I watched the film "Four Months, Three Weeks and Two Days" by Romanian director Christian Monjou at the Cultural Center of the Presidential Palace. When I got home and searched the Internet, I found out that it was the film that won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in France last year. I think her award is well-deserved. This is a film with great tension and expressiveness.
The background of the story is that in 1987, Romania's political situation was turbulent. Affected by the disintegration of the former Soviet Union, Romania was on the eve of change like other Eastern European countries. Two female college students in the same dormitory, one unexpectedly became pregnant and needed an abortion, and the other not only offered help out of friendship, but even when the money for abortion was not enough, they exchanged their bodies for the doctor, so that the doctor invited through a friend could Give the female partner a smooth abortion. Because this kind of behavior is illegal, and because for them, becoming a mother too early is undoubtedly tantamount to ruining the future.
Before watching this film, I knew very little about the film and television works of Eastern European countries, and this film could not provide a panoramic introduction. However, from the real details of the film, the documentary-style pictures and the dialogue between the two female students and the people around, we can already feel the social outlook and the mental state of the citizens of the former socialist country in the late 1980s. For example, the attitude of the staff at the front desk of the hotel when receiving female college students who come to open a room and the importance they attach to the ID card can easily remind people of China in the 1980s. However, no matter whether these political realities are right or wrong, the director's success is reflected in not judging social realities, but conveying a Information: How people lived and faced reality in Romania during that period.
Abortion, in many Western countries, especially Catholic countries, is a very serious illegal and moral violation of human rights. In China, abortion has long been commonplace, and both the spiritual cost and the actual cost are already very low. Is abortion a pregnant woman's right to self-determination or is it a violation of the growing fetus' right to life? It's almost a paradox. In some Western countries that claim to be the most human rights-minded, many teenage girls become pregnant and then risk their lives for illegal abortions. In countries that are accused of not speaking about human rights, such as China, the vast majority of women are able to deal with similar issues according to their own wishes, and the cost and cost are very small.
Meng Jiu's film may not want to judge the correctness of the abortion law at the time, or even to judge the political situation at that time. But a good film can always make people think, whether abortion is in line with human nature, or whether communism is the highest and ultimate goal of human beings, it cannot be explained by a film. But if at some point in the future, humans can find solutions to these problems with few correct answers, films like these form an integral step on the road to getting there.
2008/9/6
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