A noticeable change in Law and Order is that we’re no longer confined to a single place, as we follow police around Kansas City, Missouri. I don’t view it as entirely either a study of the police as an institution or of the city where it’s filmed. Like Titicut Follies, the cops sometimes look as bad as the guards did there, and many times they can seem anywhere from ineffective to extremely nice. We can find much behavior to object to, and much to appreciate.
A point that seems to be asserted is that problems larger than what can cops can solve come up with regularity. Wiseman seems especially sensitive to bringing the bigger world in, so it’s not just how is a cop handling a criminal or a citizen in trouble. We can still watch at the level of judging police performance, but so often that seems like just one way to respond to what we’re watching. Also, references to other institutions come up a lot, from juvenile courts to hospitals to judges, as if it’s difficult to identify who can handle the difficult issues we’re encountering.
Most of Law and Order looks filmed in a poor largely black area of Kansas City, and the interactions are mainly between white cops and members of the black community. A number are juveniles clearly doing bad things - such as stealing cars and carrying guns to attempted robberies. The cops can treat them badly, even though they know they are being filmed, which means they’re ok about being shown doing what they do. Lots of situations they deal with sympathetically. I think our mindset shifts away from judgement of the institution, to what comes out of these encounters in which both sides seem caught. The “institution” is not only the police, but also what are some of the frustrations, problems, and conflicts of living in this place in America.
Like Titicut Follies, Law and Order has a number of situations which suggest that there are real problems in the world which require some sort of institutional response - that the institutions are necessary however we might feel about how well they are doing their job. In a clear echo of the child molester first interviewed at the start of Titicut Follies, at the beginning here we see a police officer interrogating a man charged with beating a boy, hitting him with a gun, and sexually assaulting him. This is followed with a second case where a legal guardian is reporting on a nine-year old girl being sexually assaulted. Here too, then, what we get from this is that these are serious problems that require some kind of institutional response. Say what you will about the police, we want someone who will deal with cases like these.
A trademark becoming evident is Wiseman’s interest in monolog scenes, a person sometimes appearing to be talking as much to themselves as to other people, or speaking a long time on the phone while we only hear one side of the conversation. Maybe it’s the Shelley Berman or Bob Newhart tradition, but whether somewhat comic, rueful, ironic, frustrating, or plain sad, watching someone speak at length is a regular feature. A good one comes very early, where a woman speaks on the phone lamenting her being taken to the police station. She’s not as far gone as the poor fellows in Titicut Follies talking to themselves, but her combination of frustration and ironic repetition certainly rings a recognizable bell. The language repetition here, and in the final scene of the man who is losing custody of his child who repeats his predicament over and over again, feels already like Wiseman notices and presents to us. It’s Wiseman echoing Samuel Beckett in real life, a theme I’ll likely return to.
He may not go out of his way to do it, but Wiseman includes scenes that might intentionally upset preconceptions about the institution at hand. Here it would be scenes like the efforts a cop takes to get ninety cents change back for a woman being overcharged by a cab driver. Another would be an officer taking a lost or abandoned child back to the station and buying her candy. Their efforts are sustained and genuine, and while both have a sadness to it, the officers’ sincere efforts make a mark. Even in bad places or looking at unsympathetic institutions, there are still good works possible - children to save or people who deserve their change back.
The TV show Cops didn’t start until 20 years after this film, and now has over a thousand episodes and a bunch of imitators, and it’s clear already here that much interesting material can come from encounters between the police and the public. Wiseman’s particular inclination veers toward the situations which reverberate beyond the simplistic. There are no police chases in the film (very unlike Cops episodes) and one never feels that a visual side is taken. Sometimes the cops themselves are barely visible, almost like institutional bureaucrats witnessing the behavior of their customers. Wiseman’s appreciation of language is especially acute, and the big moments can be when someone makes a point that feels deeply philosophical. As happens in Wiseman films often, a situation that starts out either routine or humorous can have deeper reverberations. In a scene where the police are helping a drunk man off the ground, following a fairly funny routine with two neighborhood women bystanders over what his name is, one of the women asks the great question “Why do some people live?”, likely meaning how do they survive, and follows with the equally deep “What is his aim in life?” as the drunk is being taken by a cop to a van. These questions are not just for the people we’re watching at the moment, they generate out through the entire film and beyond. In another scene where a man tries to get help which isn’t forthcoming in reporting a gun incident, he asks in frustration “What is this police department doing about this town?” and this question seems much larger too and without a simple answer.
Law and Order is bookended by two scenes of domestic disputes, each involving a feuding couple, a child, and some other family members. These seem situations where the cops have so little to do. They either implore the people to settle arguments for themselves or to hire a lawyer, as if the courts can resolve problems they can’t. Either way, there isn’t much help that can be offered, yet the police are the ones asked to somehow respond. Unresolvable situations seem to come up often, and they present a cinematic complexity and a real challenge to the viewer, as we attempt to navigate through the family dynamics we are intruding upon. The final image of the film is a man running down the street in frustration following a custody dispute the police keep from getting violent. That’s far from a resolution, more like an acknowledgement that life’s problems don’t always have simple answers.
Just before that last custody dispute, President Nixon has come to Kansas City, and of course gets to give what was for him a standard speech about the need to establish respect for law and order. Had the film ended there, the speech might have tied things together neatly like the principal’s speech at the end of High School - a smug official speaking proudly of oppression and control. It can still feel a little like that, but not giving Nixon the last word keeps us away from that pat conclusion.
It may be overly obvious to point out, but Law and Order feels very much like it could have been made in 2020, with Trump sounding similar but worse than Nixon in his rhetoric, and racial tensions between the police and African Americans even more a clear issue. Watching a 1969 film sound so current can itself feel so frustrating. We can maybe wish Law and Order to be more pointed in its criticisms and more direct in its message. That’s just not Wiseman’s way, who is looking to these encounters to show us people involved in difficult problems or just showing what their life is like while he followed them around. That the situations sit somewhere between documentary and drama, or both at the same time, might to some feel uncomfortable for not taking a more overt stand or being more clearly didactic. I’d make the case that this is a more complex approach, at the same time that it seems more true to life. Law and Order shows a series of interactions, sometimes violent, sometimes funny, often a combination of things, and we can take that experience and think about what we’ve seen. It sounds simplistic, but it’s challenging and demanding that we need to watch these films in ways that only great interesting movies offer, ambiguities and contradictions abounding. I don’t think Law and Order is among the best of Wiseman’s films, but there’s much that requires careful attention and considerable thought.