Nevertheless, Chikatilo was able to evade detection for many years, in part because his crimes exploited weaknesses in the decaying society of the Soviet Union.
But this spare first feature from the Irish filmmaker Ciaran Foy (drawing on his own experiences) has an atavistic pulse, evoking a decaying society where elevators fail and bus drivers cower behind mesh grills.
Love Story was chocolate-box romanticism, directed with considerable acumen and no cynicism; nothing could have been further removed from it than The Hospital, a vision of a medical establishment as a microcosm of a decaying society.
One of the most momentous stories of the last century is China's rise from a self-satisfied, anti-modern, decaying society into a global power that promises to one day rival the United States.
That film is The Servant, an inspired elevation of trashy material through the screenplay by Harold Pinter (the decisive friendship in Losey's career); it was a chance to take on the key relationship in a decaying society, that of servant and master.
Communist Party bureaucrats and radical democrats alike, have been quick to sense that religion, once the vilified "opiate of the masses," may now be an ally in an effort to strengthen the moral fiber of a decaying society.
