Police, Adjective (2009)
Directed by Corneliu Porumbolu
Written by Corneliu Porumbolu
Starring Dragos Bucur
Release Date May 1st 2009
Published May 1st, 2009
The title Police, Adjective is instructive. The movie from Romanian writer-director Corneliu Porumboiu is as much about the police as it is about descriptive words. While ostensibly a flatfoot procedural about a detective on trial of a possible drug dealer, the film comes down to one terrific semantic debate about right and wrong.
Cristi (Dragos Bucur) is a young police detective in a tiny Romanian village where one can assume there isn't that much crime. Why else would he spend eight days on the case of three teenagers whose crime is smoking hashish? Nevertheless, Cristi goes diligently about his work first following one then another of the teens and meticulously documenting his findings.
Cristi is avoiding the chief of detectives because he knows that he will advise a sting operation to catch the teens in the act. Through his investigation Cristi has come to see this as entirely unnecessary. For one thing, hashish is unlikely to remain illegal much longer in ....Romania.... as the continent of ..Europe.. seems ready to make it legal. ....Romania.... is one of the last holdouts and the one with the most severe punishments.
The case is founded on one of the teens, whom Cristi calls Squealer, real name Alex, tattling on his pal Victor as payback for Victor gaining the romantic attention of the third teen, a girl named Doina. Alex is unaware that the crime he is putting his friend up for is actually defined as supplying drugs, not merely possession, and could land him in prison for nearly 8 years.
Cristi cannot carry the destruction of young Victor's life over something as meaningless as a joint. All of this leads to a showdown with his officious, bullying and startlingly brilliant chief of detectives Anghelache (Vlad Ivanov) who doesn't care for Cristi's crisis of conscience or his feelings about the trends of law in ..Europe... Angheleche is by the book and much of the scene hinges on a book, a dictionary and a series of specific definitions.
If that sounds dull to you I assure you that as filmed by Corneliu Porumboiu it is far from dull. Admittedly, the plot is thin, much of the real fascination in Police, Adjective is in technique than in typical storytelling. The ways in which Poromboiu observes, wordlessly, with no score, Cristi merely observing, sometimes walking, sometimes just waiting, are striking in composition and clever camera movement.
Students of film will watch with rapt attention the ways in which Poromboiu signifies the important players with minor, unspoken details. We observe the teens just as Cristi does. The lack of a distracting monologue or score invites us to make the same mental notes as Cristi, as if we too are investigating. It bonds us with him and makes the scenes more resonant when he isn't investigating, scenes involving his home life with his new wife.
These scenes are observed with all of the noise of daily life, the TV, Music and such, all the noise not present during Cristi's endless hours observing his suspects. The scenes with Cristi's wife are punctuated with a pair of resonant conversations that become important subtext to the film's third act, Cristi's showdown with Anghelache.
Police Adjective is a fascinating film, at once an experiment in the language of film and of language period. It also functions as commentary on state repression through law and a cry against the abuse of the law. In ....America.... one could compare what likely happened to poor Victor with the victims of so called Mandatory Minimum laws, in which offenders have spent endless years in jail over what are minor offenses. A smart American filmmaker might use Police Adjective as a great jumping off point for a work in that vein.
Police, Adjective of course, works just fine on its own as a brilliant work from a brilliant writer-director.
