Just 6.5

What an incredible movie that refuses to be just an empty police thriller and indirectly addresses so many societal issues in the most elegant writing that acts as an conversational buddy in a dialectic of the ethics of law.

There were multiple interesting points that were getting unveiled one after the other, like peeling an onion.

The first point was incarcerating drug addicts. At the beginning of the movie the police raided a ghetto full of addicts, and I couldn't but feel that something unfair was happening. Even though there was a lot of drugs, it seemed like the people being raided were just... addicts. So, what is the agency of an addict? Is taking them to jail and ruining their future forever a good way of helping them cure the addiction? If we're thinking about non-individualistic societies, if we're thinking about communities where we're all interconnected and responsible of each other and our own lives, isn't choosing to do drugs and risk neglecting your society and your own self reason enough for the community to "punish" you? What should the punish be for that case? Will the punishment help you heal?

The second point was state oppression and prison violence. After the mass raid, they were stripping naked the prisoners all in the same hall and they were put in conditions that were subhuman. The way the main police protagonist was treating the drug dealer was really harsh. The way he used his power as a policeman to get confessions from people (probably illegally). I've really grown to normalize dehumanizing treatment of criminals to the point that I would see these scenes as something normal at first, it was striking how I was reminding myself that no human being's dignity should be taken away from them... Should we really accept that sort of dehumanization to other human beings, regardless of what they did? If I was a prison guard, wouldn't I be hurting my own humanity the most by allowing this dehumanization to happen to others? Are jails really an effective way to deal with criminals in our societies and help them rejoin society? Should we just abolish prisons? How would we deal with criminals then? Or are we just implementing prison systems wrong and the Norwegians figured out a way to make it work?

The third point was the conditions that create those drug dealers in the first place. Like the protagonist drug dealer mentioned, he came from a broken home of very difficult conditions like having to help raise 6 older siblings in a capitalist system that forgives no one. He then sells some drugs, but then got himself addicted to making money, exactly like every person in the capitalist system, like the Wall Street bankers and the Elon Musks and even the middle class. He then is jailed, gets out 2 years later, and the only viable business for him in society is to go back to selling drugs. Didn't we all create this criminal by not fighting enough against the oppressions of our systems? Is he a victim, oppressor, both or something more? Where's his own agency?

The forth point was the absurdity of the law itself. Getting an illegal confession from the ex-girlfriend by threatening her was just the start. There were lots of technical law absurdities, like when a police finds the drug but not the dealer. Or the HILARIOUS scene where the drug dealer accuses the police inspector of stealing 2kg of his drug and the judge is then forced to detain the inspector that not only caught the drug dealer, but refused huge bribes from him, demonstrating high ethics that weren't appreciated by the law. And yet, the police inspector had to prove his innocence and, wait for it, use the same prisoner as the drug dealer to get himself a phone to get out of the trouble!!! Woah, what a masterful writing to show the mechanics of the absurdity of laws. The same laws that dictates -- fairly, in this case -- that a drug dealer's family property is also confiscated because it was bought by drug money in the first place. What does the law mean? "No one's above the law" is absurd if the law is absurd. What's the goal of the law then?

The fifth point was the death sentence. 30 grams or 30kgs, the sentence is the same. Ufff, what an arbitrary number that. Do I really want people to be hanged for their crimes? People who hold 30g? What about the people who destroyed lives of thousands? What about the people who by creating drug addicts, created at the same time other forms of violence like an addict dad raping his own child? Would I really not be okay to hang them? Is it fair that a community wants hanging for a member that betrayed every single person in the community, like now in Gaza with the traitors?

The sixth point: if all this law, state enforcement and prison system didn't help stop the number of addicts growing 5x in the last 10 years, is the system really working? Should we, like the main protagonist, accept that that's a failed system and resign? Or should we think that it really was going to be 20 million if it wasn't for all this? What do we do to stop millions of new addicts to join the ranks of the drug society, the same society we all live in? This 6th point to me is the most important and most urgent, it's so important it almost needs to be the 6.5.