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.

UNAFF ’14: In the Wake of Stalin

The fact that assassinated independent journalist Anna Politkovskaya supported the work of the Russian research and archival non-profit Memorial pretty much tells you all you need to know about its mission and place in the Putin-era body politic. Dedicated to exposing Stalin’s crimes against humanity and preserving the oral history of his victims, Memorial endures constant harassment and demagoguery. The dictator’s pervasive legacy and the drive to whitewash its enormity are examined in Thomas Johnson’s In the Wake of Stalin, which screens as part of the 2014 UN Association Film Festival in the Stanford area.

Through forced agricultural collectivization, willful acceptance of the resulting famines, a notorious series of purges and show trials, and periodic anti-Semitic campaigns, Stalin physically and spiritually devastated the Soviet people. Yet today, more and more Russians use loaded terms like “strong leader” and “iron willed” to describe Stalin.

In part, matters reached such a frightening and depressing state because there has never been a national reckoning of the Communist Party’s crimes. There is a government appointee officially charged with investigating Soviet human rights violations, but his lack of initiative is rather appalling, even by the standards of Soviet era bureaucrats. Memory stepped in to fill that void, but the reaction from Putin’s enforcers and loyalists has not been pretty.

While the title suggests more of a survey of Stalinist horrors, Johnson’s film, co-written with Marie Brunet-Debaines evolves into a documentary tribute to Memory, but they clearly deserve the ovation. The testimony they capture from Memory interview subjects is truly harrowing, while the thuggish graffiti and threats they document are simply ugly.

Nonetheless, Wake consistently draws a clear distinction between Stalin and Putin, readily conceding they are not moral equivalents (thus far). However, the dictum regarding those who forget the past deafeningly echoes throughout the film. Clearly, there are those who wish to render the past forgotten—and they presumably have their reasons.

Indeed, Wake is a level-headed analysis of Russia’s current ideological climate, enriched by its wider historical context. It is not alarmist, but it is alarming. Thoroughly researched and substantiated, it is a valuable work of cinematic reportage. Highly recommended, In the Wake of Stalin screens this Sunday (10/16) at Stanford University as part of session 10 of the 2014 UNAFF.

Kazakhstan’s Gift to Stalin

One of the scarier aspects of Stalin’s reign of terror was the effectiveness of his cult of personality. His image was omnipresent, investing his iron-fisted rule with a secular idolatry which brooked no criticism. In fact, reverence for dictator was so deeply ingrained in the Soviet people, many of those who suffered personal persecution under his regime reportedly still wept when news of Stalin’s death was released to the public. That emotional dichotomy is sensitively dramatized in Rustem Abdrashev’s The Gift to Stalin (trailer here), which finally opens theatrically in New York after an extended festival run.

Under Stalinism, Kazakhstan became the dumping ground for massive deportations of Soviet ethnic minorities (including a surprisingly large Korean community). As Gift opens in 1949, young Sashka’s Jewish family is on one such cramped transport making its way through the Eurasian steppe, in a scene that bears an obvious similarity to tragic events from Europe’s recent anti-Semitic history. The train stops at each provincial station just long enough to unload the freshly deceased, but it is sufficient time for Sashka’s family to smuggle him off the train in the company of corpses, where he is discovered and essentially adopted by Kasym, a fierce looking, but gentle track worker.

Given the risks inherent in sheltering Sashka, the Muslim Kasym has the village spiritualist rename him something less suspicious and more Kazakh sounding: Sabyr, meaning humble. Though still physically powerful, Kasym is old enough to be the boy’s grandfather, so he accepts the welcome help of his neighbor Verka, the exiled widow of an alleged traitor. Unfortunately, the village cannot openly come together to raise Sashka/Sabyr. Even on the lonely steppe, the Party apparatus, represented by a venal policeman and the sadistic regional military commander, maintain the Stalinist atmosphere of fear.

When not victimizing the local women, the party leaders are preparing the town’s commemoration of Stalin’s big seven-oh. Gifts from children across the USSR are being collected for the nationwide birthday celebration. The child offering the best sacrifice wins the privilege of giving their offering to Stalin personally. It might sound like a questionable honor, but Sashka covets it as an opportunity to petition Stalin for the release of his parents. However, the gift Stalin really wanted was the first successful Soviet test of an atomic bomb, which will soon literally rock Kazkhstan.

Abdrashev dramatically employs the vastness of the steppe to express the alienation of his exiled characters and deftly handles his many young actors. The physically imposing Nurjuman Ikhtimbayev turns in a legitimately touching performance as Kasym, the gentle giant. Likewise, Dalen Shintemirov comes across quite naturally on-screen, never cloying nor affected in the role of young Sashka.

Told in flashbacks by an adult Sashka now safely residing in Israel, Gift is an unabashedly sentimental story of sacrifice and thanksgiving, but honestly earns its emotional pay-off. To its credit, the film does not whitewash the realities of life under Stalinism, particularly regarding ethnic minorities banished to the Eurasian republics. One of the best films to play both the New York Jewish Film Festival and Russian Film Week in recent years, Gift well deserves its long deferred theatrical run. Recommended with enthusiasm and affection, it opens this Friday (3/18) at the Cinema Village.

