The 50 best films of 2020 in the US: No 3 – Collective
This absorbing, harrowing documentary from the Romanian director Alexander Nanau shines a spotlight on an awful episode in the country’s recent history: a nightclub fire in 2015 that claimed 64 lives, many of them as a result of bacterial infections while they were being treated in hospital for their burns. The ensuing scandal exposed a seam of corruption and gangsterism among the medical authorities and brought down the government.
The bare details of what happened pack a hell of a punch. In the first few minutes of the film, we see footage from inside the club as the blaze takes hold: onstage fireworks ignite wall panels during the live set of an angry metal band called Goodbye to Gravity. As realisation dawns on the band, and audience panic sets in, there’s a frantic scramble for the exit in a near-identical manner to the 2003 Station nightclub fire in Rhode Island that claimed even more lives.
Nanau’s film, however, really picks up some time later, after questions emerge as to why so many victims died of hospital-borne infections. A team of journalists from the sports paper Gazeta Sporturilor, led by Cătălin Tolontan and Mirela Neag, are the focus, as they interview whistleblowers, amass documentation, take surreptitious photographs and get awkward with government spokespeople. The journalists’ doggedness gets results, and it’s an absorbing record of how and where investigation really happens: on meandering phone calls, in badly lit meeting rooms and – crucially – tapping away at computers.
This kind of activity, of course, is not vivid enough for feature-film depictions of journalism – and what’s more, a conventional rendering of all this would climax with the scalp of the country’s health minister, who abruptly resigns when the dimensions of the scandal – including the corrupt purchase of illegally diluted cleaning fluid – emerge. But the domino effect of the revelations creates its own momentum, meaning the story rolls on in expected ways, heading into sinister territory and excavating a toxic reservoir that would appear to infect wider society.
A narrative as powerful as this would be enough for any documentary, but what marks Collective out as truly exceptional is the way it quietly mutates halfway through: the focus shifts from the journalists to the newbroom health minister Vlad Voiculescu, a former patients-rights activist, as he attempts to grapple with the disaster. Voiculescu is part of a technocratic cabinet, with no specific political affiliation, and the film presents him very much in that light: a fresh-faced campaigner of noble intentions who has to wise up fast in the face of bureaucratic hostility and orchestrated media attacks.
What Collective does so impressively is show how investigation, regulation and reform are never ends in themselves: they are all part of a continuing effort against moving targets – meaning the story never really ends. Whatever triumphs the film records, there is always the likelihood of trouble ahead – and this is a takeaway for every democratic society, not just post-communist ones. It’s a message we have to heed.
It’s an absorbing record of how and where investigation really happens