with the director scanning the complexity of our current social structures.  Initially, an untold sign comes from the trauma of a child, Rudi (Mark Blenyesi), who sees something in the forest (which is never shown) and becomes petrified, refusing to speak afterwards, with his mother Ana (Macrina Bârlădeanu) offering reassuring comfort, while his burly, overbearing father Matthias (Marin Grigore) shows little sympathy, wanting to instill his own patriarchal values, demanding that he be strong and face his fears, telling him to fight and never feel pity, viewing it entirely through an entrenched masculinity where any perceived weakness is paramount to cowardice.  Matthias and his family come from the German minority in the region, initially seen working abroad at a slaughterhouse in Germany, but he gets into an altercation after receiving a bigoted insult and is forced to return home, where his wife is not happy to see him, fearful of the way he bullies their son, quickly seen visiting his recently divorced former mistress, Csilla (Judith State), the Hungarian manager of a local industrial bakery, hoping to rekindle a new affair, but she’s been pursuing higher ambitions since her promotion, often seen alone drinking wine and playing the cello, while also stylishly renovating her parents’ house.  Despite the remoteness of the region, the village is populated by various ethnic groups where rampant poverty has forced them to seek work abroad, unwilling to accept the minimal wages offered locally.  As a result, the owner of the factory, Mrs. Dénes (Orsolya Moldován), is forced to recruit foreign workers from EU funds that will allow her to expand her factory, in this case hiring workers from Sri Lanka after weeks of no one else locally applying for the job.  Added to this mix is a French emissary, Ben (Victor Benderra), a member of an NGO whose mission is to count the bears in the region, part of the ecological preservation movement that shut down the nearby mine due to hazardous concerns, taking with it many local jobs, a contributing factor in so many seeking jobs elsewhere.  He’s immediately schooled by the local view that the West has historically all but ignored the East, believing there’s never been any sense of shared reciprocity, using a veritable mishmash of languages ​​in their everyday lives, where the initial festival screenings were distinguished by different subtitle colors (missing in the U.S. version), Cristian Mungiu's R.M.N. new clip official from Cannes Film Festival 2022 - 1/3 YouTube (1:44).  The wild landscape of the Carpathian mountains comes into play, shot mostly in winter, much of it during Christmas, where the population is always subjected to wolves or bears in the dense forest that could attack at any time, with sheep continually disappearing from the stables, mirroring the fears emanating from the village inhabitants.  Residents have a hard time realizing that while the mountainous landscape has remained the same for thousands of years, the circumstances have changed, as globalization hangs over the community.  The film is mostly seen through the eyes of Matthias, whose outdated and uneducated masculine views reflect the village mentality, still harboring resentments against Gypsies, where the underlying hatred is still simmering.  While the Sri Lankans have done nothing to stir up trouble, and by all indications are generous and hard working, their hiring sets off a firestorm of resentments, much of it coming in an outpouring of racial animosity expressed during a church service, where the local priest (József Bíró) acts as their intermediary, taking those complaints to Mrs. Dénes, who views them as little more than ugly rumors that have no basis in fact, ignoring his plea to get rid of them.  What follows is a stunning escalation, as Csilla’s home is firebombed by hooded vigilantes, a terrorist act that resembles a KKK attack from the 60’s in the American South, with Matthias later implicated as one of the attackers, adding a chilling undertone of sinister intimidation to his existing relationship with Csilla.

