Compared with the previous "Three Weeks and Two Days in April" and "Beyond the Mountains", the new film "Graduation Exam" by Romanian New Wave director Monghi has obviously restrained a lot of dramatic conflicts and individual sharpness, and it has also greatly reduced the number of characters in his film. The iconic long shot makes the story of the graduation exam seem more composed, but also more brutal. He used the contradictions of a family to extend a Romanian social group portrait. Compared with the metaphorical criticism of the previous two works, "Graduate Exam" is a more meaningful helplessness. The film tells that Romeo, as a father, wanted his daughter to study abroad in order to "escape" Romania, but at the critical moment of the graduation examination, her daughter suffered an accidental attack, and this accident seriously affected her daughter's normal examination. In order to ensure that his daughter can go abroad smoothly, Romeo began to run around, helping his daughter in the way he hated the most, hoping that her daughter would live a "bright" life in the future, but Romeo, who ended up being a victim, was forced to fall into a moral gray area. As a country under the management of "socialism" for 24 years, Romania still follows many of the original social "customs". In his first film, "April, March, Tuesday and Sunday", Munghi explores the social contradictions after the changing political environment. Now "Graduation Exam" is also talking about this sick Romanian society, which is no stranger to the society of Chinese audiences, and can even find absolute resonance. Through the contradictions of a middle-class family, Monghi condenses a corner of society, and finally uncovers the fundamental social contradictions of the Romanian institutional atmosphere. In the story, the father's character is a middle-class doctor. After the Romanian Revolution, he and his wife returned to the country with ambitions and tried to change the country through their own efforts. He sticks to himself and always emphasizes honesty to his daughter, but in the family he maintains an extramarital relationship with his daughter's teacher. He is a contradictory body of self-principles. He strives to maintain principles within the system, but the reality makes him firmly believe that only by leaving his daughter will he have a future. So, when he worked hard for his daughter's future life, he became one of those who should have been changed by him. The enthusiasm for change has been destroyed or even frozen, and now living in the despair of reality, the daughter is the only hope for life, and the pillar of this hope comes from the escape of "beautiful". In the play, he meaningfully advised his daughter: "We have already paid the price. To change this country, it is enough for us to stay here, you still have to leave." Through his father's lines, Mengji subtly buried political factors and social problems. Throughout the story, make the environment behind personal destiny and conscience. This film throws a lot of questions to the audience, social system, state apparatus, education, legal system, corruption, but the core is the dilemma of personal moral code under the conflict of life choices. how to choose? How to keep yourself? It has become the main contradiction of this film. The father is a contradiction and a moral swinger. As a moral adherent, the mother is morbid, thin and taciturn in the play. She is a marginal or even a loser in real society and family life. The daughter is the hope of the family, and it also implies the future of Romania. She gave up the cheating that her father arranged for her, refused to go abroad, and chose what she thought was right. Romeo finally compromised his daughter's choice, which is the necessity of father's love and the last dignity of being a middle-class intellectual. In Mengji's view, the so-called "fairness" and "morality" are swaying like a seesaw in front of Park's father, who suffers unfair attacks, so he chooses unfair cheating for his daughter to go abroad. These two kinds of "unfairness" become The source of the film's conflict, the former is a personal accident, while the latter is driven by circumstances. The former can be condemned and punished, while the latter can be understood and accepted by society. Romeo has changed from sticking to the principle of "fairness" step by step to operating "unfairly" by the general environment, which may be the flow of life in the general environment. This accident opened Romeo's entire network of relationships, which is a social phenomenon that is tightly woven around the family. From the earliest resistance of the father to the active operation later, Mengji used this accident to give the direction of reality. In the end, there is no conclusion about who is the murderer. The broken glass in the film constantly cuts off the moral bottom line of his father. That is the broken humanity. At the end, he searches for the murderer in the dark, but what he gets is a sudden Fear after a shot, the murderer is no longer an individual person, but a Romanian social environment. In reality, everyone can be a victim, but at the same time, everyone can also be a maker of this reality. Life and the future are full of despair and confusion, and Romeo's original passion and determination have long been assimilated and engulfed by the environment. Just like the corrupt official he was determined to cure, the patient died suddenly before all efforts began, the code of ethics simply cannot change anything. "Who hasn't cheated on an exam? Sometimes the results are the most important! I never do that, but this time..." Father used this sentence to destroy his own moral code, and in this way "Fairness" and "honesty" have become sad and laughable clinging concepts when faced with choices within the system. This is the absurd and cruel Romania shown in Mongi's lens. Living here, the life choices of torturing moral dilemmas are sometimes an unaffordable price, just like the murderer being traced, there is no solution. Outside the camera, it is Mongi's swaying of Romania's future development, which is also mixed with hopeless hope. As an audience, there is only a sigh of helplessness left in addition to reflection. Finally, the Romanian society embodied in Mongi’s film is summarized with the help of an interview with Romanian writer Norman Manea: “That huge lie is like a new placenta, neither giving us life nor dying, a reckless Posture will make that thin membrane burst. You have to hold your breath and keep checking yourself so that your mouth, blocked by lies big and small, doesn't inadvertently spit out breaths that could shatter that protective cocoon In fact, we're constantly wrapping the shell with other coverings, layer after layer, like a Russian nesting doll."
original article
Public number: The other side of Merlotti
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