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17 February 2012
Police,
Adjective (Politist, adjectiv)
Romania:
2009
Director:
Corneliu Porumboiu
Cert :12A
113
minutes
One
of
the
most fascinating movies of the year, this Romanian police procedural thriller is shot in long takes (some tracking shots, some from a fixed position) as Cristi, a plain-clothes cop, spends several cold autumn days following three high-school kids involved in drugs. His superiors want him to arrange a sting, secure a conviction under the strict Romanian law and close the case. But Cristi has pangs of conscience about the thoroughness of the investigation and rigid interpretation of the law.
His wife, a teacher, corrects his grammar, informing him that the Romanian Academy's verdict is final on matters of linguistic usage, and in a riveting concluding sequence, as eloquently wordy as the earlier scenes are enigmatically silent, Cristi's superior officer subjects him to a lesson in dialectics and semantics. A secretary brings in a dictionary and Cristi reads and discusses the definitions of "conscience", "morality", "law", "state" and "police", which inevitably ends up in victory for the senior, more powerful, seemingly more logical man.
It's like a post-authoritarian version of the confrontation in Nineteen Eighty- Four between the unwavering O'Brien and the ethically concerned Winston Smith but with the unconcealed menace replaced by a chilly geniality. Orwell would have been fascinated.
Philip French, The Observer
Peter Bradshaw The Guardian