Since his first internationally acclaimed film, the Palme d’Or winning 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days (4 luni, 3 saptamâni si 2 zile) (2007), Mungiu has always shot his films in sequence, drawing inspiration directly from reality, where one of the most important ingredients is time, its continuum, where there is no editing.  It was then Mungiu decided to make films that were as close to reality as possible, extremely wary that cinema can be a very manipulative art, deciding early on that the director must make choices that empower the viewers, allowing them to make their own judgments.  In this way, Mungiu counters the American model where the audience always has to understand, or identify with the main character.  For this reason, he turns the central protagonist of Matthias into an unsympathetic and brutal character, balancing this with an unforgiving forest being so close to the houses, mirroring the subconscious, where you have to be careful where you walk at night, as unseen dangers lurk everywhere.  There is a conflict between individuality and community, where sometimes you lose your individuality by becoming part of the runaway freight train of the crowd, as people often lose their moral compass to conform to convention, arguably a safer route, but one fraught with inherent dangers.  Mungiu already made a film about the role religious institutions play in abandoning society’s core values, Beyond the Hills (După dealuri) (2012), becoming more ritualistic than humanistic.  That same thing happens here, as an initial spark inside the walls of a church incites a wildfire of fear and xenophobic hatred that literally takes over the town, fueled by violent death threats from disparaging social media postings, where their instincts are to be suspicious of those who don’t look like them, upsetting the fragile balance between various ethnic groups, turning into a 17-minute communal shockwave of agitated chaos, hate slogans, and Fascist-spewing bigotry, with people angrily blaming foreigners for all the sins in the world, including poverty, unemployment, health epidemics, terrorism, and the effects of globalization.  Denouncing the liberal bastions of the West and the EU as examples of being out of touch with their neck of the woods, revealing how the absurdities of the European subsidy system can tear small villages apart, this one-shot sequence also reproduces a compilation of the stereotypes and lies reflecting the many nationalist arguments heard all throughout Europe, where a common refrain is “we have nothing against them as long as they stay where they belong.”  In terms of stirring up hysteria, it resembles the torch-wielding mob taking off after the monster in James Whale’s FRANKENSTEIN (1931), Frankenstein (7/8) Movie CLIP - The Torch-Wielding Mob ... YouTube (3:00), blamed for every offense imaginable, except, of course, their own crimes.  Somewhere near the end, the narrative of the central protagonist shifts from the more closed-minded Matthias to the more liberal Csilla, who denounces the bigotry, with music playing an important part of her life, frequently seen playing the theme music of Wong Kar-wai’s In The Mood For Love - Yumeji's Theme [4K] YouTube (6:10), striking a balance between humanity and affection, where this stark contrast is meant to portray the struggle we all face to find our own inner conscious.  Csilla embraces the foreign workers, and develops personal relationships with each one of them, knowing the value they bring to their isolated community.  Though she is agnostic, she embraces the spirit and humanistic side of religion that the church and its parishioners have abandoned.  The fact that the two younger educated women, Csilla and Mrs. Dénes, are the most open and clear-sighted, and also the warmest characters, is not accidental, but realistic.  While the layers of extreme dehumanization can feel one note, never delving into the psychological interiors, yet continually hammering home the same irrational impulses, Mungiu’s films all have a common theme that suppressing the rights of others is a pathological product of historically ingrained masculine ideology, leading to an ambiguous finale that suggests we’re at the threshold of a moral crisis and a possible return to primitivism, even breaking away momentarily from the director’s penchant for naturalism.

Cristian Mungiu’s Closet Picks YouTube (5:46)

White God (Fehér isten)

WHITE GOD (Fehér isten)         B            
Hungary  (121 mi)  2014  “Scope  d:  Kornél Mundruczó                 Filmpartners [Hungary]

It’s no secret that after the films I’ve made thus far, I am turning towards genre experiments. The first installment of these is White God, inspired mostly by preposterous and increasingly rancorous present-day social relations. In my view, parallel to the questionable advantages of globalization, a caste-system has become more sharply defined: superiority has truly become the privilege of white, Western civilization, and it is nearly impossible for us not to take advantage of it. Yes, us. After all, we are the members of this privileged mass. Hence, I would like to create a film which allows a glimpse of the passions raging on the other side, criticizing our detestable self-confidence, full of lies and lopsided truths, set on domesticating the minorities while actually wishing only to destroy them, hypocritically denying inequalities, not believing in either peace or in peaceful cohabitation. Nevertheless, I have chosen animals as the subject instead of minorities. I did this, because I wanted to focus freely on this sensitive subject; as freely and with the least amount of taboos as possible. Therefore, I tell the story of animals, a dispossessed species that was once man’s best friend. But man has betrayed them, and in turn, they revolted against their former masters and companions in order to validate their existence.

