The Grasp of the State

A documentary as a tool for articulating civil despair and disillusionment? Why not. Unfortunately, a similar thing can be done with much greater elegance and formal bravura than that offered by the author's ugly voice and microphone sticking into the camera. The film gives the impression of a high school exercise, the result of which is not so much authenticity as sometimes being annoyingly unkempt. Even so, I rate The Grasp of the State quite high. The fact that many people blame the author for stupidity, one-sidedness, etc., cannot be taken completely seriously. Piussi examines self-promo, performance, the campaign, or the effort of the "power" to communicate with citizens, and vice versa - citizens trying to communicate in an organized manner with "state power". She does a very good job of it also because she does not take committed positions and depicts supposed "non-power" individuals intoxicated by power (the passages from anti-gorilla meetings are extremely stimulating for analyzing the impossibility of an authentic egalitarian movement). The resulting impression is not a cheaply directed "Moore" indignation, but rather a farce from which the crisis of communication and the emptiness of words and deeds that engulfed the local parliamentary democracy really stick out. It is a mistake to ask a documentary filmmaker for objectivity and in-depth analysis - rather, it shows how much we want someone to think and formulate for us. Piussi filmed ugly material that offers plenty of food for thought. If, in turn, it ends only with angry condemnations of "limited subjective documentary filmmaker", or enthusiastic proclamations of the "event of the year", it only indicates that the author's despair is justified at its core. (01/02/2013)