The phone rings many times in this film, accompanied by cramped ringtones or vibrations, and arrives at the moment when the hero is embarrassed or busy. Each time is an alarm bell when the characters in the film are on the edge of morality, and like everyone who is dragged by reality, they keep hanging up, ignoring, and turning a deaf ear on the screen.
The first bell that caught my attention was when the hero met the seriously ill Mr. Bulai. The two talked about cheating, as usual as a woman talking about the rise and fall of vegetable prices, and the phone rang at an untimely time. Bulai continued to speak loudly, boasting about successful backdoor cases. No one hung up, no one answered, it was so harsh, like a severe moral torture.
Then, at Dr.Pandele's family birthday party, he enthusiastically demonstrated to the male protagonist how to cross out the words on the test paper to translate the marks. The phone rang again, but he was slightly cringed by the fireworks outside the window and the noisy voice of people. This time, Dr.Pandele hung up directly, condemning social injustice, seemingly unable to hide his sympathy for Eliza, but he did not hesitate when creating more injustice. At this time, the bell is like the swaying heart of the male protagonist, gradually weakening, and even more and more even about the behavior of giving up the principle.
The day when the male protagonist's mother fell ill was the loudest and longest-lasting segment in the whole film, trying to use the safety of his relatives to try to arouse the male protagonist's final reflection on whether or not. In the narrow and breathless bathroom, Eliza surfaced to question the rupture of his parents' relationship, but in fact he initiated moral considerations for his father's many actions. Separation, lies, cheating, illegitimate children, etc., Romeo seems to be on a road that can never be turned back, and tells Eliza in self-deception time and time again that everything is "for her to escape faster".
Towards the end of the film, the male protagonist's phone ringing is presented with vibration, and the nurse Csilla said "You never answer the phone", which broke through the numbness of the whole society.
As a representative of the Romanian New Wave, Mongi avoided the use of background music throughout the film, and insisted on using a handheld camera to work, aiming to highlight the authenticity of the story with a processing approach close to that of a documentary. The ringing of the phone, which rang again and again, was particularly pale and abrupt, like a questioning, like a wake-up call, and gradually extinguished.
double standard punishment
Punishment and double standards are everywhere in the film.
The son of the male mistress, Marty, threw stones at the villain who refused to line up in the playground, while the male protagonist, who criticized him for using evil to defeat evil, tried his best to use cheating to help the innocent daughter who was abused. As a doctor, he never accepts red envelopes from patients, but in front of Dr. Pandele, he tried his best to bribe him just to keep his heart safe.
Mask · Lie
Marty has been wearing a slightly silly and lingering mask in the film, standing silently aside every time the male protagonist quarrels with his mistress or is in a cold war, which is quite ceremonial.
The male protagonist has never talked directly to his wife about the handling of divorce. His words and deeds are not without disgust and dissatisfaction with the entire living environment. Infidelity is not so much tired of the old man, but more like a resistance to reality. But he has nowhere to hide, and life seems to be filled with endless surgeries, constantly ringing phones, and overwhelmed household chores. He began to give up on himself and gamble on his daughter's future. Escape is the only longing for his exhausted life. Because this yearning was not allowed to be interrupted unexpectedly, after learning that his daughter was injured before the exam, he chose to go to the risk alone. He would rather use his own failure to ruin his daughter's bright future. This is not just about family and fatherly love, but behind the desperate bet against his daughter's wishes is the extreme selfishness of the male protagonist himself.
The background of "Graduation Exam" is very well chosen. It seems to be a high school student's entrance test, but it is actually a moral torture of each character in the film. More, it is Mengji's hope that each audience will examine themselves. At the end of the film, there is no account of the murderer's real body, nor does he name Eliza's final destination. It's a pity that she didn't choose to cross out the words on the test paper deliberately, and she still used the tears of the victim to sympathize with her and give her more time to answer the questions.
The story of crossing the line, no matter what kind of helplessness it is accompanied by, no matter in what way, is being staged every day. People began to wonder, since when did this country become so corrupt? Following the rules gradually equals losing opportunities and different treatment. In interviews with the media at various past film festivals, Mungi said: "There is not so much black and white in this world, and many times it is in a gray area. If you tell yourself before you go out, today I only do the right thing. things, then you quickly discover that you can’t live normally.”
So, we began to walk in the gray area like "others", laugh at the power class, and live flatteringly. In hindsight, it was already a group of "others", and the team gradually grew to "everyone". The voice of reason sounded from time to time, but it seemed that no one could escape the fate of stepping on the line when blaming others. For example, the gradually fading phone ringing in the film was eventually ignored and never mentioned.
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