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4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days

EMAILPRINTIFC First Take

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days reviews
97
7.9 User Score:

Movie Info

Genre(s): Drama

Written by: Cristian Mungiu

Directed by: Cristian Mungiu

Release Date:
Theatrical: January 23, 2008
DVD: October 14, 2008

Running Time: 113 minutes, Color

Origin: Romania

Language(s): Romanian / English

Summary

RATING: Not Rated

Starring Anamaria Marinca, Laura Vasiliu, Vlad Ivanov, and Alexandru Potocean

During the final days of communism in Romania, two college roommates Otilia and Gabita are busy preparing for a night away. But rather than planning for a holiday, they are making arrangements for Gabita's illegal abortion and unwittingly, both find themselves burrowing deep down a rabbit hole of unexpected revelations. (IFC Entertainment)

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

Empire Damon Wise

Tense, kinetic, intelligent and real – as if Paul Greengrass had remade Vera Drake.

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100

Time Richard Corliss

One of the strongest movies in recent years.

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100

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

This is a film with a commitment to reality unlike any we're used to seeing.

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100

Variety Jay Weissberg

Pitch perfect and brilliantly acted, 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days is a stunning achievement, helmed with a purity and honesty that captures not just the illegal abortion story at its core but the constant, unremarked negotiations necessary for survival in the final days of the Soviet bloc.

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100

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

Though the frighteningly late-term abortion at its center hints at larger sins in the last gasp of Nicolae Ceausescu’s iron-fisted regime, it’s no metaphor, but a sordidly visceral transaction conducted in the next best thing to a back alley.

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100

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Nothing good happens in 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, the riveting, horrifying chronicle of an illegal abortion performed in 1987 when Ceauescu's dictatorial hand still gripped Romania's throat. And yet no lover of greatness in filmmaking will want to look away from one of the very best movies of 2007.

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100

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

It’s a pitiless, violent story that in its telling becomes a haunting and haunted intellectual and aesthetic achievement.

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100

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

4 Months unfolds like one of those street-level Dardenne brothers movies (Rosetta, L'Enfant).

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100

Premiere Glenn Kenny

A remarkably engrossing and thoughtful picture, beautifully rendered in an artful mode of realism.

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100

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Elegantly crafted, brilliantly acted film.

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100

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

This year’s foreign language Oscar scandal – there is always at least one – is the snub of director Cristian Mungiu’s disturbing, masterful realist drama following two college roommates as they carry out plans for one’s black market abortion in Communist Romania.

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100

TV Guide Ken Fox

The film is bold stroke that hopes to push Romanian society forward by staring into the dismal failures of its recent past.

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100

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

Despite their terrible ordeal these women are heroes, not victims. As Mungiu makes clear in the casual, brilliant final scene of this amazing movie, heroes persevere.

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100

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

First, this movie should be enjoyed. Later, marveled at. And then, once the excitement has faded, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days really should be studied, because director Cristian Mungiu creates scenes unlike any ever filmed.

100

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

The New Wave of Romanian cinema is the most exciting in the world right now. 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days is its latest masterpiece.

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100

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Writer-director Cristian Mungiu confirms the Romanian cinema renaissance while creating a paradoxical marvel: a bleak tale of illegal abortion that powerfully affirms one's faith in people.

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100

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

The result is a mixture of unified atmosphere and lived-in character study, and while Vasiliu’s role is not as indelible as that of her co-stars, Marinca’s Otilia and Ivanov’s steely abortionist are just about perfect.

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100

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

This is a powerful film and a stark visual accomplishment, but no thanks to Gabita (Laura Vasiliu). The driving character is her roommate Otilia (Anamaria Marinca), who does all the heavy lifting.

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100

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

A grueling and deeply affecting human drama.

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100

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

In a truly great movie the form becomes indistinguishable from the story, and that’s certainly the case here.

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100

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Romanian writer-director Cristian Mungiu's brilliantly discomfiting second feature is one long premonition of disaster.

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100

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

You just don't expect Hollywood to produce a masterwork so early in the new year. And it hasn't. This slice of celluloid dynamite comes from Romania, and what you see will floor you.

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100

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Without a single gunshot (and just one flick of a switchblade), it turns into an existential suspense film with the highest stakes imaginable: the survival of the human spirit.

