Review of Police, Adjective (2010) by Daniel K — 26 Apr 2010

4: Fascinating and terribly surprising despite the fact that it wasn't that far off of what I expected. The New Yorker's David Denby was right on the money when he called it "a very, very dry Romanian Martini--so dry that, at first, one doesn't quite taste much of anything".

I don't entirely agree with the second half of that statement though. Oddly enough, the film made me think of Hitchcock more than anything else. I suppose it also reminded me of Antonioni's Blow-Up, or other 60's Antonioni films for that matter, although I'm not sure everyone would make the connection.

It kept me on the edge of my seat partially because the seeming lack of anything significant seemed to demand that the audience was missing something. How could this police officer really just be following around the teenage boy that smokes a bit of marijuana for 8+ boys? Something else must be going on.

Right? Right, but it isn't what we think. What's going on is that Porumboiu, the writer and director, is delving deep into the weeds of the police procedural, in a way Hollywood never has, in order to reveal deeper meaning.

This deeper meaning ends up hinging on the use, meaning, and definition of language and how one's understanding of language can lead one along widely divergent paths. The analysis of language ends up to be as deadly serious as the rest of the film.

There are a few lighthearted moments, usually involving the cop protagonist and his partner or spouse/girlfriend, but on the whole the film is laser-focused on the nitty gritty of cop work. It is so simple and slow, and yet so riveting, that one wonders what the rest of world is up to when they rush around willy nilly and cut, cut, cut.

The takes here are incredibly long. The camera is extremely stationary. There is no score. The atmosphere and environment is devoid of any sort of beauty. It reads like a documentary if not for the thrills I got out of practically every scene.

The quiet and seeming mundanity of the proceedings left me practically breathless and quite unnerved. This is what made me think of Hitchcock. The sense of anticipation and almost dread. The continuous searching for something that may or may not be there is what made me think of Antonioni films like Blow-Up and L'Avventura.

It also obviously flows from other great recent Romanian films like The Death of Mr. Lazarescu and 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 days. It was in some ways the quintessential police procedural and in other ways its antithesis.

I understand why so many people walked out of the Bear Tooth theater, but I couldn't have imagined doing so. I was quite impressed that my date seemed to enjoy it as much as she did, although she was obviously less rapturous than me.

I'd say that more than most pictures out there, this is a film made for lovers of film. It's designed for academics and the kind of people that enjoy a good dialectical discussion, which is what forms the centerpiece of the picture here.

We knew the film was building to some kind of reckoning or twist, but few could possibly have realized it would revolve around a philosophical debate over elements of language like adjectives and nouns.

Who exactly is being policed here? What is Porumboiu saying about the Romanian state and culture? Specificity like this is how one is able to approach the universal, not the other way around as most of the world's filmmakers would have us believe.

Watching brilliant work like this is what makes watching the rest of the drivel released by everyone the world over, but inspired by the worst elements of Hollywood, so painful. To top it all off, the ending is just as brave and unconventional as the rest of the picture.

Instead of showing us the one possible "action" scene in the picture, Porumboiu simply leaves us hanging and forces us into even deeper contemplation of what we just witnessed. I think he knows exactly what he's doing and despite the seriousness of the film's tone, knows how to play a damn good joke on the audience.

Dialectic indeed. I wouldn't necessarily recommend this to many people and I'm a bit surprised I'm giving it a 4, but I think it is indeed worthy.