Police, Adjective (2009)

For some reason, our cultural history is filled with books, films, and TV shows that are focused on procedure and the process of data analysis. Who doesn't like reading a good mystery novel? Everyone loves a good hardboiled film noir. CSI and it's various incarnations and imitators are among the most popular shows on television. Police, Adjective, Romanian director Corneliu Porumboiu's second film, is about procedure and analysis, but it doesn't fit quite nicely in with this history of mysteries and crime dramas.

Instead, Police, Adjective is an analysis of the words and terminology that we use to define and make sense of these mysteries and the ultimate power that they hold. In fact, the crime in the movie is no mystery. In the very first scene we are shown our protagonist, a policeman named Cristi (Dragoş Bucur), following his suspect as he smokes hash. He is expected by his superiors to arrest the teenager for the intent to distribute, but Cristi second thoughts. The crime that the teenager will be put to jail for is an outdated law that has since become abolished everywhere else in Europe, and Cristi doesn't want to have the thought of ruining this kid's life on his conscience.

But laws are laws no matter how we dice it, and as a policeman it is supposed to be his duty to uphold the letter of the law. Right? Well, yes if we're going by the strictest definition of "police." But through the film the integrity of these words are picked apart. After a hard day of following around a hash smoking teenager, Cristi comes home to his wife listening to a Romanian pop ballad on the Internet over and over again. Over his dinner and after a few beers, Cristi begins to pick apart the banality of the schmaltzy lyrics: "What is a field without a flower? / What is the sea without the sun?" To Cristi, it's completely nonsensical, all of these things are still what they are without their accessory!

That scene, along with many others in the film, is all done within the confines of a long, continuous shot that conjures up a sense of surveillance, as if the audience is patiently waiting and watching Cristi while he does the same. Certainly a sentiment that holds some resonance for the native Romanian audience as they lived within their own real-life police state just over 20 years ago under Nicolae Ceauşescu; one that certainly established and asserted it's authority not only with brute force but also with the power of words via the law.

In the film's most remarkable scene, Cristi stands up to his superior as he refuses to go through with the arrest. In response, his superior belittles him by having him look up the definitions of words such as "law" and "police" in order to destroy his argument in the very same manner that he had earlier done to the pop song. It does nothing to clear his conscience, and in the end he must choose between what he feels is right or bow to the power of language.