The world is rarely as grey as it is in writer/director Cristian Mungiu’s R.M.N., a deliberate but provocative cautionary tale set within a closed community whose inhabitants believe they occupy a world that is black and white. That always seems to be how things are in such places, where citizens sculpt lives for themselves and fear some vaguely encroaching threat from the “other.” For this small town in Romania, the outsiders come from countries deemed undesirable by the locals, who would rather see a sudden surplus of jobs at the bakery go to the many among them who need work than to workers hired from Sri Lanka. They would also like to point out that all ethnic violence of the past has basically ceased, now that the targets of that violence have left the area.
This, if it hasn’t been made clear yet, is an incredibly discomforting movie, confronting baked-in racial and regional prejudice head-on through an ensemble of characters who are just barely on the right side of our sympathies. The film begins by introducing us to Matthias (Marin Grigore) in one of his more shameful moments. Having moved away from Romania after the jobs in his home country all but vanished, Matthias now works at a factory in Germany – but not for long, on account of pushing his supervisor through a glass widow after a small outburst. Perhaps the man simply found himself in a moment of weakness, we reason, but then he returns to Romania and to his family (Macrina Bârlǎdeanu and Mark Blenyesi as his wife and son, respectively). Here, we get a glimpse of his true nature as a crude and politically conservative man with a temper.
Mungiu is constantly upending our expectations of these characters in this way, such as how we learn about Matthias’ illicit affair with bakery manager Csilla (Judith State). She is troubled by the lack of employees from this region, but even when job postings emphasize the tremendous overtime pay and benefits, no one applies. This causes fewer job openings and more staff shortages, but since this town seems unable to reflect inwardly upon themselves to determine from where the problem might be stemming, it’s the Sri Lankans and other immigrants who are to blame – never mind that their own citizens have emigrated to other countries to find work, making them the “others” in those countries and positions. It becomes more about a nationalistic desire to favor one’s homeland above everywhere else, even when the proof is in the pudding that we inhabit an entire world.
The film is less about plot than about building this enclosed world with a meticulous eye for banal and quotidian details. This means that there is an intentionally meandering quality to R.M.N. that limits its cumulative effect somewhat. Still, there is a both haunting and haunted quality, especially given how the film all builds up to an almost inscrutably straightforward final sequence. The ultimate point of Mungiu’s film is rather elusive, but through the movie’s performances and atmosphere, the loaded scenario is done a whole host of favors. In this world of “them or us” as the basis for an entire economy, the true danger lies within the worst sort of apathy – that which might isolate a town until the point of no return.
Photo courtesy of IFC Films
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