my favorite movies of 2007:

(1) 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days

(2) The Counterfeiters

(3) Secret Sunshine

favorite of 2007:

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days

[Romanian: 4 luni, 3 săptămâni și 2 zile]

(Anamaria Marinca, Vlad Ivanov, Laura Vasiliu, Alexandru Potocean. Directed by Cristian Mungiu.)

Two friends (Anamaria Marinca and Laura Vasiliu) try to obtain an abortion for one of them, which is illegal under Ceaușescu’s communist government in Romania in 1987. (At that time, abortion and contraception were available only in limited situations.) With a relentlessly raw aesthetic and almost no music, this movie seems to show us pure reality.

The Criterion essay on this movie says:

4 Months implicitly evokes the insidious creep of a police state so intrusive you can’t even check into or out of a hotel without someone in uniform demanding to know why you’re there and what time you’re coming back. Moving through ill-lit streets from their dingy college dorm to the shabby room that has drained their meager budget, the two young women find themselves continually stymied by arbitrary rules and regulations whose only point seems to be to reduce them to dependent children, unable to think for themselves and browbeaten into submission by officials wielding petty power — and by the sheer effort it takes to get through the day.

As with all dictatorships, such oversight overload creates a breeding ground for bribery, corruption, and black markets in everything, from Western soap and cigarettes to that dangerously late abortion itself, carried out by an unlicensed amateur [Vlad Ivanov] in the next worst thing to a back alley.

A movie producer named Bob Hawk describes the feeling of this movie (in a video that’s been taken down from YouTube):

It’s an extraordinary portrait of friendship that is tested, simply because of what they both have to put themselves through. The tension in this film is so extraordinary. I remember vividly the experience of first seeing it in a packed house. When you have hundreds of people in a room, and you can hear a pin drop, it’s a great compliment. And it is earned. The film has a lot of long takes. It’s not chopped up by a lot of editing. And you are kind of captive to time. And it’s not letting you off the hook. It immerses you.

Stream 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days on these sites.

2nd favorite of 2007:

The Counterfeiters

[German: Die Fälscher]

(Karl Markovics, August Diehl, Devid Striesow. Directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky.)

A review in the Age (an Australian newspaper) observes:

This tautly directed, cool-headed, soul-shuddering drama ranks as the most unnerving, disturbing, true-life account yet of endurance under Nazi oppression.

And the film’s unsettling power has little to do with indulging the now standard portrayals of brutality and privation. Instead, it pushes us deep into the fog of moral compromise with its lean, tortured tale about Jewish prisoners who agree to collaborate with their Nazi persecutors. …

To a large degree, we’ve been conditioned to expect certain things from Holocaust movies, and our responses — typically a mixture of outrage and sorrow — have been similarly honed into a kind of emotional rote.

There is, perversely, a measure of reassurance in seeing Nazis cast as unconditionally powerful villains and Jews as unconditionally powerless victims. It’s horrific, but at least the line between good and evil, between right and wrong, is not in doubt.

The Counterfeiters is entirely uninterested in providing any such emotional comfort zone. Its focus is on how blurry the line can get when one’s survival is at stake. …

Stream The Counterfeiters on Tubi or these sites.

3rd favorite of 2007:

Secret Sunshine

[Korean: Miryang]       밀양

(Jeon Do-yeon, Song Kang-ho, Jo Young-jin, Song Mi-rim, Seon Jeong-yeop. Directed by Lee Chang-dong.)

How can I possibly forgive? I might want to, but I can’t. He says God has already forgiven him. …

God has forgiven him, and so should you too.

If he’s been absolved, how can I forgive him again? How dare God absolve him before I’ve forgiven him myself? I am in so much pain … and yet he says he has found peace. How could God do that to me?

Here’s a video analysis of Secret Sunshine, with spoilers:

Stream Secret Sunshine on the Criterion Channel (with bonus features) or YouTube (free with ads). If you don’t subscribe to the Criterion Channel, try a free trial.

Click here for the full list of my favorite movie(s) of each year from 1920 to 2020.