The rhetoric of leaving, or the mirage of the fetishized West in Cristian Mungiu’s Occident

Abstract

In one of his earlier films, Occident (2002), Cristian Mungiu showcases the East–West divide in post-communist Romania. First, the rhetoric of leaving and the rhetoric of staying are complex historical legacies of the communist period, when communist propaganda demonized capitalism and the West. In the communist totalitarian public rhetoric, East–West binaries emphasized the East and communism, which led to a fetishization of the West in the private sphere. I call the motility of predominant discourses between private and public spheres the dialectic of rhetoric, which is also always historical. Secondly, the fetish of the West is a kind of Occidentalism, or a reversed Orientalism, and it is made apparent in the film’s title. The film’s characters are trapped between binaries, given that all these factors have social, political and psychological consequences on people’s lives. Compositionally, the film’s multiple narrative planes compile a postmodern, fragmented structure, mirroring the breakdown of rhetorical master-narratives in post-communism.