I’ve been writing down ideas for a screenplay for a number of months now. And as I’ve gotten to know the main character, I find myself getting tripped up by the angry, rage-filled actions of this character. A part of me knows this is what’s true to the character, yet I’m hesitant to include it because a part of me does not agree with those actions and is uncomfortable about what these actions say about the character. Embarrassingly, I then think about those thoughts and how they reflect back on me. I’m uncomfortable.
I feel like I’m letting myself and my own hang ups get in the way of the character and the story.
So, I’ve been seeking out stories of moral and ethical complexity to hopefully buttress my confidence and allow the characters to act as they intend without prejudgement and prosecution from me. I guess the thinking is that if I find similar characters on the screen making questionable decisions then maybe I have permission to bring into existence similar characters.
Last night, I had one of those chances watching Graduation, a 2016 film from Romanian New Wave director Cristian Mungiu.
Hoping for a better life for his daughter Eliza, Romanian doctor Romeo begins to make compromises to secure his daughter’s exam results and ensure her future college education in the United Kingdom. Vicariously living out his own missed opportunities through Eliza, Romeo threatens to ensnare her in his deceptions despite her hesitations.
Graduation is another chance for Mungiu to examine Romanian society (and by extension humanity) through a small group of citizens living and acting within that system. In the case of this film, like his other films before it, the impositions of a corrupt society make it almost impossible to keep ones hands clean.
What I love is how Mungiu lays out moral and ethical complexities without devising easy answers or false escape routes for compromised characters. These characters make choices and face the consequences or lack of consequences for those actions.
In an interview predating Graduation, Mungiu points to the importance of allowing moral complexity and allowing the room for his characters to act out without judgement:
I aim to tell a story about important values by allowing the story to express itself and not impose my own interpretation. My responsibility is to present the situation and [let] the audience interpret it. I don’t think cinema should pre-interpret things for people. It is important that the story triggers the audience’s desire to meditate upon values and on their own position on the situation I have presented. Ideally, this is what cinema should be about. It should be an opportunity for people to examine values that they’ve held for a long while without really thinking about them.
For this, his third Palme d’Or entry at the Cannes Film Festival following 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days and Beyond the Hills, Mungui was awarded Best Director (an award shared that year with Olivier Assayas for Personal Shopper).
As I have with Joachim Trier these last few weeks, I expect I’ll be watching all of Mungiu’s films in short order.