Interview: Cristian Mungiu - 'This is just a way to look back and remember that it was humour that kept us alive …'

Published on Wednesday 28 October 2009 17:56

THE past few years have seen a surge of interest in Romanian cinema. International art-house successes such as 12:08 East of Bucharest, The Death of Mr Lazerescu and California Dreamin' have sparked much talk of a Romanian "new wave" and nobody knows this better than Cristian Mungiu, the 41-year-old director who scooped the 2007 Cannes film festival's main prize, the Palme d'Or, with 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, his harrowing abortion drama set during the tail-end of the Cea

A critically acclaimed international hit, it was also the most popular film of 2007 in Romania, a big surprise for the director given its subject matter. Still, despite such exposure, it didn't have quite the desire effect he hoped it would.

"The popularity of the award overshadowed the theme of the film a little," sighs Mungiu. "People were coming to see the miracle – the film that brought Romanian cinema to public attention. They didn't view it as an invitation to be political about the subject."

Nor did they view its success as an invitation to reorganise the distribution system in Romania. With fewer than 30 traditional screens in the country servicing a population of around 21 million, Mungui had to take the film on the road himself, touring the country with an improvised mobile cinema. "I was given every possible cultural medal, but nobody invested anything or changed the system, so the moment was lost a little bit."

With his latest film, Mungiu seems determined to seize the initiative again by using his new-found international profile to showcase the new generation of Romanian film-makers. Set once again during the final years of the Ceausescu regime, Tales from the Golden Age – the title is ironic – is a blackly comic collective project directed by first-time film-makers Mungiu has known since film school.

"I wanted the Palme d'Or to have another purpose in making them visible," says Mungiu, who conceived the project, wrote the script, and directed one of the episodes, all of which are based on urban legends that highlight in amusing fashion the difficulties of living under a repressive regime.

Unlike most films of this nature, it has a cohesive quality, which can be attributed to the fact that Mungiu hasn't assigned individual credits to the specific segments of the film (he refuses to say which one he directed, for instance). Indeed, Mungiu designed the film in such a way that it can be watched in any order. Six segments were produced in all and while the UK release is comprised of five stories, in some countries it is being released as two separate films that use all of them.

Mungiu says he gave international distributors the option to decide how they wanted to release it: "The whole concept was to have a different line-up at every screening. We thought that would be in the spirit of the times, because we used to queue up from midnight to get food, never knowing what we were going to get."

The film has a much lighter tone than 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, but don't mistake that as nostalgia for the era. Life under Ceausescu was terrible and the fall of Communism in Romania was the most violent Eastern bloc revolution of 1989. Mungui, who was working as a journalist for his student newspaper at the time of Ceausescu's fall in December 1989 ("It's still the best day of my life") remembers only too well the struggles, the violence, the poverty and the oppressive state bureaucracy of the times.

In fact, it's one reason he felt it was important to make 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days first, even though Tales from the Golden Age was conceived and financed before it. "When I showed people the script, a lot of people, especially a lot of young people, thought, 'Wow, it must have been so funny to live back then.' And I was like, 'No, you don't understand. This is just a way to look back and remember that it was humour that kept us alive.' It wasn't funny at all.

"So I decided if I was going to make films about this era, I needed to start with something very dramatic and realistic." The fact that Tales From the Golden Age is being released to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the fall of Communism is, then, a happy coincidence, but he's reluctant to make great claims for this momentous event being responsible for the recent explosion of Romanian cinema.

"There's been no such explosion in Bulgaria, for example, or other former Communist countries," he says.

"I guess that for Romania, the earlier film successes from 2000-2001 motivated a lot of other young film-makers who were reacting to the kinds of films that were coming out in the Communist era. I just know that when the regime collapsed, I knew there was no excuse left for me."

&#149 Tales From The Golden Age is on selected release from tomorrow.