“Economic hardship in a region with multiple ethnicities is a powder keg, the film contends, and while this isn’t any sort of brilliant insight on Mungiu’s part, the way he lays bare these raw nerves of the debate makes R.M.N., despite its narrative shortcomings and shaggy dogs, a fascinating film until its symbolic ending.”
Towards the end of his latest film R.M.N., Romanian helmer Cristian Mungiu places his camera in the community centre of a small town in the multi-ethnic region of Transylvania. What follows is a 17-minute-long heated discussion between the townspeople about the fate of the immigrant workers in the town’s bread factory that supplies the region its bread and provides labour to many in town. Many of the film’s themes and issues come to a head in this scene, a masterful display of staging and direction, working on different planes both visually and narratively. The scene shows the complexity of the European immigration debate, in which a mixture of often understandable emotions, raw economic calculus, and disinformation and ignorance can lead to explosive situations. Mungiu doesn’t pretend to know the solution to all of this, but his miniature window into the debate should be an eye-opener to those who purely think in, no pun intended, black or white.
R.M.N. starts in Germany though, where Romanian immigrant worker Matthias (Marin Grigore) unceremoniously quits his job by head-butting his boss after the latter hurls a slur at him, the first instance of many acts of racism throughout the film. Matthias evades criminal charges by quickly moving back to his seemingly charming hometown in the Transylvanian mountains. He tries to connect to his young son Rudi (Mark Blenyesi) under protestations from his wife Ana (Macrina Bârlădeanu). The kid refuses to speak ever since he saw something undefined in the woods, and Matthias tries to ‘toughen’ his son up through antiquated lessons in masculinity. He also tries to hook up with his ex Csilla (Judith State), essentially the film’s representative of the town’s bourgeoisie insofar as it exists. Presented as a refined single woman who drinks wine and plays the cello, she is also an assistant manager at the bread factory who has to secure EU grants by filling five positions in the factory with immigrant workers. The factory needs them since local workers turn up their noses at the low-paying jobs, able to make much more abroad in countries like Germany. When she brings in two workers from Sri Lanka the town remains relatively quiet, the odd racist remark here or there aside. Once a third comes in the situation heats up quickly, eventually reaching boiling point at the aforementioned townhall meeting.
There are several other characters and plot strands that add further thematic fuel and complications. The town’s original bread and butter was mining, but this was shut down under the EU’s environmental regulations, for which a French NGO employee charged with tabulating the region’s bear population takes the heat once sparks start flying. The town’s priest, a representative of one of three religions in this small place, gets involved in the socio-political games too, showing religion is an important political factor in these discussions. And amidst all of this the characters speak no less than five languages, distinguished by different colours in the subtitles, underlining the multi-ethnicity of the region that is a source of tension in its own right.
The film’s title does not refer to Romania but to the Romanian acronym for an MRI. Papa Otto (Andrei Finți), who may or may not be Matthias’ father, is an underdeveloped character who mostly seems to have been created for metaphorical reasons. A scan shows a tumour forming in his head, a clear parallel to the tumour growing in the town’s mind. There are more characters and story strands that get short shrift, the number of ideas Mungiu tries to cram into his film making R.M.N. burst at the seams. Still, the examination of Europe’s multi-faceted immigration debate should itself start conversations given how many arguments it provides. The irony of the racist townspeople being the target of racism once they move West and become immigrant workers themselves isn’t lost on them, nor is it on the audience. The capitalist failure that causes Csilla to hire cheap labour from abroad because everybody moves West is evident. Economic hardship in a region with multiple ethnicities is a powder keg, the film contends, and while this isn’t any sort of brilliant insight on Mungiu’s part, the way he lays bare these raw nerves of the debate makes R.M.N., despite its narrative shortcomings and shaggy dogs, a fascinating film until its symbolic ending.