Corneliu Porumboiu is the writer and director of the Romanian film Police, Adjective. While he was in Los Angeles for AFI Fest, I was able to spend some time with him talking about the film. Also present was Corina Suteu, Director of the Romanian Cultural Institute in New York, to help as needed with translation. Most of the interview was in English, but occasionally some translation was needed or Ms. Suteu would add clarifying comments.

DM: You and other Romanian directors whose films have made it to the US all have a very strong sense of realism. Could you comment a bit about how realism drives your work and the work of Romanian filmmakers in general?

CP: I think all of us, we grew up in a period when cinema was a propaganda tool. So this reaction is a visceral one. We are interested in Romania today and what is happening today. At the same time I think all of us make stories about people we know—about daily life. So I think we have a common taste and common problematic. From here is coming this kind of realism.

DM: While much of the film is police procedural, it becomes more philosophic, dealing with questions of "law," and "justice." How do you see the relationship between law and justice?

CP: Law is supposed to mean justice, but it's not like that every time. [Then, by way of translator:] The relationship between the individual and society is based on more than just the rules we establish. There is something behind them, which is common values that we and our conscience use, that really rules the kinds of choices that we make. And this is what I see being the relationship between law and justice. Justice is something very much related to the human being. Law should be also, but this is not always the case.

DM: Cristi [the police officer in the story] has some strong ideals and sense of morality. He has conscientious objections to what he is doing. Is there a sense in which questions of conscience are perhaps a post-Communist luxury? Does the film reflect a struggle in Romania over how to deal with conscience?

CP: Of course it's a guide while he is living in a world that is in transition and he's trying to find out his own way of being in a society and he's trying to define his own conscience. But at the same time he's living in a world where the definitions are the way that they are. If you want, it's the struggle of him, he has the good sense—a sense of good will, if you want, but at the end he became like the others.

DM: In the press notes, you say, "Behind the words, there's the dictionary; in the past, behind the words there was God, but that's a world my characters no longer have access to." Do you think religion clarifies issues of conscience or makes that more complicated?

CP: I think religion has given us a common consciousness and a way of being that clarifies in a way—to accept the other and to understand the other. So, yeah, for me it builds a conscience—a law if you want—a certain kind of law.

Continue: 1 2