Police, adjective (Corneliu Porumboiu, 2009): Romania

Reviewed by Zach McClellan.  Viewed at Mann’s Chinese 6 Theatre, part of AFI Fest 2009.

Police, adjective has brought my attention to Romanian cinema.  This film is so naturalistic, it feels like a documentary.  True to life acting and extremely lengthy unmoving shots highlight this film about a policeman with a conscience about an issue I can relate to in today’s continually modernizing world.  Cristi(Dragos Bucur) is undercover investigating a high school student who is an alleged drug dealer.  His boss wants him to quickly gather enough evidence to arrest the young man in a sting operation.  Cristi, being in the position he’s in doesn’t believe the young man is a threat to society because he enjoys the occasional joint with friends and doesn’t want to mess up his life because of it.

The cinematography in the film is beautiful and almost unmoving throughout the entire film.  There are some shots in the film that are almost painfully long, but they definitely get feeling of being right there with Cristi across.  I understood why Porumboiu decided to keep the camera, unmoving on Cristi for long lengths of time; so as to keep the audience not only there in the same rooms he’s in, but also to get into his head.  Throughout the film, during the course of his investigation, as an audience member, I knew that Cristi was having a crisis of conscience.  Perhaps because I’m American and used to fast paced and edited films, I grew tired of the long unmoving shots after seeing a few of them.  The message of the film had become clear to me by then.

Because of the naturalistic acting, nothing seems scripted.  Just honest dialogue between coworkers, friends, employers, and other people in the town.  I think that my favorite scene in the film is the scene where Cristi comes home to a cooked meal and his wife repeatedly playing a Romanian pop/love song.  The conversation between the two was refreshingly humorous and candid compared to the long shots of Cristi standing, walking, and watching a supposed criminal.  The conversations add nice little breaks from his investigation, but are mostly mundane and completely real to life conversations.  The most important scene of dialogue is at the end of the film when Cristi’s boss wants to review his police report and to begin the sting operation.  The conversation that takes place between the two is ridiculous and gets right under your skin.  It brings the message of the film and Cristi’s internal debate right to the climax of the film after a painfully slow buildup.

The message of the film is that there will always be discrepancies between one’s own moral code or law and man’s or society’s laws.  The decisions we make based off of these two different set of laws can define individuals as normal functioning members of society or as criminals.  The issue of drug laws is used in the film and is an issue I’m passionate about because of my views on the role of government and its laws.  Cristi states many times throughout the film that the laws are changing soon concerning drug possession in Romania, but this information means nothing to his boss who views the law in its current state, not as it will change as his to enforce.  In my opinion drug addiction is a sickness of society and should be treated as such, drug addicts should not be prosecuted as criminals.  A clear contradiction between society’s laws and my own.  Overall, the film had a good story with a message I related to and the acting was wonderfully naturalistic, but the film was too slow paced for me and I often found myself wondering how much longer a shot could go on for.