Dupa dealurii tells a story, in the extremely well researched and thus perfectly reconstructed environment of contemporary Eastern Orthodoxy. If you are curious as to how the muslim-catholics live today, you'll greatly benefit from watching. It's not just the civilisation, the objects, the deep pre-Iron Age flavour that is correctly conveyed ; but actually the culture, with its oppressive classical Greek rootsii is there entire.
You may, of course, reconstruct the story in your own terms (the man telling the story and the man hearing the story do not share a story ; the story told and the story heard are not the same story). What you can't do is hear the story retold in the teller's own terms. I can however, and here it is : A young man, for pride and vanity, separates from the flock and aims to build himself, and for the glorification of his own pride and vanity, a church apart.
The secret young men do not know, and generally with their perdition find, is that the church as a body, in congregation and comunion, is protected by the Lord with immense, unspeakable power from the immense, unspeakable but ultimately not sufficient lures of the Enemy. For as long as he stands with the others, and in comunion with Christ's own bride, the young man is protected, and what's more, and what's infinitely worse -- feels powerful. Riding on a narrow plank atop a thin separation line between two fluid media the surfer thinks he feels "the power of the ocean". He doesn't, not really. The subdued ocean he feels is the subdued ocean he feels, not the ocean altogether.
So it follows here : the Enemy sends balm to the vanity, in many ways unseen, and seen as well, such as in the shape of the local herd preferring the fallen church up the hill to the proper church down in the village. This is what "the people" are for, but how to tell this to the young'un ? The Lord sends word, through the hierarchy, in the shape of the Bishop refusing to sanctify the item, and in other ways. What's easier for the prideful youth than to imagine himself better informed, more intelligent, and in all respects above the Bishop who actually owns him ? Of course "the public" is right and of course the Bishop is wrong, especially given this view is a lot more actualizing of the young man's potential (as he sees it ; and in a sense, as it is).
The elaborate trap for yet another soul is ready, and the Enemy proceeds : he sends a Succubus with Janus' face, expert, delightful, manifested as two different girls that nevertheless are oneiii. The young man falls, and that's the endiv. It was, as always, a story of men -- the herd of hysterical she-cattle there present drive this point home better than a thousand writs.
The moral being that just because I can afford to despise the pre-Iron Age primitives does not mean your own situation is above the Stone Age necessarily. It isn't, as it happens, and you will know this is the truth by that simple sign -- that all the foregoing is not something that'd have ever occurred to you.
And so it goes.
———- 2012, by Cristian Mungiu, with Cosmina Stratan, Cristina Flutur, Valeriu Andriuta. Magnet. [↩]
- "The man who leaves and the man who returns - they aren't the same man." says the old(er) man to the young lesbian, and the young lesbian repeats to the woman that loves her. Indeed. [↩]
- Through marriage, you know, unity of body is achieved. Did you know ? [↩]
- Not really, for he confesses in the end, after the fall, and the ending's unclear even if it doth not look so good. [↩]