The film can be described by mingling the words adventure, revenge, rebellion, and heroism. I would like the topoi of vengeance films and the allegorical qualities of animal stories to merge in this film in a dynamic, thrilling, and undeniably emotive way. There is no question that when faced with betrayal and friendship, the audience must take sides. I would like Lili, the thirteen year-old girl, to be our mirror. Through her actions, we will be confronted by the mechanism of confabulations. Her coming of age will be the alarming example of what we hope never to raise our children to become. Still, because Lili is a courageous girl with a pure heart, in the end, she is brave enough not to step in line ... our line; the line of fathers and parents. She has the courage to rebel and contradict, to lay down her arms, even at the possible cost of her own life.

My goal is for us to root for Hagen and Lili together. For Hagen to fight back; for Lili to understand that Hagen’s rebellion is just. By way of this, we too can be cleansed and return home with the knowledge that the decision is in our hands: we have the choice not to become phony, deceitful adults. This film interweaves melo-drama with the characteristics of adventure and vengeance movies. My intention was to demonstrate that mankind and beasts share the same universe. Only if we are able to position ourselves in the place of different species do we have the chance to lay down our arms.

─Director’s Statement, Kornél Mundruczó

While an entire industry has arisen around animation or computer special effects in movies, less noticeable are the use of animal trainers, especially when considering how minimal their influence usually is when conceiving the artistic vision of a film.  Perhaps more so than the director himself, the driving force behind the success of this film must be attributed to animal trainer Árpád Halász and animal department coordinator Teresa Ann Miller, as the performances from the more than 280 dogs are shockingly convincing, both when seen individually, but also collectively as a group, where the choreography of the animals is so uniquely original that it harkens back to the extraordinary artistic vision of recently deceased Hungarian director Miklós Jancsó, to whom this film is dedicated, whose films THE RED AND THE WHITE (1967) and RED PSALM (1972) feature breathtaking camera shots of horses, where no one choreographs the movements of horses like Jancsó.  While Kornél Mundruczó is a prominent Hungarian director whose last five features have all played and/or premiered at Cannes, it’s still somewhat surprising that this film was chosen as the Best Film in the Un Certain Regard category that included Lisandro Alonso’s JAUJA (2014), one of the highest rated films at Cannes from 2014, Cannes critics ratings, (especially considering the Jury President was fellow Argentine director Pablo Trapero), but also Ruben Östlund’s Force Majeure (Turist) (2014) and Wim Wenders superb documentary The Salt of the Earth (2014) that was awarded a special prize.  That said, the story bears a startling resemblance in theme and spirit (not to mention a title inversion) to Sam Fuller’s WHITE DOG (1982), as both are allegorical comments on the human condition, where the treatment of dogs is a harsh reminder of how we view and treat minorities, as if they are a subhuman species.  While the dogs are extraordinary, along with the cinematography of Marcell Rév, the humans in the picture never rise above stereotypical depictions, where the beautiful handling of the animals is undermined by the poorly written performances of the humans, especially the male characters who come across as heavy-handed brutes, a common characteristic that recurs in every Mundruczó film, perhaps systematic of the ultra-repressive, male dominated Eastern European political regimes. Nonetheless, these poorly written characters undermine all of Mundruczó’s efforts, as they appear one dimensional and overly simplistic, lacking the kind of complexity most of us witness every day, where humans are instead perceived as a work in progress.    

