The Performance of Silence in Cristian Mungiu's 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days

Abstract

This essay examines performances of silence in Cristian Mungiu's 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days. Positing silence as a performative strategy that can bring agency to communist subjects and highlight oppression by rendering visible and intelligible their limited choices, we complicate traditional views on silence, extend work on silence as resistance, and demonstrate that the performance of silence can serve as a productive space for generating meaning and enacting resistance.

Keywords:

• Feminist Performance Studies
• Silence
• Invisibility
• Cristian Mungiu
• Communist Romania

Acknowledgements

A version of this essay was presented at the 2009 National Communication Association convention. The authors would like to thank Heidi Rose and the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful feedback on this essay.

Notes

1. The film also received the Best Foreign Language Film Award from the Toronto, Chicago, and LA Film Critics Associations and the US National Society of Film Critics.

2. We use “socialism” and “communism” interchangeably to refer to the pre-1989 socialist regimes in the former communist bloc. We do not mean to conflate that type of socialism with Western socialist movements or parties.

3. Such as maternity leaves, childcare, and labor-saving devices for housework (Verdery, “Parent-State” 230–31).

4. For an analysis of Romanian women's sexual lives as political disobedience, see Maria Bucur.

5. We thank our anonymous reviewer for drawing attention to this important function of wooden language.

6. See Thom 24–29, 53, 141; John Young 218–19.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Valerie Palmer-Mehta

Valerie Palmer-Mehta is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism at Oakland University in Rochester, MI

Alina Haliliuc

Alina Haliliuc is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Iowa