Beyond the Hills (2012)

Cristian Mungiu's 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days was a  rollercoaster of a film: it gripped me by the guts and didn't let go. His latest film, Beyond the Hills, may not be as direct and strong. It is also more complex, and mostly I think this complexity deepens the film. That said, Beyond the Hill is a challenging movie, one which I do not regret having seen. Clearly, Mungiu is a director that has things to say. Here, he explores a story in which religious frenzy, a non-existent welfare state and a sad love story are complicit factors in the film's evolving tragedy - no easy solutions wait around the corner and there is no comforting consolation that everything will be alright in the end. Mungiu's approach is harsh and it remains harsh, but that doesn't mean he is cynical.

Alina comes back from Germany to go visit her friend/lover Voichita who lives in a small monastery. They both grew up in the same orphanage. Alina has resolved to take Voichita with her away from the monastery, so that they could live together. Voichita oscillates between different solutions and as the story progresses, they both live in the monastery. Alina is seen as an outsider, a threat to the order. That is also what she becomes. One horrible thing after another happens, not as a result of one action, or one person's malice. Things get out of hand, and Alina gets desperate. And desperation is also the theme here, and people's responses to it. Voichita pleads for her friend: they must take care of her in the monastery, they must let her stay and they must help her, because nobody else will, they cannot throw her out on the street. In this way, the film connects several aspects of a situation that goes from bad to worse. Mungiu looks at how decisions and attitudes evolve within a bigger context, a context of insecurity and vulnerability. I don't think the film bashes religion itself. Rather, the monastery is placed in a specific society, a specific state of poverty and social problems. It seems quite true to the film to emphasize its character of tragedy: Mungiu takes a step back and looks at the big picture, how a truly sad chain of events unfolds from a messy background story involving many levels of lack of support but also attempts to help and understand.   

Mungius combines wide-angle shots of the grim landscape surrounding the convent with the much more crammed images of urban life - and in a similar way, the film shifts from silence to the piercing noise of the city. His steady attention works just as well when he focuses on the ordinary life of the nuns as when he takes his characters to the labyrinthine hospital. Nothing is romanticized, there are no spaces of relief. This makes the film quite exhausting, and I must admit that in some scenes towards the end we see more than we should see and not just the life of the characters but also this viewer's capacity to digest the harsh violence on display starts to deteriorate. I no longer know what to think about what is going on: would I really call all this a matter of good-hearted yet clueless attempts to 'help'? Well - - -. My thoughts start to poke around in darkness. But on the other hand, the very last scenes are terribly well crafted and powerful. I would say that what makes Beyond the Hills a good film is that instead of accusing, it poses a series of important questions about the meaning of responsibility and the different ways we are weighed down by a requirement to act.