4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (4 luni, 3 saptamâni si 2 zile) (Mungiu, 2007)

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Cristian Mungiu, 2007) displays extraordinarily simple cinematography and editing. This brings the audience much closer to the characters, and lets an already extremely tense situation speak for itself. More complicated camera work and editing might distract from the raw emotional impact of this film.

The camera in this film is most often either sitting still or following Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) in an anxious, hand-held fashion. Both of these give a sense of immediacy to the situation, especially the shaky hand-held shots. This story takes place in the span of one day, and quite a bit happens in these young girls' lives. There is no time for tracking or cranes.

The story does not follow a girl who is having an abortion, or the doctor performing it, it follows the girl's friend who is helping her. This is reflected in the stationary shots. Much like Otilia, we do a lot of sitting and watching. These kinds of shots can also convey a sense of contemplation. There are hard decisions made in this film, and we are able to see the characters making them.

The editing is equally as simple and possibly more effective. There are so few cuts in this film it is astounding. Shots are regularly held for minutes. This truly gives a sense of the tension involved in this story. At the dinner table at Adi's house we get one long take of Otilia becoming more and more anxious. She is preoccupied with helping Gabriela and what she had to do for her, her relationship with Adi and the quarrel over Otilia's comparatively insignificant act of leaving the party before his mother serves the meringue, and having to listen to Adi's upper class family defame the social class of her upbringing.

Through extremely simple cinematography and editing, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days takes a microcosmic look at intense issues of oppressive government and class struggles in a post Cold War Romania. Rather than learn about these issues through a preachy message, we see how the characters are forced to deal with them in one harrowing day.