By Arun Kumar
Featured in IMDb Critic Reviews
Corneliu Porombiu makes satirical
social drama on the stonewalling, soulless bureaucratic policies of Romanian
authority. Through his characters’ indifference, he subtly notes at the
relationship existing between Romania’s modern authority and the nation’s past
repressive ‘police state’. But, even if we aren’t aware of Romania’s
oppressive post-World War II history, we can connect with the situation, since
bureaucratic blockades and close-minded thinking are universal in nature.
Despite fixing on to a particular issue to satirize, the writer/director allows
his character and their conversations to evolve in an organic manner. There’s
no didactism and the character’s emotional intelligence isn’t used to stir the
dramatics. Nothing seems to happen in the narrative, but with a subsequent
viewing, each word uttered by the character seems to offer profound meaning
about the ‘State’s’ rigid control over language and law. Cinema’s
typical meaning about ‘procedural’ changes in the couple of sequences,
when the camera looks down on the report typed by Cristi after a humdrum
surveillance. It clearly shows how the attention is given to language and the
words used; not to personal deduction or actions.
Featured in IMDb Critic Reviews
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| Police, Adjective (2016) - By Corneliu Porumboiu |
‘Police’
is only a noun or a verb. However, it is employed in adjective form to either
denote police procedural where mysteries are solved through detective’s
ingenuity or to address a police state. The lead police character in Romanian
film-maker Corneliu Porumboiu’s “Police, Adjective” [aka
‘Politist, adjectiv’, 2009] stays true to the adjective form. But, not the
kind of ‘adjective’ form we usually watch in on-screen police procedural. There
are no hard punches, gun pulling and big twists. What we see is definitely a ‘procedure’,
which is as mundane as our drab office jobs. And, within that routine work
there raises a central conflict for our protagonist, between submitting to rule
of law and his own moral law. The word play in the title is also an indication
that this film is more about linguistics and one’s interpretation of words
rather than about ingenious deduction. “Police, Adjective” might be small in
scope or scale, but it conveys what it wants to through precise and a little
exhausting visual language. The trademark dry comedy of the Romanian New Wave
is put to perfect use to comment on the nature of policing and the inherent
partition between justice and law. Winner of 2009 ‘Un Certain Regard’ price
at Cannes, the film’s static shots, slow pace and absence of narrative
motivation would make many declare it as ‘very boring’, but with abundance of
patience, we can get some food for thought, if only we pierce through that drab
narrative surface.
Our Rating: 8.0
IMDb Ratings: 7.1
IMDb Ratings: 7.1
Genre: Comedy | Crime | Drama
Cast: Dragos Bucur, Vlad Ivanov, Ion Stoica
Country: Romania
Language: Romanian
Runtime: 113 min
Color: Color
“Police, Adjective” opens
in some dingy corner of Bucharest city. A young student is on his way to school
and a man, who happens to be a detective named Cristi (Dragos Bucur). The boy
smokes, and once finished with it, he throws it down. Cristi rushes through,
picks it up, and checks. Once he finished following the boy to high-school,
Cristi returns to white-grey painted office, riddled with rusty bureaus, dusty
files, and old desktop. He reports to the prosecutor about tailing the boy. The
boy named Victor, now and then, smokes a bit of hashish (or joint) with his friend
Alex and a girl, near the school playground. Alex have squealed (or denounced)
his friend Victor, stating Victor’s brother is the dealer of hashish. Cristi
has been following Victor for a week but there is nothing to confirm that
either he or his brother is the dealer. Cristi also wonders why Alex would
denounce his friend (it might be because of the girl, he says in his report to
the prosecutor). Most importantly, Cristi doesn’t want to arrest the boy for
just smoking a joint with his friends in public, especially when there is no
evidence of the boy distributing the drug. Unlike, other European countries,
there’s strict law on smoking joint in the public and the boy may get up to
three-and-a-half to seven year jail term. Cristi’s supervisors aren’t hanging
to those moral obligations. They just expect Cristi to think in terms of formal
law and be a policeman.
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| A Still from Police, Adjective |
There’s a very naturalistic approach
taken to stage the subject matter, consisting of static and slowly crawling
shots. From the very first shot, the director is keen on showing us Cristi’s
life, which is anything but exciting. The pretty dull trailing, the tiresome
one-man surveillance, the boring talks with officials, long detailed reports,
exhausting red tapes are totally different from the life of a cop we expect to
see on-screen. The shot compositions keep out Cristi, while he is looking at
teenagers going on about their habitual smoking and then he is kept at an edge,
as he wordlessly follow them from some distance (keeps one or two person between
him and the target). The routines are precisely staged to makes us note the
time dedicated to such a simple case about kids smoking a joint (the typical
rhetoric provided is that it is thorough police work). There are also no
visible transitions to Cristi’s character. The transition that happens at the
very end is also so subtle (explaining the ‘sting’ through the diagram
and a flat voice is one of the masterful decision made by the director).
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| A Still from Police, Adjective |
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| A Still from Police, Adjective |
In one scene, we see Cristi arguing with his
intelligent wife Anca about a band’s song. To which, she explains the use of
images and concepts of abstract thinking, symbolism, etc. Later, in another
conversation Anca points out grammar in Cristi’s report is out-of-date, changed
recently by Romanian academy. The understanding of these two scenes plays a
vital role in the final showdown with between Cristi and his boss (a fantastic
Vlad Ivanov) with the Romanian dictionary. Without raising their voices, they
make a striking argument. In the end, we are left to think about how the use of
language, its interpretations and the perception of law is intricately linked.
The details of crime and the relevance of justice become secondary; the
communication of written law becomes the predominating aspect. Furthermore, the
conversations make us wonder that if there is an academy to change out-dated
words, why aren’t there changes to out-dated laws? Director Porumboiu’s also
taps on to our inherent dilemma in choose over emotional or intellectual
deliberations. Nevertheless, the trouble for a viewer would be find a space to
clearly interpret its themes and come to a understanding, within a narrative
that is more or less occupied with monotonous procedures (or what looks like
casual talks). In movies like this, it is hard to convey tedium without coming
closer to pass on the ennui upon viewers. “Police, Adjective” doesn’t
cross the line to become totally tedious, but the exhausting procedure could
affect the viewers’ desire to interpret. A second viewing helped me to pass
through the little visual obstacles to grasp the aforementioned simple statement,
the film wants to make.
“Police, Adjective” (115 minutes) is all about the language, used by a grumbling system to oppress and keep in line the people, afflicted by set of moral obligations. A meaningful cinema with a conscience.
“Police, Adjective” (115 minutes) is all about the language, used by a grumbling system to oppress and keep in line the people, afflicted by set of moral obligations. A meaningful cinema with a conscience.
About Author -
Arun Kumar is an ardent cinephile, who finds solace by exploring and learning from the unique works of the cinematic art. He believes in the shared-dream experience of cinema and tries to share those thoughts in the best possible way. He blogs at Passion for Movies and 'Creofire'.
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