Майор (original title)
IMDb: 7.3/10
1h 39min | Action,
Crime, Drama | Russia
Director: Yuriy
Bykov
Writer: Yuriy Bykov
Stars: Denis
Shvedov, Yuriy Bykov, Irina Nizina
In a car accident, a
policeman accidentally killed a child. The other cops are trying to hush up the
case to save themselves.
Black.
Like The Fool, from Bykov,
this film is also a comment on a society that appears to have a broken
system; both victim and victimizer are doomed. The system seems
unbreakable, the corruption and malpractice too engrained to change; the dereliction
of duty too synonymous with the duty itself for those involved to be able to
clearly distinguish between right and wrong.
The story takes us along with the
perpetrator attempting (one senses, like everything in the world of Bykov, that
his efforts will be in vain) to reverse the tide of the system – by doing
everything he can to bring himself to justice, thus going contrary to
what the system should endeavour to be doing anyway. Bykov portrays a system so
perverse and broken that black is white, and white is black, and that to prove
otherwise, you first have to agree to the above.
An expert comment on what Bykov considers a broken society.