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F.or years, actually for decades, Romanian filmmakers have warned us of official corruption from top to bottom in their homeland – an insidious malaise that undermines the state and infects the soul. The Death Of Mr Lazarescu (2005) by Cristi Puiu talks about the last hours of an old man transformed into an ordeal by the inefficiency and insensitivity of the hospital; Cristian Mungiu’s Graduation (2016) talks about a doctor asking for favors to correct his daughter’s exam results and Corneliu Porumboiu’s Police, Adjective (2009) talks about the bizarre bureaucratic slowness of a police station. Now documentary director Alexander Nanau has come up with something to prove that this wasn’t just mannerism or metaphor. It is based on disgusting facts.
Collective tells what happened after a terrible fire at the Colectiv nightclub in Bucharest in 2015 that killed 64 people. This was not simply official laxity in inspecting fire exits and building materials – most died later, not from injuries, but from hospital infections. A heroically harsh investigation conducted by Cătălin Tolontan, a reporter for a sports newspaper, Gazeta Sporturilor, proved that the disinfectant supplied to state hospitals was useless due to secretly dilution. It is at this stage of the film that you might think of Harry Lime and his penicillin racket in The Third Man. The resulting surplus of taxpayer money has filled the pockets of some individuals in what can only be called Romania’s pharmaceutical-government complex. Tolontan found that it was only part of the widespread corruption and gangsterism in Romania.
The film shows a parade of nauseating and bland government ministers attempting to dismiss the demands of Tolontan and others. Eventually a new broom at the health ministry, a certain Vlad Voiculescu (a former patient rights activist) is at least more understanding. “How the hell can this be solved?” at one point he gasps, faced with further evidence from a hospital informant. How really? Activists hoped that after the national emergency government that lasted a year after the Colectiv scandal, there would be a new generation of politicians committed to eradicating abuse. But it seems that the Tolontan campaign continues.
The cynicism and indifference to suffering are truly horrible, and a kind of insidious evil like carbon monoxide emerges from the screen, and a terrible sadness too.
There is a moment when I feel like hiding under my seat: when Tolontan and his colleagues are shown a covertly filmed video of worms wriggling in the wound of an incompletely clothed patient. If it were in a fictional film, the metaphor would be dismissed as too obvious. Finally, Tolontan and his team are shown discussing sinister communications they have had from the intelligence services, telling them to be careful, for the sake of their families.
The title itself has unbearably ironic echoes. In part, Collective talks about the macabre authoritarian habits that survived the fall of Ceausescu in Romania; in part it is about the big money to be made, in the style of Moscow, in the exploitation of national assets. It’s also a warning to us here about how appetizingly profitable a state healthcare system is for some type of well-connected entrepreneur whose impulse is to save money and make a profit.
• Collective is available on digital platforms from 20 November.
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