Since I am very interested in watching all new Romanian movies, I could not have missed the new movie directed by Cristian Mungiu, R.M.N.
Until arriving to the movie theater, I
thought that the name was a direct reference to the imaging of the characters
to be presented. Sitting there, it came to my mind that it could also refer to
the name of the country, Romania, but without vowels. After the movie ended, and
left me with a couple of questions about certain symbols that I noticed, I
started searching for opinions in other articles and got to other versions to
the title, not at all uninteresting, among which ‚remain’, and ‚Romanian, Hungarian,
German’.
Moving forward, to the body of the
movie, Matthias impetuously returns to his home village in Transylvania and discovers
that his son had suffered a trauma and ceased talking. Preoccupied with finding
a solution to this and cure his son from the fear, Matthias’ story weaves with
another, the one about some workers coming from Sri Lanka coming to work as bakers
within a bread factory.
Things degenerate and the villages is
soon divided into two parts – one that supports the Sri Lanka workers to leave
and another that does not.
While searching for opinions about the
ending of the movie, I found a comment saying that the movie would present
Romanians as rasists and xenophobic. I say it does not. This movie is like a
mirror and anyone can see themselves in it, be it European or from other parts
of the world. Universal themes are in it, about life, death, discrimination,
tolerance, love and fight for survival. And since I mentioned universalness, I
enjoyed the moment where the Romanian ballad Mioritza (a popular ballad poem about
two sheperds planning to kill the third and the sheep, Mioritza, overhearing
them conniving informs the third sheperd) was sung by children in Hungarian, amplifying
its significance.
I noticed some discrete notes of magical
realism – I will not say more than pay attention to the little boy. Towards the
end of the movie there was a moment that greatly moved me for it was a symbolical
pyramid illustrated by boy-holding-father-holding-father.
As for the ending... well, I have a couple
of interpretations, but I don’t want to spoil by mistake the magic of the
movie.
Go watch the movie R.M.N directed by
Cristian Mungiu. It is sublime, just like the song that embraces its ending.
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