Movies often build to that one moment of revelation or a final showdown. Police, Adjective builds up to a sit-down between three men engaged in a debate. A confrontation that is solved not by a shootout but rather with a dictionary.
Writer-director Corneliu Porumboiu’s films are delightfully idiosyncratic. He proposes questions and at the end he leaves us with more questions, yet not unsatisfied. His characters ponder and debate on actions and their consequences, but Porumboiu doesn’t take sides.
In Police, Adjective, adolescent Victor shares his hash with two of his friends, one of whom tells the police about it. Detective Cristi is given the case. Cristi feels that smoking hash is a misdemeanor, and while it’s a crime in Romania, he believe the law will be modified in the near future. Cristi chooses to observe three adolescents and find the supplier of the hash, someone Cristi can persecute.
The majority of the film involves Cristi tailing one of his suspects or standing outside the house of a suspect, waiting for him to re-emerge. All the glamor of detective work as portrayed in fiction is stripped away. And what is left are the mundane and empty hours. The camera follows Cristi as he walks around his gray Romanian town, passing block after block of derelict streets. The camera stays with Cristi as he stands by a concrete block outside Victor’s house, waiting, smoking. We watch, with Cristi, as a woman (probably the suspect’s maid) dusts a rug on the balcony.
There is a lot of waiting in the film, even outside of detective work, for a meeting with the boss, for the secretary to bring the dictionary, etc. The director lets the time stretch out, refusing to cut to the action. There is a statement here on how much of life is waiting for something or someone. But it’s hard to portray boredom on film without boring the audience. The first half of the film tests our patience, it could have used a much tighter editing and still made its point.
What saves the film and makes it worthy is the dialogue — raw and entertaining. So much character, wit and humor are packed into so few lines. For the Western audience, this type of direct talk is rather unusual and rude, the characters openly judgmental and lacking minimal courtesy. Yet their interactions and sarcasm are portrayed with a great sense of humor and warmth.
Eastern European movies often deal with the ghosts of the communist era, but Porumboiu is more interested in human interaction: he focuses on the perceptions and dilemmas of his characters. In his earlier film (12:08 East of Bucharest), a small town radio show – on the 15th anniversary of the fall of the communist regime – debates whether there was a revolution in their town. The answer would be yes, if the people of the town marched the streets before the communist leader Ceausescu abandoned his chair. In Police, Adjective, the question is more universal, the conflict between moral judgment and the law.
The brilliance of Porumboiu is in how he makes these absurd and seemingly outrageous characters a product of their time and place. While Porumboiu doesn’t directly talk about the woes of communism in either of his films, the aftereffects of the system are quite visible. The towns are poor, with old and squalid buildings, and cars, cell phones and computers from a different era. Beyond the economic condition, there is the abject state of mind of the people. They aren’t exactly pessimistic, but in the absence of nostalgia and lofty dreams, there is only a bleak acceptance of reality. The characters in 12:08 East of Bucharest and Police, Adjective don’t ask the big questions or attempt to better their lives or their community. Instead, they doggedly hold onto their tales, beliefs and opinions, repeating their words, arguing to support their stance.
Cristi investigates for days, in an attempt to find the supplier of the hash. His boss wants to arrest Victor and get the information through him. Something Cristi refuses to do, because he feels possession is a minor offense, not worth jailing the young man and ruining his life. The difference of opinion between Cristi and the Captain leads to the climatic argument about consciousness and law. An argument that breaks down to a matter of semiotics and definition. To prove his point, the Captain calls upon a Romanian dictionary for help, and meanwhile he makes the other detective jot down Cristi’s definition of “conscience” on the blackboard.
Porumboiu likes to put a third person in the midst of the debate. A character quite uninterested in the conversation or its outcome. But he is nevertheless stuck there, like the viewer, and he watches the long debate unfold. This person not only provides comic relief through his fidgeting and attempts at making peace, he also stands in for the apathy of the society at large.
Featuring excellent actors, subtle and skilled cinematography, and great humor, Police, Adjective is a fascinating watch, and worth enduring the sometimes-excruciating slowness of the first half.
