[CRITICAL] BACHELOR’s degree

Eliza (Maria Dragus) is being attacked then it is a test of Bac. His father, the renowned physician Romeo (Adrian Titieni) wants to do anything to make it succeed to get the scholarship that would allow him to leave to study in England. To do this, she must obtain an average of 18/20, but his daughter seems to be too disturbed by the events to succeed. By his relations, his father will attempt to weigh in on the survey and on the test Tray to maximize the chances of Eliza.

As the film progresses, we understand that the success of Eliza affects much more than the simple departure. The couple formed by the parents depends on it, and by repercussion the mistress of Romeo, a single mother. But also, as suggested in the latest plan, the return of equity Romania. Beyond the twists and turns of its plot and the study of his figures, BA is a sort of huis-clos within the entire Romanian society. The characters have all the relationships, obligations for services rendered or common interests, implying a contiguity stifling between all the citizens, as well related.

Without getting into a real corruption mafia or a system instituted nepotism, the film of Cristian Mungiu portrays a corruption informal gangrene of all social relations. Even if it is considered as irreproachable by the other, the doctor Romeo is going to have to dirty his hands in order to increase the chances of success of her daughter to the examination.

Adrien Tittieni portrays a human brain to the closed face, which we do not know whether we should feel for him an antipathy to be so much a calculator, or give our admiration to the extent of self-denial in front of his difficulties. Well prior to the incident suffered by her daughter, the world of Romeo is already in the process of disintegrating. The climate oppressive that it installs Cristian Mungiu , thanks to its staging can follow a plot with a slow burning without getting bored. Often articulated around a main plane which multiply the primers of the secondary characters, and objects all in lines of flight, the scenes of BA is “blocks” as hermetic as the ex-soviet regime, in which gravity seems to converge toward the center of the image, where is the doctor. His large stature doesn’t seem too much to bear the weight of the ruins of the dictatorship of Ceausescu.

Without being frontally addressed, the inertia of institutions is indeed the main theme of the film by Mungiu. The endemic corruption is described as the prerogative of the older generation. Even if they have experienced the liberation and the democratic process, the patterns of exchange of good practices in the public service have the hard life and contaminate any conversation. “I have to give him service, he was eager to help“, here is the currency which is at the heart of all exchanges. The new generation, on the contrary, embodied by Eliza, has a chance to get rid of these bad habits in condition to make the right choices very early on. The meaning given by the end of the BACHELOR’s degree is rather optimistic, but it could be interpreted as a wish of the director more than as a result of the actions of the main character.

Beyond its twists and turns, the BACHELOR is a behind closed doors, within the entire Romanian society. Click To Tweet

BA, if it is perfectly mastered, is very theoretical. The viewer will have to decode the meaning of the film from the staging, and the overall form of the work. The interactions between the characters if they are very realistic, seem to be ultimately dictated by the ambitions of the thematic of Mungiu. It follows a direction of actors devoid of empathy (except for the mistress of Romeo in a scene where she drops the mask).

The coldness that emanates from the film is comparable to the intelligence without emotion, of his main character. If Romeo is a surgeon whose never seen the hands to the work, Mungiu is the kind of doctor who diagnoses a cancer without reassure you about your chances to come out alive. Apart from this last plan, which augurs a possible revival due to the generation of Eliza, BA is a depressing inevitability. It includes as well the vows stake Mungiu towards the morality of Eliza and the generation it represents, as the last hope of a disappointed man by his contemporaries. The honesty of a single young woman is the bulwark ultimate against the gangrene, the only excuse for not to disconnect a corporation in the terminal phase.