Beyond the Hills – Dupa Dealuri (2012)

Directed by: Cristian Mungiu | 152 minutes | drama | Actors: Cosmina Stratan, Cristina Flutur, Valeriu Andriuta, Dana Tapalaga, Catalina Harabagiu, Gina Tandura, Vica Agache, Nora Covali, Dionisie Vitcu, Ionut Ghinea, Liliana Mocanu, Doru Ana, Costache Babii, Luminita Gheorghiuteanu, Alina Berzuntea

While Palme d’Or winner Christian Mungiu was in New York promoting his film ‘4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days’ (‘4 luni, 3 saptamâni si 2 zile’, 2007), he met journalist Tatiana Niculescu Bran. There he saw the performance of a stage adaptation of her non-fiction books, which she wrote about a shocking incident in Romania, which received a lot of international attention – an event that still manages to stir people’s tongues. A girl suffering from mental health problems visited her friend in a monastery in Moldova, where she was believed to be possessed by the devil. With all its consequences. Mungiu started working on a screenplay, but felt it stayed too close to reality. The final version became a story for a film in which the question of guilt hardly plays a role, but apathy, love and the resulting choices that people make all the more so. The result is a film that can compete on all fronts with the impressive ‘4 Months…’.

Alina (Cristina Flutur) returns from Germany to the place where she grew up: a poor region in Romania. The purpose of her journey is clear: she wants to persuade her good friend Voichita (Cosmina Stratan) to leave the monastery, where she has been living since Alina left. Together with Voichita, she wants to build a new and, above all, happier life in Germany. Temporarily in spoken word, but in reality she hopes it will be forever. But Voichita no longer has room in her life for her friend, with whom she spent her childhood in the orphanage. In the monastery behind the hills she is happy, she has allowed God into her heart and feels good about following the strict regime of the monastery. “Even if you have hundreds of people around you, without God in your heart you are still lonely”, that is more or less the mantra that was given to her by the priest, whom she invariably continues to call papa. In addition, the priest will not welcome her again once she has left the monastery, even if only for a short period of time. Alina is wildly annoyed by the indiscriminate imitation of the priest and uses all possible means to get Voichita to leave what she considers a terrible place. She is very attached to her independence and can’t bear the fact that her friend, the only one she seems to live for, so effaces herself for a faith she does not share. Voichita, on the other hand, continues to have a firm faith in God and is convinced that God can heal and make her friend happy.

The conflicting opinions of the two girlfriends form the central point of ‘Beyond the Hills’. This is not only nicely characterized by the difference in clothing (Alina’s western clothing contrasts sharply with the sober clothing and headscarves of Voichita and the nuns), but also in the sparse conversations and posture. The past of the two remains largely unexposed, but there is enough shimmer through it to excite. Mungiu has managed to gather a sublime cast for his slowly unfolding character drama. The two actresses shared their prize for Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival and rightly so. They strike the right chord in every scene, with it being impossible to say which actress had the most difficult part. With intense looks and emotional, hysterical outbursts, Christina Flutur makes it very clear how much she craves the attention of her friend, preferably outside the rickety fence of the monastery. Cosmina Stratan shines as the quiet, but internally consumed by doubt, nun, unforgettable in one of the last scenes, in which the priest and her fellow nuns talk to someone from outside the monastery and she literally stands there as an outsider. She listens, she looks, all the while her brain is working overtime. Magnificent. ‘Beyond the Hills’ is long at 152 minutes, and therefore not for everyone, but there is no scene too much. The film almost puts you in a kind of meditative state, because the events seem so far from our normal existence and you are completely sucked into this world. Leave it to Mungiu to get you back on the ground. ‘Beyond the Hills’ does not leave you in a trance, but it does leave you with the feeling that you have once again seen something very beautiful from this Romanian master filmmaker.