A work that tries to copy the structure of a film, but doesn't quite understand the decisions behind it to make said structure work and not come off as kitschy at times.

There's an inconsistency to the characters (if not the metaphor), that makes it hard to care about them. There's the didactic political mouthpieces and then the insubstantial characters, where ineffective jokes disrupt any meaningful attempt to try and commiserate with the abstracted struggle of politics recontextualized as an interpersonal drama.

If there were more effort to combine the two, or to make the propaganda moments more humanized, I think the two separate elements could have merged better together into something beautiful, but I don't give much headspace to realpolitik in any form, especially if the `human` element is purposefully left out.

The ending reflects the ambitious docudrama moment where all of the prior elements are reflected in the present day lens, the "where are they now" moment, but that requires more successful buildup to make it feel anything more than forced sentimentality. You have to care, and it's hard to care for props that feel like mouthpieces if they can't be sufficiently humanized.

Still, there's some lovely moments that really stand out above anything else in the presentation, like the peephole viewing. Those successful few jokes are the moments that really linger with the readers. There's a lot of real moments that likely resonate for the "local" reader, elements that get lost in translation but do otherwise give some verisimilitude to the underlying story. In spite of the walls of text of the legislation, one can really dive into an understanding of real world politics from years ago.

It's great to see a love letter for another medium, but sometimes one has to think extra about how to translate a narrative between two differently structured forms.