Z

Constantin Costa-Gavras crafts a masterpiece of political cinema with Z (1969). Based on Vassilis Vassilikos's fictionalized account of a right-wing assassination in 1960s Greece, it's a starkly realistic, disturbing look at a country's descent into dictatorship.

Greece, 1963. (The location is never explicitly stated but it's rather obvious.) The leader of the Parliamentary opposition (Yves Montand) holds a rally to protest the right-wing government's hardline militarism and repression of demonstrators. The Deputy is mortally wounded in a strange incident involving a speeding three-wheeler driven by a pair of losers (Renato Salvatori and Marcel Bozzuffi). At first it seems like an accident, but as the local magistrate (Jean-Louis Trintigant) sifts through the evidence, he realizes the evidence doesn't add up. It soon becomes apparent that the Deputy's death was a murder, and that it involves a conspiracy reaching into the highest levels of government.

In the bitter aftermath of Watergate, Vietnam and a decade of assassinations, Hollywood churned out tons of conspiracy movies, replete with an all-seeing, perfidious government coldly murdering citizens who challenged the status quo and searched for its secrets. Aside from All the President's Men, few achieved anything like realism, viewing Richard Nixon's low-level thuggery as emblematic of a corrupt, repressive, improbably-efficient fascist state. Films like The Parallax View and Three Days of the Condor are cartoonish fantasies, no more realistic than The X-Files, capturing the paranoid zeitgeist rather than reality of their time. Post-9/11 fears of globalization, terrorism, warrantless wiretapping and corporate perfidy and have made the genre "relevant" again, with the same tricks and tropes trotted out (Michael Clayton, The International).

Based on a true incident, Z stands head-and-shoulders above its Hollywood counterparts. While American liberals imagined a repressive police state, Greeks were actually living it. As a small country on the front lines of the Cold War, Greece could hardly afford to remain ideological neutral in the struggle against Communism. Aided and abetted by our government, the Greek military took power in 1967, establishing one of the most repressive regimes this side of the Iron Curtain.

The portrait of government conspiracy here is chillingly plausible. The opening sets the tone: an agricultural briefing on mildew is directly compared to "insidious" Communist influences, and one individual blames hippies and leftists for an increase in solar flares! The government claims to be "neutral" and above politics but their vitriol and apocalyptic rhetoric are directed at the Left, accompanied on occasion by active repression. The police doesn't hire super-efficient assassins to silence dissent, but low-level street thugs with a high failure rate. The overall sloppiness of the government most striking; the conspiracy is really transparent and obvious, and yet it seems unstoppable.

Costa-Gavras doesn't obtain the documentary objectivity of Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers: it's obvious where his sympathies lie, and he stacks the dramatic deck against his antagonists, who are delusional blowhards ("Dreyfus was guilty!") or, presaging Oliver Stone's JFK, a scummy homosexual. But lack of objectivity is hardly a flaw in this case, especially with the message made so forcefully. It's a remarkably angry film, undercutting its triumphant climax with a chillingly subversive coda, showing justice coming to naught. In a cruel irony, bringing down one oppressive government merely serves to bring a far worse one to power.

Costa-Gavras's direction is modest but effective, making excellent use of imagery and Francoise Bonnot's editing. There are a few action scenes but they're well-integrated into the story. The film's atmosphere isn't so much dark and sinister as uncertain and foreboding; it obtains an admirable degree of clinical realism. Mikis Theodorakis's score is another highlight.

Yves Montand and Irene Pappas (The Guns of Navarone) get top-billing for what amount to extended cameos. Montand makes a strong impression, but Pappas is reduced to meaningful glances and ambiguous flashbacks. Jean-Lous Trintigant (Is Paris Burning?) gets the best role, as the impartial investigator driven to find the truth. Jacques Perrin gets a nice role as an inquisitive journalist. An interesting collection of actors plays government officials and thugs, with Francois Perrier, Pierre Dux and Renato Salvatori (Burn!) among them.

Z is one of the best films of the 1960's, and a truly remarkable example of political cinema. Forceful, angry and powerful, it retains its power when many of its peers and imitators have faded into anachronism.