The boy prosecutor and the Indian rope Tudor Giurgiu’s original intent was to meticulously recount the events of the 2002 corruption scandal in the Romanian government following the (suicide) murder of 29-year-old prosecutor Christian Panait. But there were so many facts that it was impossible to combine them in a two-hour tape. And instead of a tough political thriller, Giurgiou focused on re-creating the psychological portrait of Panath, the feelings and thoughts that plagued the servant of the law in his fateful days.
The director minimally changes the names of the main participants in the events that stirred the country and leaves unchanged the positions, names of cities and institutions, as if alluding to possible differences only in the characters of Christian Panduru and his prototype Panaita, as well as Panduru’s colleague Bogdan Lek and his prototype Alexandru Lele. The latter managed to sue the son of a sponsor of the ruling party for smuggling fuel, for which he was sent to Panduru, an ambitious and uncompromising expert of laws who had already gained fame in cases against deputies and judges. Leka turns out not to be a badass and invites to record the process of searching the employees of the local TV channel - so the Romanian people looked live under the carpet of criminal and political battles.
After an unsuccessful search, the main conflict of the position of the young prosecutor opens up to the viewer. The psychological pressure of the authorities is intensifying, up to the hysteria of large ranks, and there is no real evidence of Lek’s guilt. Interrogations, endless screenings of the search video, and even the not-so-legal use of intelligence data turn out to be the corners of a dark room for Panduru, from which Lek’s black cat of guilt must be kicked out, while the authorities keep screaming at the door. Actor Emilian Oprea perfectly managed to convey the growing anxiety of his character, reaching, according to bosses, to paranoia (Panait was recognized as schizophrenic).
Realizing that he does not support the shared version of events, Giurgiu shot his film secretly from the media (!), and after the release of the film received in his country a lot of reviews, which can not be called constructive criticism. At the same time, the main idea of the film is as far from the tricks of ministers of a peripheral European country as Romania is from India. It is the focus of the Indian fakirs with a rope vertically directed into the clear sky, along which a thin boy climbs to the sounds of a sound, that serves, perhaps, as the best metaphor for the meaning of a career in modern society. Codrea, the chief of Panduru, mentions this trick, explaining to the ward how the world works. Sometimes it happens that the boy falls, the rope crumbles into small pieces, and astonished spectators look in horror at the bloody remains. To the eternal question inscribed in the title of the film, Panduru receives a detailed answer: he was chosen for the role of a boy because he is super-ambitious.
Perhaps, when a boy thinks that the rope will run out sooner or later, he may despair at the thought that to move up he will have to grasp the void (to which the rope itself is attached). The image of a rope sticking out of the ground is like the laws of human society - a rope is as material as a book with a criminal code. But the fakir continues to play - and where, according to visible laws, it is already time to stop, the boy is climbing up, going beyond the rules - fortunately, few people look at the rope itself, fascinated by the actor and the play of the fakir performed by modern media. If you stop like Pandur, the rope will crumble, bringing the whole code of laws down on your head.
It is interesting that the claims of Western European and American critics to the film concerned only issues of effectivity – the film lacks beautiful landscapes (!), this is not a thriller with a strong protagonist and, in general, but where is the Eastern European brand of absurdism “kafka”? Seeing a thoughtful psychological picture of the structure of power, film critics found no mirrors of their governments. The French president single-handedly trampled the two-hundred-year-old civil code with the oxymoron of "same-sex marriage," otherwise he would have long been a political corpse. That’s only the Western fakirs hide in the shadows, and do not sell stolen gasoline.
9 out of 10
Original