Más allá de las colinas

Albert Camus said, "The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding." These words become prophetic in Romanian director Cristian Mungui's Beyond the Hills, a powerful tale of religious and emotional obsession that leads to tragic consequences. Like his award winning abortion drama, 4 Months, 3 weeks and 2 Days, the Palme d'Or winner at Cannes in 2007, it is deliberately paced and can be demanding to the viewer unaccustomed to long takes without cuts or camera movements. Set in a remote Orthodox Christian convent in rural Moldova known as New Hill Monastery, Beyond the Hills is a social drama based on two books labeled "nonfiction novels" by Romanian journalist Tatiana Niculescu Bran concerning an exorcism in 2005 that became sensationalized in the press.

Filmed in -15 degree weather during the heaviest snow season in years, Oleg Mutu's cinematography makes us feel the bleakness and the cold, damp air inside a convent that has no electricity or running water. As the film begins, Alina (Cristina Flutur) has returned from Berlin to the town in which she grew up. She is met at the train station by Voichita (Cosmina Stratan), her best friend and partner since their years together in an orphanage. Voichita believes she has found her direction, however, in the convent where she is a novice and has become emotionally attached to the priest she calls "Papa" (Valeriu Andriuta) and the mother superior (Dana Tapalaga).

Alina, a sometimes believer, has come to rescue her friend from what she feels is the church's domination and is unprepared for Voichita's unwillingness to leave with her and work together on a German cruise ship. She tells Alina that she has found a sense of family and has been changed by her experience. Though she lovingly invites her friend to give herself to the Lord, Alina feels betrayed. A tug of war develops between the church's fear of the "unbeliever", and their wish to provide sanctuary, knowing that Alina has nowhere else to go. Under threat by those around her, Voichita finds herself torn between her one and only friend and her devotion to God.

Desperate for affection, Alina flirts with suicide and her growing paranoia makes her suspicious of everyone in Voichita's life. Soon, her repeated fits of hysteria land her in the local hospital, but the anti-psychotic drugs provide only a temporary solution. When the doctors tell the priest that there is nothing further they can do to help, Alina is returned to the convent but the situation does not improve. The distraught girl does leave on her own to go back to her last foster home, but gives up all her possessions and returns to the monastery, unable to stay away from Voichita.

Ultimately, the priest is convinced that she is not just a sinner, but one possessed by the devil and must undergo an exorcism. Without her consent, Alina is tied to a cross with ropes and chains and her mouth gagged to prevent her screaming as the service is performed. Beyond the Hills is an intense and haunting film, and the performances of Flutur and Stratan, who shared the Best Actress award at Cannes, add depth and complexity to the film's moral universe. Under Mungui's direction, the film avoids pointing the finger. There are no good guys and bad guys and everyone involved thinks they are acting in Alina's best interests, but they are sadly myopic.

Regardless of their good intentions, each character is so caught up in the narrow scope of their vision that they cannot see beyond their immediate self-interest. What becomes lost is the ability to look beyond rituals and forms to find the substance - love, charity, and compassion. According to Mungui, the film "speaks about guilt but is more concerned with love and choices, with the things people do in the name of their beliefs, the difficulty of telling good from bad, understanding religion literally, indifference as an even greater sin than intolerance and freedom of will." When these factors are present, tragedy cannot be far away.

'Based on a true story' – a phrase that can cover so many bases - is the slow-burning and languorous Romanian film Beyond the Hills.

Set predominantly in a monastery in a bleak and poverty-stricken district, it is a complex and multi-layered film revolving around two young women, Alina and Voichita. Previously childhood friends then lovers, their lives intertwine once more when Alina returns from working in Germany in an attempt to once more enter into a relationship with Voichita who has since taken Holy Orders and is living the chaste and extremely frugal life of a nun. The rekindling of the relationship was always doomed and as Alina's mental health deteriorates with the realisation that she will not achieve her objective, she provokes a series of events culminating in the belief by some that she is possessed and needs cleansing.

A Romanian film about faith, despair and unrequited lesbian love in an impoverished monastery was never likely to be an action-packed, sensationalist blockbuster. It is long at 155 minutes and its pace tends to alternate between dead slow and stop. It's the sort of a film which will take over 5 minutes to show a nun leaving the kitchen to draw water from the well and return to the kitchen with no dialogue or plot advancement throughout that period. But it is a film that has the courage to take its time, confident that it can draw you into the lives of the people whose story it tells. And on the whole it succeeds.

