4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days

One of the best movies I've ever seen. Everything the movie tries to do it does perfectly.

It's almost too bad that Mungiu chose to center the movie around an abortion, since abortion is one of those things that is just an "issue" and that is almost impossible for people to actually talk about in any truthful way because it's so hard to see past the "issue." It's not "almost too bad" because it's in any way a flaw of the movie; in fact, among the many many amazing things about the movie is the fact that it is a movie about an abortion--and the trouble that surrounds having an abortion in a place that it's illegal--that actually manages to not be about "the issue" of abortion (that is to say, the characters and the plot and stuff never once come even close to becoming allegorical). It's just too bad that because the movie is about an abortion, so many people will probably end up not seeing it or not being able to see past the abortion issue to the actual movie. It's one of the most incredible movies ever made by human people.

I'm still kind of in awe right now.

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(next day)

I had the same type of feeling after seeing this movie that I first identified after reading Endgame by Beckett, which is that the subject matter of the movie is really pretty depressing, and the whole move makes you feel very tense (Robin said, "I just need a drink!" while we were on the bus after the movie, and a random other bus passenger then said, "Did you just see that 4 Months movie, too?"), but despite that and what most of the reviews I've read have referred to as the "bleakness" of the movie, I left feeling totally exhilarated, and that exhilaration was just about how incredibly made the movie is. It's like this exhilaration about the sheer amazingness of human creation, and when it's this good it really trumps any level of bad shit (ie, existential angst, trying to obtain an abortion in Ceausescu's Romania). I mean I feel like it actually completely overcomes it. In some way. Or something. I don't know. This movie is just frickin' good, though. I'm still thinking about how perfect random shots were, and there really wasn't a single one that wasn't perfect. God. Wow. Shit.

* * *

I just got a new high score in Jetman! 2479! While I was playing, I was thinking about this movie and how a lot of other movies that I would group into a "like this one" category, largely based on the really long takes, which isn't really an especially useful category, but I was thinking that a lot of movies that I would group into a "like this one" category, like movies by David Gordon Green and Lost in Translation and Cuaron's movies, that a lot of the complaints about these movies is how "nothing ever happens," in them, or how they generally also avoid a tight plot, seemingly as a part of their adherence to greater realism or something. Which I would sort of agree with although it's not really a "complaint" in my book. But one of the things that was so incredible about this movie was how it was a "like this one" movie (duh!) that also was super tightly plotted. The plot was done so well because it never felt like the plot was driving the movie along, but it was definitely very tightly plotted. Reviews say almost Hitchcockianly so, which just makes me realize I need to watch more Hitchcock.

And also about the absence of music, which never felt like a device at all, it just seemed like it didn't need music, and I had this idea that most other movies that don't use music totally use it as a device although I can't really think of any good examples except No Country for Old Men, and not that that's bad to use no-music as a device, but that it's impressive to use it not as a device. Although maybe it still is. Anyway, that scene of blondie sitting at the chair and not saying anything, after the dude left, that went on for quite a long time, that scene would have been absolutely ruined by music. (Rififi, of course, used the abscence of a score to incredible effect, although that was only for part of the movie. That may be the only example I can think of that used it so effectively.)

Then I started thinking about how I totally set a new high score in my Jetman game and that I did it while thinking about this movie so I should totally blog about it. Then I tried to not think about that but instead to think about this movie some more, but it didn't work. Then I lost.