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Of decorated international auteurs, Cristian Mungiu has long felt particularly overdue for a stateside breakout. The Romanian master, known for his sweeping yet hyperrealistic explorations of contemporary society and its thorniest issues, has been the toast of international critics and film festivals for decades — he made three movies between 2007 and 2016, all of which won prizes at Cannes, including the Palme d’Or-winning classic 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days — even as the Academy consistently overlooked his work. Still, given his profile and consistency, it’s been a matter of when, not if.
We may have reached that moment. Just as the Academy has globalized at a rapid rate, in terms of both membership and recognition, Mungiu has roared back onto the scene with Fjord, which examines the infuriating and subtly tragic fallout of a conservative Romanian family’s move to Norway after their customs — from religiosity to parenting style — are skeptically interrogated by their new progressive government. Starring Oscar nominees Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve as the controversial parents in question, Fjord won the Palme d’Or in May, its backing by the great Cannes-to-Oscars whisperer that is Neon signaling a fruitful fall awards run.
And so I meet Mungiu on a bench by the San Miguel River, nestled in the Rockies of Colorado. He’s here for the Telluride Film Festival, his first stop since Cannes and his first visit to the Labor Day weekend showcase in 10 years, going back to when he screened Graduation. (In between, he made the underseen film R.M.N.) His filmmaking has remained remarkably consistent since his 4 Months breakout, and yet now, he’s a kind of unexpected heavyweight around town, a legendary director with some early heat this season. (Romania recently selected the film as its international Oscar submission.) As ever, he’s making provocative work without compromising.
That last point is where we begin, since Fjord — which intently avoids moralizing or taking a side, preferring to dissect the current state of polarization — has emerged as a bit of a social-media lightning rod post-Cannes. Mungiu is both aware and unafraid of that. When asked whether he ever gets nervous in interviews, he replies bluntly, “No.” So sets the tone for a thorny but freewheeling conversation.
You made a film very much about society today — the effects of polarization, groupthink, and silos. It then premieres at Cannes, you win the Palme d’Or — and people express a lot of opinions about your movie in terms of its political bent. It’s as if the problem you’re exploring in Fjord applies to the responses to it — of taking a kind of stance. Did you find that?
Yes. People were polarized to an extreme and they started this fight on social media before they watched the film. This was happening during Cannes, a bit before Cannes. I said, “This is precisely the argument for what this film tries to speak about.” How can I take you seriously with an opinion if you don’t even wait to see? I’m pretty convinced that things are the way I see them, but okay, I have the patience to listen to your point of view. But if you express opinions before [seeing it]?
Films started to get into a pattern lately, in the last 10, 20 years, in which it became unusual to make a film the way I make it: to be the motivator of a conversation and present two different opinions of a complex situation — to quote them and to allow people to talk about this. It became a sin not to embrace one of the points of view; you had to make a film either pro or against something. When and why have we lost this freedom in telling stories the way we want to tell stories?
So many films like this in the last 20 years. Very good, no problem — but they are not convincing anybody else to change their opinion. I think it’s good to make a film like Fjord because as long as you don’t take sides, at least not directly in the film, people won’t feel judged from the beginning and then maybe some conversation can start.
They might be surprised by how they feel?
We started getting some feedback and the nicest was regarding the kind of conversations from people who noticed that, I don’t know, their spouse might have had a different opinion than they thought after watching the film. We had all these comments from people saying that, “Hey, we discovered that we’re more conservative than our parents. They were more liberal after watching this film, but we were conservative.” That’s interesting. At the same time, it’s quite clear for us that 90 percent, or a lot of the people coming to watch this film, want to confirm their opinions. And a lot of them, of course, will use the film as a tool to defend their opinions. But all my films were used like this: 4 Months, either for or against abortion; Beyond the Hills was seen as a very anti-religious film until they started screening the film in monasteries. That shows you something about this style of filmmaking.
So clearly you’re aware of the discourse surrounding Fjord already. Does it frustrate you or does the debate feel gratifying?
