Loznitsa’s Two Prosecutors

Ironically, guileless Kornyev is especially vulnerable to Stalin’s purges, precisely because he ardently believes in Communism and the virtue of the tyrannical General Secretary. That leaves him defenseless to those who better understand the Party’s true nature and what is necessary to survive it. Ill-advisedly, Kornyev goes straight to the top, reporting his suspicions of corruption to Procurator General Andrey Vyshinsky, the legal architect of Stalin’s Purges in director-screenwriter Sergei Lotznitsa’s Two Prosecutors, which opens tomorrow in New York.

Tired old Pegleg gets a relatively easy prison job—burning all the letters sent to Stalin, asking him to intervene in a loved one’s case, in the interests of “justice.” It turns out his blood-scrawled note is in there too. It presumably never reached Stalin, but somehow it found its way to Kornyev, a recently appointed provincial prosecutor (functioning somewhat like an investigating magistrate).

Kornyev insists on interviewing Stepniak, as the prisoner was still known, even though the prison officials think he is crazy for wasting his time. They put him through a Kafkaesque bureaucratic ringer, but eventually they relent. Convinced Stepniak has been unjustly prosecuted, Kornyev fears the local authorities are acting in concert to undermine confidence in the Soviet justice system, so he leaves for Moscow, intending to report his findings directly to Vyshinsky.

Frankly, Kornyev’s naivete is painful to behold. Watching him dig his own grave, deeper and deeper, is absolutely agonizing. Indeed, the greatest tragedy is his own faith in the Party. In most films, finding yourself several step ahead of the protagonist induces boredom, but in this case, it is utterly nerve-wracking waiting for the ironclad shoe to drop.

Two Prosecutors is an austerely Spartan film, partly because that is how life is under socialism, and partly because Loznitsa allows nothing to distract from Kornyev’s self-inflicted doom. The film only consists of a half-dozen scenes, but each one almost suffocates viewers with tension and absurdity.

As Kornyev, Aleksandr Kuznetsov is convincingly earnest to a fault. We deeply sympathize with him, as well as Aleksandr Filippenko, who is profoundly world-weary as Stepniak, whose outlook isn’t much better. In contrast, Anatoliy Beliy projects an utterly soulless ruthlessness as Vyshinsky, while also maybe bearing a not entirely vague resemblance to the Kremlin’s current boss.

Predictably, both sides of the political spectrum will try to claim Two Prosecutors as an allegory, but it is important to remember its roots. Loznitsa’s screenplay was adapted from a novella written by Georgy Demidov, a victim of these same purges and a longtime prisoner of conscience, which was only posthumously published in 2009. It is profoundly a product of the Communist experience, but it takes on urgent timeliness from the rise of Putin and Xi, who clearly hope to emulate Stalin’s example. It is not an easy film, but it is a powerful one. Very highly recommended, Two Prosecutors opens tomorrow (3/20) in New York, at Film Forum.