TWO PROSECUTORS / ZWEI STAATSANWÄLTE (2025)

Joseph Stalin, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, was (if possible) even more paranoid than usual in the mid-‘30s, before his ill-fated Nazi Pact and the ‘Great Patriotic War’ split his attention . . . for a while.  But it’s 1937 when this steely paced/inexorable miscarriage-of-Soviet-justice story plays out.  Alerted by a letter written in blood from within a fortress-like prison far from Moscow’s center of power, a local, idealistic State prosecutor (Alexander Kuznetsov, whose boxing past has given him an addictively photogenic face - half boyish/half smashed) follows up on the complaint by honoring the prisoner’s right to an interview.  Evidence of NKVD torture on ths longtime committed Communist not only confirming the man’s story, but giving support to tales of similar treatment thru-out the province prisons.  Much of it stemming from his refusal to certify official Death Warrants of innocent men; himself included.  Taking up the old man’s case against prison guards & the NKVD (the future KGB), the new State Prosecutor, a tru-believer in the Soviet system as outlined in its constitution, may be idealistic, but not so naive to think he’d have a chance to do anything locally.  So, without appointment, he’s off to Moscow in hope of seeing the USSR Attorney General.  No surprise where this is heading, but co-writer/director Sergey Loznitsa’s meticulous physical realization (the film shot in Latvia), and formal structural design (basically two long interviews: tortured prisoner and young prosecutor; young prosecutor and plainspeaking Attorney General); followed by a quickstep coda showing the NKVD trap awaiting him, no anomaly, but Kremlin-approved policy.  Played for suspense or shock this would fall flat as a blini, but comes alive when played as Greek Tragedy, predetermined ‘ot A do Ya’ (from A to Zed).  Why generations of Russians, a country all but synonymous with Revolution, put up with these conditions, probably unanswerable by anyone not part of the system.*

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Armando Iannucci’s bleakly hilarious THE DEATH OF STALIN comes within shouting distance of understanding/explaining the Russian attitude, if not the Russian soul.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-death-of-stalin-2017.html