It’s ideal not to let yourself be frustrated. I am glad and I consider that it’s a successful part of the film if it can start a conversation. I think it’s very difficult to do this today with a film or a book…. We touched on something with this film. On this topic, everybody has an opinion because it’s connected to very personal things — you can be very tolerant and generous to a lot of things in society, but deep down when it’s about your children, it’s a bit more complicated to be tolerant. One of the big issues in this film regards this question of: Whose children are these? Do they belong to their families, do the families have the right to just pass on their own values, or do they belong more to the society in which they live? This is why, for example, the film is still placed in Norway and not in France, because there the conflict is clearer. 20, 30 years ago, they started believing more that the state got to a level of progress in which the state was more entitled to pass the right values. I’m sure that they really wish the best with this idea, but it’s a bit dangerous if you ask me.
There’s a lot of curiosity around your own beliefs as they pertain to Fjord, maybe inevitably given the subject matter. There’s a question as to what you might be revealing of yourself through the storytelling choices. What do you make of that?
If I get engaged in a personal conversation with people, my opinion would matter as much as theirs, and we can speak as civilians about the way we see society. As a filmmaker, I have a different kind of responsibility. It’s not about what I believe. Not that I don’t have an opinion, but that’s not important when I make the film. When I make a film, it’s ethically correct as an author to allow some freedom for your characters to express their points of view without interfering or commenting. What kind of cinema or storytelling is that one in which you inflict or impose your point of view onto them? People have lost a little bit of their critical spirit while watching films — they assume that what the film says is the opinion of the filmmaker, and what the characters say is the truth. Come on.
I was also accused of [casting] well-known actors for the main family so that I could attract more sympathy for that cause. This is your stereotype of watching films with A-listers, it’s not mine! I mean, why are you more on their side? Watch and judge what they say, because the film encourages you to be rational, not emotional.
So what went into the casting of Sebastian Stan? He’s a very different kind of lead for you — American, for starters, and undergoing a true physical and vocal transformation.
In terms of how I design my films and my way of filmmaking, it’s not a big difference between Fjord and the films that I’ve done before. Still there’s a big difference compared to R.M.N, which was very frustrating for me — I still consider that film to be at least at the level of Fjord, but it wasn’t very visible. I learned that it wasn’t very visible for two reasons: One, it was my first film in Cannes, which didn’t get an award, and the other is that, in the way cinema looks today, there’s a limit to how much you can make a film visible. No matter how the film is, as long as it’s a subtitled film in a small language with unknown actors — much of it depends on language, the notoriety of the actors, and the dimension of the production. It’s sad. In an ideal world, it shouldn’t be like this. It should be just about the film.
I was working on [Fjord] for the last 10 years, gathering a lot of articles, and it was clear that we needed to shoot in Norway. We can’t fake Norway for Romania. And Norway is a very expensive country — they work eight hours a day even when they shoot, so it’s very complicated. We’ve got to learn and respect this, but to be very honest, we knew from the moment I gave the story to my sales agent and co-producers that we would need to bring on some better-known actors.
I started talking to Sebastian some 10 years ago because we wanted to work on something together. Not that easy. He was mostly known for his Marvel films; I’m doing something completely different. He’s primarily an American actor, but he speaks Romanian, and he also wanted to be part of a film in which he speaks Romanian — and that’s the point of working with me. So I called Sebastian after I wrote three pages with this film. I didn’t have too many choices, to be honest. He’s the only well-known American actor who can speak Romanian.
The film is more of a dramatization than any kind of reenactment of a conflict that actually happened. One ideological issue you zero in on here is sexuality. What was your way in there and why was that subject specifically something that felt so pertinent to your larger aims?
When we talk about the conservative side and the progressive side of sexuality, things are clear. This is something that splits the sides completely. No way of agreeing.
Homosexuality was illegal in Romania until 1989. Then it is a thing dividing people and politicians all the time. This is how we ended up in Romania with all the politicians — even the most progressive politicians or the most progressive parties — declaring themselves that as far as family is concerned, they are on the side of the “traditional family,” a man and a woman, because there’s no other way you can win. When people had to vote, something between 75 percent and 90 percent of people declared that the family was made of one man and one woman. That was not very nice, but it was not as important because it was just a referendum — and then the next step was that, of course, the conservative society tries to push this further, to have this into the constitution. That’s something else. You move from just an exit poll asking people what they think to forcing your opinion on others. We pretty much all know that the conservative society does this.
Right, your film is not told from that perspective.
