Beyond the Hills

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Kevin L Many Romanian films released outside their borders tend to be so infused with bleakness that are only surpassed by the sunlight of their critical acclaim. "Beyond the Hills", with its uncompromising aesthetic, is no exception. The anarchic actions of a young woman who has clearly suffered greatly in her youth threatens to disrupt the oppressive atmosphere of a remote Orthodox monastery after a young nun invites her beloved friend from her orphanage days to stay. A profound and bruising study of a country whose long-suffering inhabitants are cowed into noncommunication by various forms of repressive dictatorship, the movie serves up profound questions to answer, which leads up to the ultimate fate of this visitor. Was it the unbearable forces of religious zealotry? The oppressive, suffocating essence of the myopic world the young nun lives within? Or the innate fear of retribution brought on by theistic teachings and dictatorial regimes? 3.2 stars Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 07/06/25 Full Review Audience Member 152 minutes of very straight forward telling with really one-note characters with no arcs for said characters all while being shot in static fashion. The sole driving force of this picture is the direction and it's piercing narrative that smartly avoids bias or on-the-nose preachiness. Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 02/20/23 Full Review nefasto r "Beyond the HIlls" is about faith against reason, love against love, sanity against craziness, bleak against bleaker, and most importantly: a bore! Painfully slow, so difficult for me to finish it, and when I did I cannot say it was worth it. I did like "Graduation", that Cristian Mungiu wrote, but as a director I really cannot stand him. "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days" had the same effect on me, and I will think twice before watching his next work. Rated 2/5 Stars •  Rated 2 out of 5 stars 03/31/23 Full Review Audience Member A powerful drama about faith and the life in the mountains of Romania. It also reminds me much of Denis Diderot's The Nun. Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 02/25/23 Full Review Audience Member Of all the many, many foreign language films I have seen, only a sparse handful are from Romania, but every one of them has impressed me with their rich detail, and their sensibilities to the lives of people in their country. Beyond the Hills, directed by Cristian Mungiu (who also did the masterful 2007 film 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days) continues in that pattern. It tells the story of two young women, longtime friends who grew up together in an orphanage. Their lives have taken very different paths while they've been apart. One, Voichita, played by Cosmina Stratan, has found a calling as a nun in a Romanian convent; the other, Alina, played by Cristina Flutur, has lived in Germany for work, and once they reunite there's a tension from the start. The person that each has become, conflict with the relations they used to have to each other-relations of a deeper sort at least one of them wants to rekindle once more. While both young ladies staying at the convent, Alina is impatient with her friend's Orthodox piousness, and angry with the other nuns and the head priest there, and she acts outs erratically and at times violently. Voichita meanwhile tries to make Alina find her way in God. Both these performances, of almost polar-opposite tones, come in vivid believability. Flutur's wildness is extraordinary to see, but Stratan's emotive restraint is nearly as impressive. The pace of the story builds gradually but never uninterestingly, rich with the Romanian setting and character interactions, making scenes of even apparent mundane tasks compelling (a scene of Voichita getting her friend a document reminded me a lot of a scene in Mungiu's, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, where one the main character tries to register a hotel room for her friend to get an abortion in). It's has a gritty realism that doesn't typically shock (though there is at least one big shock) as much as it gets under the viewer's skin. Beyond the Hills is not an easy film to watch, particularly in the turn it takes towards the end. I won't say much about it other than it concerns very much how the push and pull conflict of the two protagonists comes to ahead in a sequence of ignorant decisions based on superstition (in addition to the lack of interest of people outside the convent). At the end, there's a shot of somebody's face that will not be easily forgotten. This is a film which rewards patience and appreciation of detail, and though at nearly two and a half hours it is not a slog at all if you let it draw you in. It's not quite at the level of 4 Month, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, but, thanks in large part to the two strong leads and the director's building of their story, it comes quite close. Rated 4.5/5 Stars •  Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 02/15/23 Full Review Audience Member This is a Romanian film about a girl who reunites with a former lover who has now become a nun. Unfortunately, this girl has some significant trouble accepting her friend's new holy lifestyle and struggles with how to be with the woman she loves without wanting to live the life of a nun for herself. There's a lot of ambiguity in this story that is never explained for the audience. We are left to judge for ourselves if the priest and nuns behave inappropriately, if the young woman has a mental illness of some kind, or even if she is actually possessed. As far as I'm concerned...I don't care. The movie moved back and forth between 2 things I hate watching on film. Half the time it was really slow and extraordinarily boring. Every person spends most of the movie talking in very hushed tones, there is basically no music in the film, it's loaded with dead air. In fact, it took me multiple days to finish this movie because I kept falling asleep while watching. The times when the movie wasn't boring, it was annoying. I constantly wanted to slap some sense into the characters, and was frustrated by their stupid decisions. I can see some of the intriguing elements of Beyond the Hills and why it might fascinate more "cultured" movie-goers. But my big, dumb brain just didn't care. Rated 1/5 Stars •  Rated 1 out of 5 stars 02/21/23 Full Review Read all reviews

Beyond the Hills

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