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| Aleksandr Kuznetsov in Two Prosecutors |
Cast: Aleksandr Kuznetsov, Aleksandr Filippenko, Anatoliy Beliy, Andris Keiss, Vytautus Kaniusonus, Nerijus Gadliauska, Valentin Novopolskij, Demitrijus Denisiukas. Screenplay: Sergei Loznitsa, based on a novel by Georgy Demidov. Cinematography: Oleg Mutu. Production design: Yuriy Grigorovich, Aldis Meinerts. Film editing: Danielius Kokanauskis. Music: Christiaan Verbeek.
Sergei Loznitsa's Two Prosecutors is a movie that makes you wait, an ordinarily boring experience that gets its mounting suspense from the awareness of its setting: the Soviet Union in 1937, the era of murder and torture and imprisonment as Stalin consolidated his power. The man who waits is Kornyev (Alexsandr Kuznetsov), a young lawyer who is sent to interview a prisoner. Kornyev is led through a labyrinthine series of doors that are unlocked and locked behind him, just to see a prison official who makes him wait until he can see the prison governor, who also makes him wait as he provides a number of reasons why Kornyev shouldn't see the prisoner. Finally, he is led through another labyrinth of unlocked and locked doors to Stepniak (Aleksandr Filippenko), a hunched and haunted man who shows Kornyev his scars and tells his harrowing tale. It's hard not to breathe a sigh of relief once Kornyev is out of this awful place. But then he goes to another awful place, another kind of labyrinth, a Moscow government office building swarming with people on the business of bureaucracy. There he waits and waits again to put Stepniak's case before the Soviet procurator general, Andrey Vyshinsky, now known to history as the man who made Stalin's purge trials work, encouraging any means necessary to extract confessions from the accused. Vishinsky is played with a chilling narrow-eyed stare by Anatoliy Beliy, and though he assures Kornyev that justice will be done in Stepniak's case, we know what that means. We also know that Kornyev is doomed for even suggesting that Stepniak's charges against the NKVD, the Soviet secret police, might be valid. From there on, it's just a matter of watching Kornyev's fate play out. Two Prosecutors is not a subtle film, but it gathers great power from the performers, especially Filippenko, who plays not only Stepniak but also an aging war veteran with one arm and a wooden leg, whom Kornyev meets on the train in a scene that serves as a kind of black comedy interlude. It's also superbly filmed by Oleg Mutu, using the Academy aspect ratio to add to the claustrophobic feeling that Kornyev is caught in a trap not of his own making. As for any application to current political trends toward authoritarianism, that's up to the viewer.
