Reconstituirea - Filming the fight scene.

When a parent catches a child smoking, one creative punishment involves finishing the entire pack at once, repeating the transgression to the point of physical sickness. I just managed to track down a copy of Lucian Pintilie’s 1968 film Reconstituirea, which illustrates a similar process. Two high school graduates recklessly celebrate in a local bar, breaking some glasses and getting into a fight. When authorities catch the boys, the prosecutor comes up with with a strange penalty. Instead of sending the students to jail, he takes them back to the scene of the crime and forces them to reenact their offenses. He documents the reconstruction on film, intending to use the footage as warning to other young people on the effects of alcohol. With TDAR, I’ve been researching how reenactment might be a useful teaching tool, both as a way of interpreting the past and as a means of new expression, so the film naturally attracted me.

Film re-enactments particularly appeal to me in an educational context, but not in the way that the prosecutor from Reconstituirea envisions. These days, fans constantly reenact and reinterpret the actions of those they admire on YouTube. The videos need not be purely honorific. Often critical and interpretive, these “reenactments” offer a rich means of analyzing the original, picking apart and remixing its intended meanings.

There are obvious differences between YouTube fan videos and the Reconstituirea judicial system. One system is based on voluntary participation, the other is forced; one requires adopting another person’s identity while the other involves performing as oneself. So does Reconstituirea have anything to teach about teaching? Well, the film clearly offers much broader lessons, with pointed commentary on repression, alienation, and cruel justice under a communist state. But in the context of learning, it does give some perspective on the different ways reenactment might serve as a teaching tool.

Reconstituirea - The students and the prosecutor.

The prosecutor in Reconstituirea sees the film footage generated from the reenactment as the main pedagogical device, serving as a cautionary tale for those who view it. The recording will provide lessons to others, but if the criminals learn anything, it is simply that all crimes earn punishment and humiliation. For their part, the students are alternatively playful and intractable, viewing their punishment as pointless, silly, or somewhat embarrassing (particularly when a pretty girl is standing by). But what about the possibilities of re-enactment itself as a playful, creative method of learning?

If reenactment has a place in education, how might a teacher implement it in such a way that taps into its playfully interpretive possibilities, rather than the indignity of a forced march? The boys from Reconstituirea gleefully sing during their night of revelry, but hesitantly do so during their punishment. Some of this may relate to their drunkenness in the original moment, but it also relates to the difficulty of encouraging playful acts when dictated to do so.