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100

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Brilliant, suspenseful, absolutely riveting film.

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90

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

Anamaria Marinca delivers an utterly transfixing performance as Otilia, a young woman who helps a friend (Laura Vasiliu) obtain an illegal abortion in the waning days of Romania's communist Ceausescu regime.

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90

New York Magazine David Edelstein

The coup de grâce is especially graceless because everything we know is already visible in Marinca’s eyes. The actress is extraordinary.

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90

Slate Dana Stevens

A beautiful and formally compelling work of art.

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88

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

Relentlessly dark but expertly rendered, it shares its cinematographer and quality of aggrieved compassion with another recent Romanian art house hit, "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu."

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88

USA Today Claudia Puig

Depressing and gut-wrenching, but always powerful and gripping.

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88

New York Post V.A. Musetto

It is filmmaking as it should be but usually isn't.

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88

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Despite being slow and deliberate, it is often compelling and occasionally riveting. As "The Lives of Others" was in 2007, this is the first memorable movie of 2008.

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83

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

A grueling film in both technique and subject matter.

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80

Film Threat Rick Kisonak

This is a tale of friendship, corruption, betrayal and desperation masterfully told without an ounce of filmmaking flash and with an unflinching commitment to realism.

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80

The Hollywood Reporter Ray Bennett

The film is dark, gloomy and without music, but it is also observant and highly suspenseful, with Mungiu using his often static camera to balance banal cruelty with simple generosity.

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80

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

Mungiu’s pacing is so sure, however, in its switching from loose to taut, and the concentration of his leading lady so unwavering, that the movie, which won the Palme d’Or at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, feels more like a thriller than a moody wallow.

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78

Austin Chronicle Josh Rosenblatt

A curious filmgoing experience: Virtuosic, assured, and possessed of undeniable aesthetic force, it’s also hard not to turn away from.

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63

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

It makes "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu" and "12:08 East of Bucharest," the last glum Romanian movies about life under dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, seem merry.

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What Our Users Said

The average user rating for this movie is 7.9 (out of 10) based on 122 User Votes

Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Dustin C. gave it a1:
To see this movie sandwiched between Pan's Labyrinth and Dr. Strangelove absolutely turns my stomach. this is movie is complete rubbish. do you want to watch nothing happen for 2 hours in a communist country in the 80s? watch it. its not "harrowing" its not "poignant" it is, however, CRAP.

John S gave it a5:
How did this movie get such high reviews? I love foreign, art house, film noir but I just found this incredibly boring, slow and pretty slim on plot and dialogue. I just could not figure how many of the scenes even added to the overall theme, experience or anything. But glad the people who loved it loved it.

Melissa M. gave it a10:
Incredible piece of filmmaking. Now, I am no diehard movie fan, let alone an indie-film or foreign-film connoisseur; I am simply a fan of a sharp, brilliantly told and expertly conceived story. This movie offers that. Tremendous acting surrounds a refreshingly simple plot. Stellar work about an important and still-relevant subject.

Rose S. gave it a10:
I run a boutique cinema. This movie drew my smallest crowed of 2009. It was the only one I cannot remove from my mind, and I think the fact that it hasnt won an award reveals the hypocrisy of the Oscars. Harrowing and mundane in the same breath. If you can get out of this film without white knuckles, you are made of strong stuff.

John H gave it an8:
Beautifully written, "4 months" is easily in the top 10 of the year for great acting! I cant say anything that anyone else has said thats true about it, its clearly obvious the cast did a superb job. I can understand how some people find this film dull, its an acquired taste, its not some action Bruce Willis flick, its driven on emotion, treads on your nerves, and through it you will feel something real like i did, or you wont, as i said - its an acquired taste.

Ady G. gave it a6:
Superbly performed gritty tale - but I learnt nothing from it, it was simply harrowing for its own sake, and didn't preoccupy my mind for long after its viewing. This film has very little to say.

Michael B gave it a10:
This is frighteningly realistic rendition of life in the Eastern Bloc under communism. The awfulness of everything down to the clothes and the offensive drunk waiters make compelling viewing. Easily the best film I saw last year, and I saw Cargo 200!!!

Read more user comments >

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