Z (Costa-Gavras, 1969)
அ and I watched Z by Costa-Gavras the other day and it helped us vicariously riot. (Of course, we’ve since been reflecting upon the fact that our own activism is circumscribed not just by the state but also by our own willingness to tolerate actual physical discomfort outside the comfort of our sofa or the movie theatre.)
Z is a fine polemic. Right from the pointed on-screen disclaimer to the crushing epilogue, Gavras repeatedly blunts and sharpens his own idealism until all that is left is something so fragile but so easily combustible. A cinema vérité style combined with something more iconographic, Hollywood-like (reminded me of Tony Scott’s Crimson Tide!) results in an urgent thriller that feels real and staged at the same time. But the urgency is not just stylistic.
Despite an unequivocal stance against an authoritarian-military rule, Gavras feels no need to articulate the ‘merits of the left’. He has no time to sit about twiddling with the various dials of political theory. The fact of political murder is enough to galvanise him into action with a single priority: depose these evil men at once.
There’s no time to indulge in a self-righteous monologue that plagues so many contemporary films (see The Post, Running Man, or the Ayushman Khurana multiverse of idealism). Liberal films of today function as PSAs proceeding gingerly towards their thesis afraid to offend yet eager to entertain. In pursuit of an ‘airtight’ argument and desperate to appear infallible, such films appear smug and entitled to power. And crucially they miss out on an often forgotten premise of democracy: that as much as parties can be elected, power can also be voted out. Gavras’ emphasis on the latter is the sole reason Z works as a polemic. Because all Z is interested in, is the abuse of power, and the murder of a political opponent is enough of a catalyst to ignite public consciousness.
That the movie (and real life events) proceeds to dismantle the state with the tools of the state (bureaucracy, courts, civil servants, and witness’) reveals that the issue isn’t a matter of institutions, but the simultaneous complacence and incompetence of those that inhabit it. We have the bones, but the flesh is rotten.
My one gripe with Z is that it’s a bit too neat. The state is cartoonishly evil and the good guys brim with idealism. Adaptations are almost always abbreviated: events are smoothed out, made linear; clarity of purpose (good or evil) replaces conflict, confusion; and the work of countless principled citizens are summarily rolled up into key actors, righteous heroes. The screen just cannot capture reality in full resolution. But sometimes all one needs is a story as pointed and fiery as this to light a fire up one’s ass.