There's a wealth to be mined from "The Treasure"

In "Police, Adjective", a police investigator is tasked to follow, catch and question a boy who's suspected of smoking hashish (a dry weed). In lesser hands, such a story will probably be reduced to a series of tense cat-and-mouse chase sequences and brutal interrogations, highlighting just the spectacle of the story. In the hands of a more thoughtful filmmaker though, like Corneliu Porumboiu, such a seemingly simple story becomes a springboard for the exploration of the moral - and not just the legal - ramifications of one's job as a police officer. It becomes a question of the ethics of duty, responsibility and law. The same filmmaking inclinations can be said of "12:08 East of Bucharest": rather than focusing on the spectacle of a national revolution, Porumboiu turns his gaze on the question of the extent of actual participation of the masses in the revolution (in the film's context, it's in regards the city of Vaslui). It becomes a matter of the philosophy of revolution and of revolutionary tendencies and aspirations. In Porumboiu's latest film, "The Treasure" (2015, Romania;shown in the just-concluded Cinema One Originals Digital Film Festival), we get another deceptively simple set-up: three hardluck everymen go to an old and abandoned garden (belonging to the grandparents of one of them) in the hopes of digging up treasures believed to be long-buried in the place. 

Those of us uninitiated to Porumboiu's cinema or, for that matter, to the Romanian New Wave cinema might initially have the impression that the story will take the route of a "The Treasure of Sierra Madre"-like gold-hunting adventure. There's actually a long mid-section in the film that's entirely devoted, in a quintessentially Porumboiu fashion, to the three men (the neighbors Costi and Adrian and the metal-detector guy Cornel) unassailably detecting, searching and digging up for the maybe-there-or-maybe-not-there treasure, with the constant wooty sound of the round metal detector serving as an accompaniment and becoming a character in itself. But then, it's not something that's filled with exhilarating suspense and adventure, where someone might actually be double-crossing the other. The real tension here rests on the characters' moral resolve to find the thing that they're looking for. It's not a question of whether the actual treasure exists or not, but of how far the characters will abide by their belief and hope that they'll be able to get something out of their mission, no matter how futile and absurd it might turn out. So the dilemma here is something that closely resembles that of the optimistic knight Don Quixote. 

Closely, because they were finally able to unearth an actual "treasure" - in the form of vintage Mercedes stock certificates. Now, in regards this one, another issue comes to the fore, which is political in nature and has been hinted at already early on as the film progresses. The Romanian New Wave film movement is primarily a catalyst for the legacy of Nicolae Ceausescu's fallen communist regime (see, for example, the omnibus film "Tales from the Golden Age"). I don't profess to have a comprehensive knowledge of this particular chapter in Romanian history, but in "The Treasure", we see how the characters remark about how the communists supposedly buried treasures as the regime is about to end and how some treasures might really be of cultural heritage and thus belong to the state and how it's in fact a criminal offense if such dug-up items aren't reported to the officials. That part of the film wherein Costi and Adrian present to a couple of police authorities the box that they dug up, as they enlist the help of a thief (!) in opening it up, is replete with wry undertones of authoritarian imposition and citizen subjugation, as the camera remains fixed in medium shot on the entire setpiece. The set-up recalls the lengthy debate over the meaning of certain words by the end of "Police, Adjective" and the lengthy discussion in a televised news program by the end of "12:08 East of Bucharest". 

Yet, it turns out that the scene isn't actually the film's denouement. That specific part ties up with an earlier part in which Costi tells the story of Robin Hood to his son. Most probably as an outcome of the fact that the above-mentioned stock certificates have already been bought, Costi goes on a generous purchase of various jewelries at a jewelry store. We thought that it was nothing but pure materialistic indulgence on his part. But in the next scene, we see Costi showing the jewelries now placed in the dug-up box to a group of children, which includes his son, in a playground, apparently to foster the kids' belief that a treasure always literally refers to all things that glitter. In effect, he acted like a "modified" Robin Hood: he accumulated (rather than stole) wealth to make the children (in place of the poor) happy. Yet, something happens still out of this situation which will somewhat make us scratch our heads. 

Cinematographer Tudor Mircea's ("When Evening Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism") unobtrusive and observant camerawork and the complete absence of a soundtrack (that is, not until the closing credits) underline the film's wry and understated sensibilities. Like the best works of the Romanian New Wave, "The Treasure" shows how from a deceptively simple or an outwardly non-political situation, insights into man's moral complexities and snides against a country's political legacy can be mined. It was one of the best international films that I saw in this year's Cinema One Originals. 

Corneliu Porumboiu's "The Treasure" (Comoara): Finding what's hidden beneath - and more