What perhaps distinguishes this work is its adherence to the horror genre, especially the rebellion of a mistreated animal species, using a sci-fi twist that veers into Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963), becoming an apocalyptic cautionary tale.  While its aim may be to peel back a layer of grotesque human behavior, it lacks the depth and poetry of Bresson’s Au Hasard Balthazar (1966), arguably the greatest animal movie ever made, defined by the extraordinary breadth of its grace and compassion, and instead provides a steroid-fueled version of unleashed anger gone amok.  At the center of the film is a dog named Hagen, where everything that happens is seen through his eyes as he goes from one harrowing adventure to the next.  Initially he is the companion to Lili (Zsófia Psotta), a child of divorce, a young, somewhat sullen 13-year old girl who is seen being dropped off by her mother with her estranged father Dániel (Sándor Zsótér), where friction immediately develops as he lives in a building where dogs are not welcome.  Neighbors complain, Dániel denies he has a dog, forcing Lili to lock him up in the bathroom, which of course leads to continual barking coming from his home, which she’s able to calm by playing her trumpet.  We discover they are in the center of an even larger controversy, as Budapest is charging a government imposed “mongrel” fine, an exorbitant tax to own mixed breed dogs, preferring pure bred, pedigreed dogs, causing owners to unload their mutts onto the street to avoid payment, where the animal shelters are soon overrun, creating an epidemic of wild dogs running free.  Following an incident in school where Hagen’s presence nearly gets her kicked out of the band, where her music instructor refuses to allow a dog, Lili runs out of options.  Despite fighting desperately to hold onto him, finding the ban cruel and hurtful, as dogs offer a friendship often lacking in society, her father forces Lili to get rid of the dog, leaving him on the side of the road and driving away, forcing Hagen to fend for himself.  Like a subspecies of creatures, the stray dogs are forced to survive against impossible odds, constantly chased by sadistic dogcatchers, where they quickly learn evasive maneuvers.  The audience is quickly sucked into an “us against the world” mentality, as the dogs are besieged at every turn by a rigid authority that wants to get rid of them.  Hagen’s cycle of survival is emotionally taxing, as at first he survives by his wits, gaining the audience’s sympathies, often through humorous methods before being tricked by an underhanded street beggar that sells him to a ruthless dog fight trainer who’s only interest is making money, converting Hagen into a ferocious Alpha male that is brutally trained to rip any opponent to shreds or be killed himself. 

Other than the blunt realism of PLEASANT DAYS (2002), which remains arguably his best film, Mundruczó has used artificiality to almost mythic effect, where JOHANNA (2005) is the most uniquely outrageous, a full-blown 20th century expressionist opera on sin and redemption, while the stunning visual beauty of DELTA (2008) defies the Edenesque brutality that follows, all suggesting a world gone wrong, a poetic variation of Paradise Lost.  Similarly, WHITE GOD turns into a nightmarish fever dream where Hagen’s transition from affectionate pet to mad dog killer defies belief, escaping from his cage where he’s continually seen wandering desperately through a jagged urban wasteland charged with ever more difficult obstacles to overcome, eventually captured yet again, placed in a kind of solitary confinement for obstinate dogs, a private room that may as well be a doggy death row where he witnesses another dog being put to sleep, where incredibly Hagen glances up at a television playing Tom and Jerry cartoons, perhaps a wry comment on how easily we’re appeased while surrounded by human savagery.  Apparently this is the inspiration he needs, as literally moments from suffering a similar fate he leads a death defying escape, causing a canine revolt on the proportion of the Spartacus (1960) slave rebellion, where the chaos that ensues takes the city by storm and the stunned populace by surprise, where the city is literally overrun by wild packs of liberated dogs, all of whom have been treated with sadistic brutality and malevolent disdain.  Led by Hagen, the unleashed animal fury of hundreds of mixed bred dogs racing through the streets in mass is an impressive sight, like water gushing through a sudden opening in a dam, where the accompanying surge of freedom couldn’t be more powerfully expressed.  This kind of metaphorical furor must resonate even more powerfully in Eastern Europe where so many nations were forced to submit to a post-war Soviet military presence, leading to lengthy periods of occupation.  Unfortunately, the film meanders into mystifyingly strange territory, where the human presence simply deflates the build-up of energy, resembling the mayhem in the streets caused by King Kong (1933), “often imitated, never equaled,” or GODZILLA (1954), where Dániel is actually seen with a Rambo-like flamethrower to protect himself against this formidable enemy, adding a cartoonish element to an otherwise riveting moment, leading to an ultimate showdown between man and beast.  While the idea itself can be dramatically compelling, the execution leaves something to be desired, lost in the reverie of a childlike innocence where a naïve hope becomes the only option.  The final sequence is a stunner, filled with sorrow and pity, which may pull at the heartstrings while viewers may also be equally astounded at how they could pull it off without CGI effects.  The human depiction is overly predictable, while giving human traits to animals is always a precarious ordeal, yet the film does offer a voice to the voiceless, where it at least hopes to build empathy for those who have been mistreated and brutalized the most, where their marginalized status is seemingly taken for granted in the growing complacency of the modern world.