R.M.N (2022)
Directed by Cristian Mungiu
How do you separate where someone is from, from who they were? It’s a messy (and poorly structured) question, but it’s one that I asked myself often when watching Cristian Mungiu’s excellent new film, R.M.N. The film opens on a provocative sequence, where a young boy named Rudi (Mark Edward Blenyesi) walks through the Transylvanian woods to school, where he encounters something off-screen that horrifies him. We then follow Rudi’s father, Matthias (Marin Grigore) as he provides his labor at a slaughterhouse. The tedious and punishing work is compounded by verbal assaults from Matthias’ supervisors. Attempting to take a break, a superior refers to Matthias as a “fucking lazy gypsy”, which is met with a headbutt. Matthias makes his way back home to Rudi, his estranged wife Ana (Macrina Barladeanu), and the mistress that ended his marriage, Csilla (Judith State).
Mungiu examines this Transylvanian township with a measured eye, piecing together the social, spiritual, and economic interests of the community in a suspenseful and thoughtful way. The threads are established and it’s Csilla’s narrative, as the administrative manager of a bread factory, that captured my attention most. It’s her narrative that ignites the various dramatic aspects of the film, wherein her business desperately needs additional workers, but no one from the community is interested in the minimum wage gig. So instead, she hires a few Sri Lanken men to take on the role of baker. Their arrival in the Romanian/Hungarian community is met with requisite xenophobia, spearheaded by the Catholic community’s attempt to violently oust them from town. A Facebook group is created to spread misinformation and fear about their presence, along with bullshit rumors about their belief system, behaviors, etc. And in the film’s most poignant and powerful sequence, Mungiu stages a nearly 20-minute unbroken sequence involving the townspeople debating the subject of these Sri Lanken men, providing a multifaceted argument on capitalism, patriarchy, and hate. The object of the community’s ire (and Csilla’s staunch and brave defense) are, obviously, absent from this conversation.
Mungiu’s sensibilities lean toward a micro analysis of vast macro subjects (the apartment of 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days or the church of Beyond the Hills), but here there’s a distinct sense of compression, wherein macro-ideologies open the film and fold onto itself as it progresses. Tensions escalate and what unravels is a distinct sense of how hate transcends, how systems of patriarchy and capitalism require these machinations of vitriol to operate. Either you’re a worker that embraces hate because you see a job that underpays given to an immigrant, and your belief system tells you that it’s their fault. Or you’re a business-owner exploiting immigrants with enticing wages, while maintaining a standard of living that could be passed along locally. These dialogues happen in unison in R.M.N., and the answers, as Mungiu seemingly suggests, rests in annihilating old ways of thinking. It’s only Csilla that seemingly understands the broader consequences of this hate and does her best to disengage from it, opening herself up to the Sri Lanken men that have full, vibrant lives. Or rekindling her romance with Matthias, someone so rooted in patriarchal behavior that he’s basically a child himself. Csilla attempts to cajole love out of Matthias, in a manner that he struggles to comprehend. The traditional modes of masculinity prove inadequate for his survival, and it’s through both Csilla and Rudi that he’s able to navigate out of the trenches, or so you hope. If Mungiu leaves actions or even the film’s ursine conclusion open-ended, it’s by design. The questions he posits have no easy answers, and while something like Michael Haneke’s bleak but similar-minded The White Ribbon opts for a misanthropic reading, R.M.N. suggests that maybe all is not lost. I like to picture Michael Haneke reading bell hooks and imagine it looking a bit like Mungiu’s latest.