Mungiu's themes all come together in an astonishing 17-minute town hall meeting that's done in a single shot and features more than 25 speakers. His harshness runs counter to the sympathetic Csilla's desire to be part of the prosperous European Union and to embrace the heightened romantic emotions you find in Wong Kar-wai's film "In the Mood For Love," whose theme song she practices on her cello. Fighting the currents of history, he embodies a once-admired vision of manhood - strong, patriarchal, fraught with violence - that feels out of date. Shot in dynamic widescreen images suffused with wintry blues and grays, it offers a superbly choreographed vision of this village's life - from its holiday parade with men wearing bear costumes to its jingoist Facebook groups.Īlthough he's concerned with large sociopolitical issues, Mungiu treats his characters as vivid individuals bursting with human complexity, none more mysteriously so than Matthias, a lost soul torn between joining his xenophobic neighbors and trying to win Csilla's love. But while the story is true, "R.M.N." is no docudrama or slab of dreary realism. Mungiu based the film on an actual 2020 event in Ditrau, Romania, where 1,800 villagers voted to expel three Sri Lankans who worked at their local bakery. To Csilla's horror, the villagers, including the local doctor and pastor, want them gone. Even though many local men work abroad, the community freaks out over having foreigners in their midst, especially Asian ones. She manages a regional baking company that, owing to a labor shortage, hires a couple of employees from Sri Lanka. Nor does Matthias' return please his ex-lover Csilla - that's Judith State - who's moved on. The ones who show pity die first, he tells his terrified son. The surly Matthias worries that Ana's concern is turning Rudy into a sissy with no survival skills. She's busy fretting over their young son, Rudi, who's gone mute since being traumatized by something he saw in the woods. Though it's just before Christmas, his arrival doesn't exactly delight his estranged wife, Ana. He returns home to a struggling Romanian village in Transylvania. The main character is Matthias, played by Marin Grigore, who as the action begins, flees his job at a German slaughterhouse after headbutting a co-worker who calls him a gypsy. He catches our precise historical moment in his new one, "R.M.N.," a piercing, enigmatic story that's set in bleak, present-day Romania but is profoundly relevant to what's happening almost everywhere. Its leading light is Cristian Mungiu, who highlighted Romania's claim to attention by winning the 2007 Palme d'Or at Cannes with his abortion drama "4 months, 3 weeks and 2 Days." Since then, he's made only three features, but they've shown Mungiu unmatched at capturing how social forces twist people into knots. And while Romanian cinema is less known, it's produced a wave of filmmakers whose work dwarfs the movies coming out of, say, France or Sundance. South Korea has become not just a film but a pop culture juggernaut.
JOHN POWERS, BYLINE: Back in 1999, if you'd asked me to guess which film cultures would be the most exciting in the next century, I would never have picked South Korea and Romania. He says "R.M.N." cuts to the very heart of what's happening in the world right now. Our critic-at-large, John Powers, thinks he's one of the best filmmakers anywhere. The movie, which is now playing in theaters, was made by Cristian Mungiu. In the new Romanian film "R.M.N.," a village in Transylvania is thrown into turmoil when the local bakery hires workers from Sri Lanka.
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