my favorite movie of 2016:

Graduation

[Romanian: Bacalaureat] 

(Adrian Titieni, Maria-Victoria Dragus, Lia Bugnar, Mălina Manovici, Vlad Ivanov, Rareș Andrici. Directed by Cristian Mungiu.)

My post about my favorite movie of 2007 — 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days — talked about writer/director Cristian Mungiu’s style of unflinching realism in showing young women trying to obtain an abortion in Romania under Soviet communism. In Graduation, he applies a similar style to corruption in the same country, but in the present day.

After a girl on her way to high school is sexually assaulted and injures her wrist while defending herself, she seems to be in no physical or psychological condition to take a series of exams which she needs to do well on to be admitted to a prestigious London university. The outside world responds coldly: exam administrators don’t offer her any accommodations (and aren’t even sure whether to allow her to take the exams wearing a cast), while the police are feckless at solving the case. Without support from the system on any legitimate level, the girl’s father feels driven to help her through unscrupulous means by exploiting his connections.

From a Washington Post review:

Of course, Romania isn’t the only country in which social capital is king. Because of that, “Graduation” resonates not just as a vivid portrait of a culture at a particular moment in time, but also of the most enduring and confounding contradictions of human nature itself. Although he’s contemplating age-old arguments about means vs. ends, Mungiu nonetheless infuses them with timely relevance, both in the context of a world order that has become broader and more cosmopolitan, and a society that, 30 years after its rebirth, still struggles with establishing agreed-upon norms, expectations and rules of the road. …

The power of the film is cumulative, as the filmmaker spins a mesmerizing morality tale from the dross of daily life. In his skillful hands, the ordinary turns out to be anything but.

One of the few negative reviews said Graduation “suffers from too many narrative threads that don’t resolve.” It’s true that this movie deprives us of clarity and finality, leaving us to wonder what exactly happened and how it’s all going to turn out. That might bother you … or you might find meaningfulness in the uncertainty.

Once she starts on this path, there’s no going back. … You know in your heart that it’s not right. …

If there were any other way, I wouldn’t even think of it. … All that counts is getting to a normal world.

How you get there matters too. It’s not fair to —

Being attacked in broad daylight in a crowded place, is that fair? … You ended up in some library because you were fair. Sometimes the result is all that matters.

Stream Graduation on these sites.

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