Відгук на фільм Verdict 19 (2019) ( https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9880724/?ref_=tt_urv)

In nowadays turbulent time, when virtual reality (social networks, tvimages, cinema characters, etc.) so intensely transcends our real life starting to replace it, the opposite process takes place: real people become film's heroes, and life itself adjusts the script, so that development of events cannot be foreseen even by a most professional scriptwriter...
This is what happened to the character in the new documentary entitled Verdict 19 by Ukrainian director and legal scholar Vyacheslav (Slavik) Bihun, avant-premiered on 26 March 2019 in Kyiv. A successful and well-known Ukrainian scholar and university professor, doctor of laws Oleksandr Merezhko returns to Ukraine to take part in the contest for the High Anti-Corruption Court (HACC) as he believes in the possibility of positive change and wants to serve his country.
As per film's author, the film was conceived as a triumph of justice story, an illustration of new positive changes within the judiciary. But the life made its corrections: the protagonist faces a range of subjective factors and does not win in the contest. The film has been already reviewed by some lawyers in terms of its content, legal issues as well as the importance of the issue raised to resolve the fate of the country.
I would like to dwell on a slightly different aspect: "hows" and by what creative means the author tells the story to the viewer, the story which does not have Hollywood special effects and action-like scenes, but nevertheless keeps the viewer's attention throughout the screen time.
Perhaps, the first thing to note, as a leading feature of the film overall and that of the character in particular, is sincerity. From the first minutes you feel sympathetic to him and thereafter you live with him every episode. The viewer is taken to a lecture and classes by Professor Merezhko, to a hall of an Academic Council for the defence of dissertations at a scholarly institution, to conversations with his colleagues at a university's department and cafeteria, to the presentation of a scholarly publication. The viewer also takes a walk with him in his daily paths through streets of Kyiv, observing seasonal changes of nature (as from the preparation and submission of documents to the announcement of the contest's results it took more than six months) as well as the daily life of the big city. We are also touched by a secret, i.a. a visit to a perinatal center where we hear the first public "sneeze" of his newborn daughter.
Dr. Merezhko looks very natural and organic in the frame. It seems that he simply lives his life, completely forgetting about the camera filming him. And this testifies to the high skill of the film's author, the deep trust of the character towards him.
Also, along with Dr.Merezhko as a contestant to the HACC, an average citizen has a chance to visit and witness the location, working mannersand persons of such a high-ranking and little-known body as the High Qualification Commission of Judges of Ukraine (HQCJ). We see faces of those responsible for the creation of the Anti-Corruption Court and the selection of judges to the judiciary as a whole. And as the film ends we know their names.
I would also like to note the logical structuring of the film and the smooth and motivated transitions from one episode to another. In particular, the author coherently and naturally brings the viewer from the shots with exhibition of drawings to the theme of the Revolution of Dignity in the university's corridors to a documentary shorts of a memoir of real events at the Maidan, and then to a full-fledged scene of the commemorative prayer of the Heavenly Hundred. And then from the streets where helmets of the fallen street protestors are solemnly depicted to the depths of the soul, that is a hospital where we visit Dr.Merezhko's wounded brother serving in the military...
The smooth chain of episodes goes on: we bid farewell to the wounded "Beast" (a call-name of the soldier), leaving his hospital's chamber, for a moment looking at the calendar on the door. And we witness the Mount Sermon of Jesus Christ with an illustration. And then we are taken to the corridor of the HQCJ where we read in large text (on the whole wall!) the Prayer of a Judge. "... judge me as God. I judged as a man", - these final words of the mentioned Prayer enter deep into my memory and still resonate. What if all judges, all officials, and eventually all of us, everyone in his or her own place, always did according to the law of God, or at least keep to the spirit and letters of the adopted legislative acts of a human society and moral principles...

Being himself a participant in the contest, alike Dr.Merezhko facing a rejection, and observing and feeling it from the within, the film's author is very delicately weavingirony into the canvas of the film, sometimes resorting to burlesque notes. So the first frames of the HQCJ meeting are accompanied by boring buzz of a fly that later clings to a thick book of laws... Warning siren soundsaccompany the author's titles such as "Anonymity", "Transparency", etc., each time mentally switching the content of visually presented definitions to the opposite... Three identical shoes of passengers in the underground, a painted pig on the glass of a cafe as the character watches through it, the figure "9" croppedfrom the figure "8" in the interior of the university department signifying the change of year, paintings by Maria Prymachenko with her fantastic beasts in the HQCJ halls, these are funny and ironic author's strokes, which for a short moment pass into sarcastic laughter,- the applause and the noise of a stadium when announcing the final verdict. The drama has turned into a farce... The final chord of this sad farce is that the "Monkey rides the Beast" (by painter Maria Prymachenko)... Same as in one well-knownfairy tale we know from the childhood, "Might makes right"...
As the glass doors open-close to fairy-tale music, behind them we see an empty corridor ... it's sad ... but somehow it is as if it was so expected... so it's not tragic. It is our usual reality. It is our reality in which we witness prayers on the wall, oaths on paper but not their fulfilment in life; where the screen character has a chance to become the head of the 40-million European country...
But life goes on. Children are born. And there is hope that everything will be fine... That everything will be there for us!

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The features I outlined are not more than a few strokes to the "portrait" of Vyacheslav Bihun's "Verdict 19" documentary. In fact, there are still a lot of interesting things which I deliberately omit, to keep some intrigue. (In particular, the confluence between the failure of two fellow countrymen: the outstanding lawyer of the early twentieth century Dr.Leon Petrazyckiand our character Dr.Merezhko in this contest, and many more).
Like most of the films by director Vyacheslav Bihun, the "Verdict 19" does not provide ready answers. It rather documents the current moment, raises questions, draws attention to the pressing issues in the society, searching for ways to solve them.

Halyna Vynohradska, Scholar at the Institute of Ethnology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (Lviv)