This is why I thought it was way more interesting to make a story about the attitude of the progressive side, when the conservatives are in minority. How will the majority act? Will this majority be more tolerant or understanding and inclusive because these are their values? They might not be. They might behave as any majority trying to impose the point of view of the majority on the others. This tells you that this way of thinking is not so different if it goes to the extremes — actually you’re not so different from the others.
It was very frustrating for a lot of families coming from conservative countries to this very progressive Norway to see that minorities had a lot of rights and they were respected. But they do not really express opinions about this — they did not change their opinion, they would keep having their opinion, but wouldn’t express it publicly. Kept in your private family. The children are entitled to make more progress than the adults because they are a bit more free to express feelings and to understand the world on a different sensorial level and intuitive level. As far as the adults are concerned, I don’t think that these positions are very easy to reconcile.
There’s a suggestion that the two girls, coming from opposing families and cultures, are expressing feelings for one another —
That’s very nicely put and I’d like to keep it that way. It’s an expression of feelings. At this age, what people feel is a sort of affection and they are more free to express these feelings today to whichever other person they feel affection for. In my time — and even today in conservative societies — this is very strictly regulated for children. This is one of the points in which it’s very difficult to reach common ground. The hope is always that it’s about tolerance at the end of the day. You need to understand that it’s not possible to apply the same norm to everybody. There’s no other way than understanding that as long as this doesn’t concern you, it’s up to everybody else to do whatever they think. But stop enforcing everybody in the society to conform. Or if you want to do this, define the rules of your territory, state, whatever, and communicate them on the border clearly and say, “Hey, this is the social contract.” If not, there are a lot of misunderstandings.
You had mentioned earlier this film being very in line with your past work, which I think is true, but it’s been 20 years between Palme d’Or wins for you, going back to 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days in 2007. How has your filmmaking changed in that time? Or has it?
I haven’t changed too much. Of course, as a director, you do change because there’s this thing called experience — and the more you are experienced, the less you can find again that freshness that you have at the beginning. Actually it’s very complicated and I feel anxious every now and then when I realize that I am doing things that I did already and that I have solutions to situations faster. I say, “Okay, I did this like this several times, let’s think about something else.” I wish that I could’ve surprised myself more in these 20 years, changing the pattern of what I do and to find a better or different way of understanding cinema.
For now I’m still there because this still corresponds to the better translation of the cinema inspired by reality and by life itself. I try to replicate life and reality as much as I can. This is why I’m still shooting these continuous moments of fictional reality. I put them together without music, without editing — a very neutral camera, to make myself as much as possible not visible in the film. Though there are things that have changed: I became a bit more free in the way I use this style. For example, I did something different here, using these kinds of establishing shots, which are from a different convention, like very introductory scenes to what happens next. They belong to a different convention, but I felt it was good for the rhythm and for the clarity and for a way of integrating the environment and the landscape. Landscape plays an important part in this film.
Maybe it’s that your style hasn’t changed that much, but the way that the audience meets your films has changed as the culture changes.
And the big difference in the way this Palme d’Or was received, compared to my first, is social media. Social media didn’t exist for my first — back then, somebody had the idea to broadcast the [ceremony] live in Romania because I worked in television before and my former boss thought, “Hey, you might get this so far, but we’ll do this and, who knows, maybe you win.” We won. It was the first time and it was broadcasted live. It was a very popular moment through the press, through the television — but nothing compared to what happens today.
Today, every other blogger or Instagrammer is a film critic. They have their own opinion about this. This is the way opinion got to be free today, with the good parts of it and bad parts of it. But again, you can’t stop things. For this film in particular, it is good that people can express opinions. Again, ideally after they watch the film. (Laughs) I’m not a big fan of the conspiracy theories out there, but you never know when it’s good to interfere and when it’s good to just let things go on social media. Once you interfere…
It sounds like you’re looking at it though.
Not me. I got to a different level, as a director, and I was told that I needed to have an Instagram like 10 years ago. Now I have an Instagram, so we do a lot of social media. There’s a whole team in the office handling these things — the press, social media and so on. I do see things every now and then because of course, whenever I watch Instagram, they pop up. Actually I saw something a few days ago that I sent to people in my office. I said, “Maybe we should interfere in this one,” because sometimes people overinterpret the film…but you have to learn to live with this. There’s no other way.
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