Not Rated. In English, French, Hungarian, German, Sinhala and Romanian with subtitles. On VOD.

Unfolding in a linguistic Tower of Babel and featuring a swirling mixture of mostly European DNA, Cristian Mungiu’s Palme d’Or nomiee “R.M.N.” (Romanian abbreviation for “Magnetic Resonance Imaging”) kicks off with Matthias ( Marin Grigore), the film’s nearly monosyllabic, Romanian (more or less) anti-hero nearly killing a co-worker at a German meat factory with a single blow.

Matthias then returns to the small, multi-ethnic village in Transylvania, where his young son Rudi (Mark Edward Blenyesi) is being turned into a sissy (according to Matthias) by his mother Ana (Macrina Barladeanu). After confronting Ana in his usual threatening manner, toxic Matthias resolves to force the boy to walk to school by himself through nearby woods, even though Rudi has been frightened by something in there.

At the same time, Csilla Szabo (Judith State), Matthias’ attractive and available ex, and Mrs. Denes (Orsolya Moldovan), who run the village bakery, have not been able to find two workers in the village because their wages are too low and locals would prefer to remain on the dole. Csilla and Mrs. Denes decide to hire immigrants from Sri Lanka to keep the bakery running. The immigrants are good workers and send wages home to family. But some of the townspeople object to POC touching their bread, suspect the newcomers of being terrorists, and do not want them sharing lodging with locals.

Just as a slaughterhouse reduces animals to meat and bone or an MRI (that darn resonance imaging, again) shows us what lies beneath the surface, Mungiu’s film reduces its human characters to their ancient tribal essentials. Some villagers do not even want Germans in their midst or Hungarians, even though by now most Romanians are related to one or both. A couple of Frenchmen have arrived in town to count the bears. It’s not long before a local brings up “Charlie Hebdo.” In Germany apparently, anyone from Eastern Europe might be called a “Gypsy.” In Matthias’ village, men and woman still ride on horseback, mingling with the cars and truck on the roads. Matthias kindly agrees to slaughter a friend’s pig. It is a cruel, messy business, but someone has to know how to do it well. Past and future coexist. Matthias’ father “Papa Otto” has dementia. Someone is stealing Papa Otto’s sheep. Matthias, who believes that Rudi was maybe frightened by a bear, reaches for the double-barreled shotgun.

At a town hall meeting, a tour-de-force of acting by a large group of people, all the forces in the city converge to express their beliefs, however toxic. Matthias zooms around the snow-covered village on a motorcycle. Men dress in bear costumes for a hockey game. Rivals fight one another with sticks. Crucifixes line the roadsides. A ridiculously small local church is for “construction workers” only. When the Sri Lankans try to get in (one is a Catholic), a local man pushes them out. A local priest supports racist congregation members at the same time. Has this guy even read the New Testament? With remarkably stable, mobile cameras, Mungiu (“4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days,” “Graduation”) lays bare some of the racial and tribal specters haunting modern-day Romania and by association all of Europe.

(“R.M.N.” contains violence and profanity)