In reading through some of the interviews on the internet with Crisitan Mungiu (the writer and director of 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days), it is clear to me that we as Christians have failed to communicate to the world the true nature and causes of abortion. And it is our duty as Christians to do so because it is us that should recognise the nature of abortion as being primarily one of a spiritual nature – not primarily one of a sociological, political or purely moral nature. And it is this latter illusion that Crisitan Mungiu appears to have bought into. Indeed he uses the word ‘twisted’ a couple of times in the interviews I’ve read; inferring he sees the events of his country’s past as somewhat paradoxical according to the reality of how he currently views the situation. Clearly he is lost.

Primarily, Mungiu paints a picture of communism as being inherently evil, and in doing so assumes that everything that accompanied it was inherently evil too. This black and white way of viewing things creates a precarious and dangerous mindset. It is the equivalent of viewing the American and British forces that went into Iraq and Afghanistan to bring them ‘freedom’, as being inherently good or holy. Whereas from the pictures we have seen and the accounts of torture and gross humiliation that we have read, it is clear that they brought evil with them too. And therefore just as we should not be naïve in recognising that goodness can be accompanied by evil, so too we should not be naïve in recognising that evil can be accompanied by goodness. It should also be noted that China’s communist government has a one-child policy affecting a significant proportion of their population. This policy has been strongly implicated in an increase in forced abortions and female infanticide; demonstrating that stances on abortion are not necessarily linked to political ideologies.

In an interview with europeanfilms.net Mungiu waves the invisible red flag that all Christian film critics should now recognise when he says “It is not a moralising story because that would mean that my point of view is in the story and I hope that my point of view is not; I’m just telling a story”. But the truth is that a moral has been conferred to the audience and Mungiu’s point of view is in the story. And that point of view, as the sympathetic interviewer of London’s Time Out summarises, is this: “It’s a film about how deeply politics – notably the series of repressive policies pursued by Ceausescu in his later years, such as his banning of artificial birth control and elective abortions in 1966 – affect the very texture of human lives”.  That indeed is what the central message of the film is. If any more evidence was needed, one of the trailers for ‘4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days’ starts off with the caption "Living under Total Repression, Before the Fall of Communism". The suggestion is that what is to follow in the film - that is the events that unfold as a result of the illegality of abortion - is one of the things that contributed to this ‘total repression’. And as such the film is propaganda for the legalisation of abortion.

In many of his interviews, Mungiu, either directly or by deduction, refers to this time in Romania’s history as a period without freedom. True, many personal and rightful freedoms were taken away during this time. But the ‘freedom’ to have an abortion (even under ‘safe’ conditions) was not one of them. To believe that ‘freedom’ to do whatever you chose to do without having regard to, and responsibility for, their consequence, results in any kind of true freedom, is simply wrong. True freedom is only obtained through accepting Jesus Christ fully into our lives. Jesus is the only one that can take away the struggle within us that causes so much anxiety and unhappiness. As St Paul says “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate, I do… what a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God - through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:15 & 24-25). Similarly, to believe that a change in the political system will bring about true freedom is also wrong. As St Peter reminds us regarding false teachers: “… they promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of depravity - for a man is a slave to whatever has mastered him” (2 Peter 2:18-19). Catholic writer Bill Power helps us to recognise this lack of freedom in a contemporary political and economic context by summarising: “Capitalism and socialism are theoretically enemies, but for the ordinary citizen, their results are remarkably similar: little or no power. In socialism, power centres in the few who happen to run the government. In capitalism, power gathers in the few who happen to run the largest corporations” (from the essay ‘Capitalist? Socialist? Distributist.’).

The real danger in films such as this, results as much from what is not shown and elaborated upon, as in that that is shown. In an interview at seanax.com Mungiu says “if you ask me, it’s difficult to say, at the end of the film, which of these two girls is better adapted and fit for the society in which they live, because apparently as much as Otilia makes the decisions all the time and negotiates everything, she pays a bigger price than Gabita; and Gabita, with this very fragile attitude, gets what she needs and her problems are solved at the end of the day”. Once again Mungiu has put his point of view in the story. And that point of view, albeit implicitly, is that there is a higher price to pay for sleeping with a stranger than there is to having an abortion, which, according at least to how Mungiu has viewed the film, has solved all of Gabita’s problems.

In another example of the distorted way in which people see this issue, an article on ‘4 Months…’ in the UK’s Telegraph newspaper included the statement “Abortion had been illegal in Romania since 1966, resulting in more than half a million deaths at the hands of backstreet quacks”. This is a lie. If the number is to be believed, those half-million deaths resulted not because abortion was illegal, but because too many women engaged in promiscuous sex and subsequently failed to obey the law. And if the argument is that having become pregnant those women felt they were not able to cope with a baby and/or be accepted into society, then that was a failing of the social, religious, family and political structures and teachings; not of the existence of the law itself. And in that case, just as was the case with Mike Leigh’s Vera Drake, the true focus of the film should have been on those primary failings – not on the subsequent results.

The Telegraph interview also included the most disappointing of all statements I read in these interviews. In it, Mungiu’s shares his thoughts on the communist era, commenting "In a funny, twisted way, Ceauşescu ended women's freedom to choose - but it's how I came into this world". The thing is it’s not funny at all – when you don’t allow people to have abortions life is what results; real people survive and are born into the world. And yes, it is twisted that the pro-‘choice’ ideology that ‘4 Months…’ implicitly promotes, is the very same ideology that might well have meant Mungiu wouldn’t be here now had it been in place prior to the day you were born.   

In conclusion, I’d like to return to the european-films.net interview. In that interview Mungiu says “In a strange way, the story is also about what a lack of freedom does to people; about how abusing the lack of freedom is also wrong”. I assume in this statement he is referring to people such as the abortionist who took further advantage of Gabita and Otilia. Yet by acknowledging that we can abuse a “lack of freedom”, Mungiu is implicitly admitting that there exists both a ‘freedom’ the world allocates to us, and another freedom separate to this; a freedom to choose between right and wrong that is not derived from a political ideology, but a freedom that resides within us. Therefore no matter how much the world limits our ‘freedom’, we will always have the most important freedom of all, which is the freedom to follow our own conscience.