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“From Minimalist Representation to Excessive Interpretation: Contextualizing 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days.”
- Author(s):
- Oana Godeanu-Kenworthy, Oana Popescu-Sandu (see profile)
- Date:
- 2014
- Group(s):
- LLC Romanian, LLC Slavic and East European, TM Literary and Cultural Theory
- Subject(s):
- Motion pictures--Social aspects, Romanians--Social life and customs, Gender identity, Literary form
- Item Type:
- Article
- Tag(s):
- Film and society, Romanian culture, Gender and genre, Gender studies
- Permanent URL:
- http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M6H12V70C
- Abstract:
- The article examines the Romanian and American reception of Cristian Mungiu’s 4 weeks, 3 months, 2 weeks (2007), arguing that the film’s representational minimalism indirectly caused an excess of interpretation across cultural contexts. This overinterpretation was possible because the film’s aesthetic minimalism encouraged viewers to decode the story through the lens of their own cultural and political predispositions. The historical and social background against which American viewers consumed this story of an illegal abortion during communism shaped its meaning (and perceptions about its political relevance), plugging a rather obscure art-house Romanian film into the larger national debate over reproductive rights in contemporary United States. Thus, in its transition from the domestic to global marketplace, 432 was transformed from an act of amoral probing of the Romanian individual and collective memory about communism into a film about the controversial nature of particular individual choices, within the liberal capitalist paradigm.
- Metadata:
- xml
- Published as:
- Journal article
- Status:
- Published
- Last Updated:
- 5 years ago
- License:
- All Rights Reserved
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