Screenplay Update: Scene 42 - The Aesthetic of the Small Things
STYLE: A hectic press conference. Overexposed faces, the flashbulbs of the photographers act like a stroboscope. Microphones jut into the frame like black lances.
CAST:
- Minister Dr. Gernot Gönner: An actor with perfectly gelled hair and a smile that sits as firmly as his tie.
- Journalists: A chorus of critical voices from off-screen.
INT. PRESS CENTER - DAY
Minister Gönner stands at the podium. He doesn't look caught, but rather... academically offended.
JOURNALIST (OFF) Mr. Minister, the list of donations from Mrs. Horten is almost three meters long. All amounts just below the reporting threshold. That can't be a coincidence!
GÖNNER (takes a deep breath, smiles pitifully) Do you know what the problem of today's time is? A glaring lack of a sense of aesthetics. You see a list of numbers. I see a work of art.
He makes an expansive gesture with his hands.
GÖNNER Mrs. Horten is a patron of pointillism. You know Seurat? Signac? These great spirits understood that the truth does not lie in the large, coarse brushstroke. The truth is composed of thousands of tiny, glowing dots.
JOURNALIST (OFF) We're talking about 49,000-euro morsels past the Court of Audit!
GÖNNER (interrupts him gently) I'm talking about the freedom of art! If a lady of the world decides to express her affection for democracy in many small, tender gestures – who are we to impose a coarse, bureaucratic grid on her?
He leans confidentially towards the microphone.
GÖNNER A mountain consists of grains of sand. Would you declare a grain of sand at customs? No. Only when it's a mountain. But for us... for us, it's a beach. And on a beach, it's just easier to govern.
JOURNALIST (OFF) That's pure donation splitting to circumvent transparency!
GÖNNER (adjusts his tie) Transparency is a beautiful word. But glass is also transparent, and yet people are constantly running into it. We prefer the soft light of discretion. That's not a circumvention, that's... political landscape maintenance.
FADE TO BLACK.