Z 1969

When it's threatened by a budding resistance movement, a visibly panicked military government begins pulling dirty tricks and punching below the belt. Chief among their concerns is an upcoming rally by the opposition, which is subsequently sabotaged and co-opted in a number of plausibly-deniable ways. Things get hairy when their agents go too far, killing the keynote speaker before a mob of protestors, and the ensuing cover-up attempts unravel under closer scrutiny. The story's real driving force is Trintignant, an examining magistrate, who enters the scene as a legal advisor to the establishment but grows more concerned and vigilant as his investigation uncovers such arrogant, clumsy, widespread corruption. Like he's gone out for a bit of gardening, turned over an innocuous stone and found it teeming with maggots. He's surprised, then diligent, then increasingly angry and vengeful, disregarding threats and commands from higher-ups as he pushes for lawful justice on an imbalanced playing field.

The acting can be amateurish, the filming techniques low-budget and dated, the dialogue rapid to the point of exhaustion (keeping up with the subtitles is often a tall order), but in a way, many of those shortcomings actually lend validity and ground-level meaning to the film. This isn't a polished, dumbed-down, all-audiences interpretation of an idea; it's a raw, passionate cry of rage and indignant frustration. Its depiction of the means and methods a ruling class employs, to skirt its own rules and retain power without tipping its hand, is chilling in its clinical efficiency and all too relatable. Even the "happy ending" is soured by a reality-check epilogue that always felt inevitable. And this isn't just a hypothetical; Z has way too much in common with the Greek coup d'etat of a few years prior to be a mere coincidence.

A stirring, rousing, crushing bit of intrigue that makes no bones about its message and still, maddeningly, resonates fifty years later. Some things, apparently, never really change.