It's not uncommon for movies to be made in response to (or financially exploiting) a news-making, societal pushpin, be it a tacky made-for-TV affair using the flash of a scandalously embarrassing public spectacle to goose potential ratings in a cynical fish-in-the-barrel maneuver -- The Texas Cheerleader Scandal, let's say. Or a more psychologically nuanced examination of a previously outrageous affair (I, Tonya), even.
But for a narrative reply to the current college admissions cheating tempest, one artfully composed response has actually already beaten everyone to the punch. Cristian Mungiu's Graduation, the most recent effort from this thoughtful Romanian director, whose 2016 release presaged this entire imbroglio, suggests a more deeply significant aspect of the cheating scandal that only seems merely incidental.
A monthslong FBI sting has lead to allegations against some 33 wealthy parents, who are suspected of taking part in a far-reaching scam designed to get their children accepted into prestigious colleges, such as USC and Stanford, by any means necessary. They allegedly forged documents, augmented test scores, and, in some cases, falsified the athletic achievement of their kids in order to be eligible for a sports scholarship in activities in which the children never even participated. Charges have been filed against parents, school admissions officers, several top NCAA coaches, and the alleged ringleader of this particularly seedy circus, William Singer, a college "consultant" whose now-infamous "side door" scheme had become so well-oiled, he grew increasingly cocky about its invulnerability.
Mungiu, meanwhile, has been on the international cinematic map since winning the Palme d'Or in 2007 for his masterpiece, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days, a film set in '80s-era Romania, about a young woman trying to help her best friend obtain an illegal abortion. Since then, he has continued to artfully chronicle the lives of Romanians, with a special emphasis on how oppressive regimes (political and religious) affect the lives of women.
Graduation also involves a young woman, but somewhat more indirectly than in his previous work: The film is focused instead on the young woman's father, Dr. Romeo Aldea (Adrian Titieni), a man held in relatively high esteem in the Romanian city of Cluj-Napoca, where he lives with his mostly estranged wife, Magda (Lia Bugnar), and his teen daughter, Eliza (Maria Dragus), whom he dearly adores.
Much to Romeo's joy, Eliza has received a scholarship offer to a university in the U.K., where she can go to study psychology, taking her far out of Romania, a country which the doctor has all but given up upon. Years earlier, after the fall of communism in the early '90s, Romeo and Magda decided to return to their homeland in order, as the doctor says, "to make a difference." That hopeful thread of optimism has been fraying ever since, leaving the couple's relationship in tatters, and Romeo determined for his daughter to have a better life in Western Europe, a goal that appears now to be well within reach.
To her parents' horror, however, on the morning before Eliza is meant to take her all-important final exams, the final hurdle toward that scholarship, she is assaulted at a construction site just outside her school by an escaped convict, leaving her psychologically wounded, with a cast on her wrist, and unable to concentrate properly on her exams. Fearing for her daughter's future, Romeo eventually goes against what he considers to be his nature, and, through the help of an influential vice-mayor named Bulai (Petre Ciubotaro), whom he agrees to, in turn, bump up on the liver transplant list, gives his daughter the opportunity to cheat on her exam in order to assure a grade high enough for her to keep her scholarship.
As Mungiu subtly points out, despite the doctor's reputation for honesty, and his own belief in his integrity, it's pretty clear he has already been indoctrinated in the ways of duplicity and privilege: As Eliza is attacked shortly after he drops her off near her school that fateful morning, he is in bed with his mistress, Sandra (Mãlina Manovici), who is actually Eliza's English teacher. At one point, his good friend, the chief of police, mentions how the influence of this same Bulai also once helped the two of them avoid being drafted when they were young men. Romeo might see himself as above the corruption of his home country, but even if this sort of nakedly direct grafting feels uncomfortable to him, it's clear his moral honesty has already been deeply contaminated.
One of the more wrenching scenes of the film comes when Romeo has to explain the specifics of the cheating plan to his daughter, the night before her last test. In order to identify herself, she is to cross out the last three words of the first page of the exam, forcing her to be complicit in the process. Eliza is a very bright young woman, with an air of innocence about her made possible by the doggedly devoted efforts of her parents to protect her from the world of corruption all around her. When Romeo offers her this choice (eventually suggesting she just "chooses what's best" and leaving it at that), he does so knowing full well he's making her engage in the deceit, while indirectly suggesting she would be incapable of achieving this on her own by simply playing fair.
We still don't know exactly how much the children involved in the current scandal knew about what their parents were rigging behind the scenes on their behalf, but certainly for those who had to fake athletic prowess, they were most certainly aware of the manipulation of the system being bent to their advantage. It's impossible to say how this may have affected these kids, it's entirely probable they had already been so routinely granted such unethical benefits it was but one more blip of venality in a world already draped in fraud, but the implicit message remains the same: They have to cheat to get where their parents want them to, because they aren't gifted or hard-working enough to do so by their own mettle.
Though their reasoning may be far less morally complex than Mungiu's protagonist, beyond 'wanting their kids to achieve at a level commiserate with their own ego,' the intricacies of their situation, in many cases acting on their children's behalf without informing them of what they're doing, are strikingly similar. By illegally ensuring their kids achieve the possibility of a "better" (or at least "more accomplished") future, the parents readily trade in their child's innocence in the process.
Here, they make the same moral miscalculation that Romeo does: By assuming the end always justifies the means, they taint their children in the process, an irony that would not have been lost on Shakespeare. By coddling and protecting them from the world but not from their own dishonesty -- like Brando's Don Corleone in The Godfather, so wanting, and failing, to spare his youngest child, Michael, from his lifestyle -- they inadvertently assure their child's corruption in the process.
Such is the implicit message to Eliza. Her father's lack of faith in her ability to achieve on her own merits, by her own hands, is where he loses her respect, and she loses her innocence. He says all along how willing he is to let her go, as long as she's willing to follow the life he has laid out to her in the U.K. By disbelieving in her, and subjecting her to the moral corruption he doesn't even realize he has embraced, he instead loses her in a much less hopeful manner than he intended.
Mungiu does not make it easy on his protagonist -- or the audience. He purposefully puts Romeo in a position where it seems defensible to use social graft to his advantage (it's true that the school refuses to make any accommodations for the truly damaged Eliza, which seems decidedly unfair), a choice he tries to justify throughout the film. ("We raised you to be honest," he tells her, during that fateful conversation. "But this is the world we live in, and sometimes we have to fight using this world's weapons.")
One can also argue that his daughter had already legitimately earned her scholarship through years of hard work, and the test, as Romeo puts it, is merely a "formality," but such is the delicate and intricate machine-work of ethical purity that even when it appears to be excusable, such a dishonesty can shatter the entire apparatus, irrevocably breaking the mechanism in the process. The initial impulse to protect and support your children at all costs might well seem like an act of love, but it has definite and far-reaching consequences.
As any parent can tell you, the single most difficult thing to do when you're teaching your child to ride a bike is to finally let go of their seat and let them wobble down the pavement under their own power. It is up to you as a parent to determine which outcome is worse: They swoon and immediately hit the ground, sobbing and waving their arms up at you in need; or they shudder, shake, right themselves, and speed on their way, with you standing, watching helplessly as your child begins to make their journey through the world on their own terms without you.
MovieStyle on 04/05/2019