the do-gooders
by Douglas Messerli
Cristian
Mungiu (screenplay and director), based on books by Tatiana Niculescu Bran) După dealuri (Beyond the Hills) / 2012 / I saw this film in Los Angeles at the
Chinese Theare during the 2012 AFI Film Festival on November 5, 2012.
Cristian
Mungiu’s film, Beyond the Hills begins
at a train station where Voichiţa (Cosmina Stratan) is greeting Alina (Cristina
Flutur), the latter, we later discover, returning to Moldavia from a stint as a
bar maid in Germany. Alina intensely hugs her friend, as Voichiţa nervously
pulls away, muttering that people will see them. Already we sense both the
intensity of their relationship—they grew up together in an orphanage—and perceive
that something has changed, that their friendship is now fraught. And we soon
discover just what that alteration is when Alina takes her friend, with whom
she quite obviously has had a lesbian relationship—neither the story nor the
director ever confirm this, although a latter massage between the two women
certainly reveals, as critic Manola Dargis notes, “complexities” in their
relationship—to her new home, an orthodox monastery “beyond the hills,” run by
a kindly, but strict, priest (whom the nuns call “Pappa,” Valeriu Andriuţă) and
the gentle and submissive Mother Superior (whom they call “Mamma,” Dana
Tapalagă). It is a place, we immediately realize, where the high strung and
strong-minded will never feel at home. Despite the fact that Alina shares a
room with her friend, Voichiţa’s love has been replaced by a love of God. The
newcomer may also be pregnant.
The monastery is an isolated and
ramshackle place of small huts, a communal kitchen where most of the action
occurs, and a church, attended by the locals. The girls living in its crowded
quarters (others wish to join the order but are told that there is no room)
work hard, raising chickens and caring for the gardens, gathering wood and
water, cooking, and praying. They are all dressed alike in black. Rain and snow
dominate the weather.
Although, both Pappa and Mamma are
soft-spoken and outwardly reasonable with their charges, as with most fundamentalists
there is little room in this monastery for wavering beliefs or even hidden
doubts. Alina has no faith, has seldom gone to confession, and, apparently, has
been independent-thinking even in the orphanage, where she used her karate
skills. It does not take long before she lashes out at the close-minded world
in which she has suddenly discovered herself; but we recognize also that she is
not as angry about their pious mission, as she is with the changes in her
friend. As lonely as she has been in Germany, she is made even more lonely in
the small community “beyond the hills,” and she quickly becomes paranoid even
about the gentle eye-contact Voichiţa has with another nun. A violent outburst
forces the women to tie her up and call the hospital. But the local hospital,
evidently, has only one ambulance, currently in use, and the order is forced to
call a friend, Mr. Valerică, who ferries them in his auto.
Even in the hospital, Alina remains tied
down; but gradually, with the help of drugs, she returns to normality.
Recognizing the stranger’s unfitness for their order, Mamma attempts to have
the hospital take charge of her, but they refuse. She will be better looked after
at in the monastery, they argue. So the order has no choice but to take her
back.
Slowly Voichiţa attempts to accommodate
Alina, medicating her and teaching her the sins of the world—of which,
according to the Priest, there are more than 400. Alina confesses and even
accepts the prostrations she must suffer for her sins. But eventually, when
they discover her behind the altar in the church, rummaging for an icon that
supposedly works miracles, she once again grows violent, breaking the glass in
which the icon is kept. Once more, Mamma attempts to find another home for her,
taking her to the house of a couple who had temporarily taken her in before her
travels. But the family has brought in a new girl, and, although they are happy
to put Alina up for a while, they cannot permanently take her back. Once one
has left orphanage, moreover, there is no return. Alina has nowhere to go but
to the small huts beyond the hills.
The exorcism takes days, during which the
girl continues to struggle; she cannot eat and drinks little, her stool soiling
her pants. When, a few nights later, Voichiţa can no longer bear her friend’s
howls, she sneaks into the chapel where they have put her, unties her hands and
legs, bidding Alina to leave.
The next morning, a miracle has seemed to
happen. Alina has “come back to herself,” but, just as the nuns, Priest, and
Mother Superior rush to her side, her pulse suddenly becomes faint. An
ambulance is called, but by the time they have reached the hospital, the girl
has died. The head doctor brutally recounts the causes of death, noting the
marks around her hands and legs, the girl’s obvious dehydration, etc. The
police soon visit the monastery, taking the Priest and a couple of witnesses,
including Voichiţa, to the prosecutor.
The prosecutor is busy taking evidence
for another crime that morning: a young boy has killed his mother. And the film
ends with small group waiting in the police car, the snow falling around them,
a passing vehicle splashing blackened slush and water across the front
windshield.
Based on two nonfiction novels by
Romanian writer Tatiana Niculescu Bran, Mungiu’s film is a long (at 155
minutes), starkly realistic work has been described by some critics as
“lugubrious” and exhausting, similar to the reaction of some to his previous film, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, a work I enthusiastically reviewed in
2007. Screen Daily critic Dan Fainaru
predicted when the film won the best screenplay and both the lead actresses won
for Best Actress Award at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, that it was “bound to
split both audience and critical opinions, some considering it a major
achievement and others blaming it for overlong pretentious sensationalism.”
Those who believe the latter are
apparently not watching the same movie I saw. For this is not a work about evil
events in an isolated monastery; Mungiu has made a film so straight-forward and
honest that it blames no one in particular. While certainly a central battle in
this film is between faith and free will, between submissiveness and passion, Beyond the Hills does, in fact, take us
far away from the little monastery and its hills in the ramifications of its
subject. Although the Priest and nuns may have unintentionally killed Alina, as
Mungiu has suggested they are not alone guilty: Mungiu: “…It is difficult to
say who is guilty, because the people who are really guilty are not in the
film.”
I would argue that some of guilty are
portrayed or at least hinted at: certainly the hospital staff rebuffed her, the
ambulance drivers criticized for having even attempted to save her; the family
with whom she lived may have had good intentions, but they use girls like Alina
as cheap labor; the entire orphanage system dumps their charges into the
society at large without jobs or proper skills. Even the police dispassionately
discuss events as if there were no humans behind them. In short, there is no
place in this world for a young independent-thinking and passionate woman like
Alina. In Beyond the Hills everyone
means well; they are all do-gooders who cannot comprehend their own limitations
and incompetence. The director suggests—like the image with which he closes his
film—that his is a dirty society through which one can only see the world
darkly, if at all.
Los Angeles,
November 8, 2012
Reprinted
from Nth Position (December 2012).
No comments:
Post a Comment