There are no real villains or heroes in the film. It does not take the easy route to mock and blame religion for out-dated belief – when a nun believes she has been sent a sign from God and goes all peculiar, the Orthodox Priest in charge cuts down the hysteria curtly and tells her and the other nuns to move on. No, the people shown in this film, be they doctors, police or those of the cloth, are portrayed as well-meaning individuals all looking to do no harm even if, like all of us, they can be judgmental and self-righteous on occasion. Beyond the Hills is an unashamedly bleak and ultimately very sad film which gives no answers but merely records events leaving its audience to draw their own conclusions.

Cinematography was good, though the constant sound of the ever-blowing wind was sometimes crude and off-putting.

And there was an early failure of the sub-titles. When Alina first arrives at the monastery, the camera concentrates on a hand-written sign at its entrance. It's clearly of some import for it to be shown so, but the audience is not let in on its message. Post-film research ascertained it stated, words to the effect: This is the House of God. Forbidden to those of different religion. You must believe and not doubt. It would have explained much.

A complex story plot describing a tragic division of life paths of two female friends who found themselves either into grinding mill of bigotry in church structures or into that of a cold bureaucratic apparatus. This poetically told story leads us through meditative winter landscapes and dark interiors of the monastery where, besides obvious social issues, one can vaguely discern a disturbing relationship between the two friends consisting of perplexing resignation and self-destruction. The success of this work lies in the abundance of details which bring the audience into contemplation about human nature.

The Romanian film Dupa Dealuri (2012) was shown in the U.S. with the title "Beyond the Hills." The movie was written and directed by Cristian Mungiu.

A better name for this film would have been "Beyond the City," because the movie takes place in a Romanian convent where conditions are basically medieval--no electricity, no running water, no central heating. Ironically, the convent overlooks a modern city. When anyone from the convent visits the city, we are jarred into remembering that the action is happening today, rather than 500 years ago. A group of nuns live in the convent, which is directed by an Orthodox priest and his wife, who is the mother superior.

Two young women grew up together in an orphanage, and then separated. One of the friends, (Volchita, played by Cosmina Stratan) has joined the convent. The other (Alina, played by Cristina Flutur) has gotten work in Germany. When Alina returns to visit Cosmina at the convent, the movie appears destined to be about a liberated woman freeing her more traditional friend from the repressive religious, patriarchal, atmosphere of the convent. That's not the direction the film takes.

We learn that Alina is desperate to be with Cosmina. She wants Cosmina to leave the convent and join her in Germany. It's Alina who is troubled. Cosmina is happy at the convent, and truly believes that Alina belongs there as well.

I assumed that the convent would be a place of repression and degradation, but that isn't the case. The life is hard, but the nuns are not mistreated, and they don't appear to have been brainwashed into accepting the strict rules set down by the priest (played by Valeriu Andriuta).

The interactions between the outsider--Alina--with Cosmina and the nuns and priest take turns and twists that I wouldn't have predicted. It's a hard, cold life at the convent, and this is a hard, cold portrayal of that life, and what happens when that life is disturbed.

Beyond the Hills is a grim, but fascinating, movie about good intentions meeting harsh reality. The acting and cinematography are superb. It's definitely worth seeking out and viewing.

We saw this film at the excellent Dryden Theatre at George Eastman House in Rochester. It will work well on DVD. Beyond the Hills was submitted as the Romanian entry in the 2013 Academy Awards Best Foreign Language Film category.

It is a sad story told in a fair way. You see the two characters desperately trying to save each other, but also desperately trying to keep themselves into the "safe bubble" they created around them: Voichita's bubble is the monastery, Alina's bubble is Voichita, the only human being that ever loved her.

It is the story of two girls who grew up in an orphanage (I felt a shiver trying to imagine it) and had few choices at the moment they became adults. The movie lefts many questions open. One of them, the hardest perhaps, is how was it possible that nobody (monastery, hospital, school, foster family, police, etc.) was able to help a girl, while everybody agreed on the fact that she needed help.