7th entry for 13th Nov.

I’m still looking forward that next philosopher to learn of, since I was ill this week and I didn’t feel suitable to attend the lecture on Tuesday.

However, I happened to get a Cannes-award-winning film from Romania. The title is Police, Adjective. English is a bit unfortunate language to give an exact translation for the title though, since in Romanian, the noun form means “policeman” instead of “police”.

The film would be quite miserable for the casual watcher. The plot is, there’s a young policeman, Christi, pursuing kids smoking weed, and is ordered to find out where is that coming from, but it turns out there’s no local dealer, so the kid supplying the other two is to be arrested and sentenced to a few years of jail. That’s what Christi’s conscience refuses to support (he’d better like to wait for one of his other suspects), and he ends up in confrontation with his seniors.

The film has real-time scenes, which can make one from the vicinity (from Hungary, for example) a little bored, there’s nothing romantic for us in seeing panel-buildings or their obsolete interiors minutes after minutes. The camera tends not to move, only turn, and there’s no music except when characters listen to it.

After all, it’s all about how obsolete the country is (we see Christi pursuing subjects as a detective, observing a house for hours, all on foot), and how frighteningly this obsolescence is stuck in the heads as well.

In the end, after a long discussion with the captain, he has no choice but agreeing the sting operation and putting the kid in jail, case closed - no reasonable or happy endings in Eastern Europe. Some critic said it's the "greatest Hungarian film" lately. He meant this film is not strictly about Romania.