NYJFF ’11: Stalin Thought of You

Attention to detail and a long memory might be all well and good for office drones, but they are not so hot in dictators. Stalin was a case in point. He always remembered the little people he encountered—much to their woe. However, the tyrant saw a potential usefulness in one political cartoonist that proved to be his salvation. Indeed, the late Boris Efimov would outlive Stalin and his successors, surviving well past his centennial. It is a telling episode in Soviet history, even if Efimov himself was somewhat ambiguous about his relationship with his brother’s murderer in Stalin Thought of You (trailer here), Kevin McNeer’s documentary profile of the Communist caricaturist, which screens on the opening day of the 2011 New York Jewish Film Festival, co-presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Jewish Museum.

Efimov and his brother Mikhail Koltsov were both ardent Communists who had permanently adopted their revolutionary nom de plumes. Koltsov was the more outgoing sibling, rocketing up the ladder of the Soviet journalism establishment while holding secretly working for with NKVD. He is widely accepted to have been the inspiration for the Karkov character in Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls. Despite (or more likely because) of his prominence, he was executed during Stalin’s Great Purge, despite recanting his forced confession.

Obviously, this put Efimov in a difficult position as the brother of a declared class enemy, but it was Stalin himself who threw the struggling artist a lifeline with a personal request for a very specific cartoon supposedly well suited to his talents. While it was only during Khrushchev’s anti-Stalin campaign that Efimov was fully rehabilitated, his lingering sense of indebtedness to the fearsome dictator is evident all through Thought.

To his credit, McNeer presents an unvarnished portrait of Efimov, often challenging him on his loyal service to the Communist system that murdered his brother. He also often broached the subject of Efimov’s Jewish identity, but the centenarian shut him down each time. While he might simply be ambivalent, McNeer shrewdly includes footage of old Soviet newscasts using Efimov’s Jewish heritage as cover for the virulently “anti-Zionist” cartoons he was required to produce.

If not an explicitly hostile witness, it is clear Efimov was not entirely forthcoming with McNeer. Yet, rather than papering over his evasiveness, McNeer wisely exploits it to make larger points. Frankly, one comes away from Thought with a much higher regard for Koltsov than its ostensive subject.

Throughout Thought, McNeer consistently asks the right questions and provides the necessary context to fully understand the propaganda under discussion. The resulting film offers fresh insights into a dark time in human history fueled by a poisonous ideology. Selections of the New York Jewish Film Festival frequently play at subsequent regional Jewish themed film festivals, so viewers outside the City should definitely keep an eye out for it. For New Yorkers, Thought screens this Wednesday (1/12), both in the afternoon and evening, as the 2011 NYJFF kicks off at the Walter Reade Theater.

Russian Film Week ’10: Burnt By the Sun 2: Imminence

Col. Sergei Petrovich Kotov ought to be dead. We were told he was about to be executed as part of Stalin’s purge at the end of Mikhalkov’s Burnt by the Sun. The Communist dictator assumed as much himself, which is why he is so out of sorts to discover Kotov yet lives in Mikhalkov’s Burnt by the Sun 2: Imminence (trailer here), the second film of his projected trilogy, which screened during the 2010 Russian Film Week in New York.

One typically miserable day in the gulag, Kotov is dismayed to discover his Article 58 political conviction has been reclassified to a pedestrian criminal charge. Moments later, the political inmates are summarily executed and the remaining prisoners are evacuated. The Germans have attacked, offering Kotov an opportunity for salvation. Before you can say “Great Patriotic War” he has enlisted in a special penal company, tenaciously fighting on the frontline as a lowly private.

Of course, that cuts no ice with Stalin. When he purges someone, it is meant to be permanent. With a war raging, he summons NKVD Colonel Mitya Arsentyev to track him down and finish the job, setting in motion the Communist version of Saving Private Ryan. It is an assignment that hits close to home for Arsentyev, given his long history with Kotov. Estranged comrades, Arsentyev married Kotov’s wife and adopted his daughter after arresting the war hero on Stalin’s orders. However, Kotov is the only father Nadya Kotova will ever acknowledge. In true Zhivagan fashion, they will both brave the horrors of war in hopes of reuniting.

It is hard to know where to start with Imminence, perhaps because there is so much of it: nearly three hours plus a teaser of the next installment to come. It certainly captures the spirit of the age, boldly portraying Stalin not just as an autocrat, but a legitimate psychopath. Yet, Mikhalkov’s well known status as Russia’s more-or-less film czar and notorious FOP (friend of Putin) adds a layer of irony to his blistering critique of Stalinism. After all, who would he consider the film’s closest analog to Russia’s current thug-in-chief (and former KGB officer).

Burnt 2 is at its best when depicting the chaos and degradation of war, unnecessarily aggravated by Stalin’s policies. Ironically, Mikhalkov’s carte blanche did not always serve the best interests of the film. Case in point, the over-orchestrated score veers close to parody. Still, there are times when Mikhalkov goes for broke and pulls it off, as when a dying priest baptizes Kotova while they cling to an exploded mine bobbing in open water.

In truth, Mikhalkov’s lead performance as the disillusioned Kotov is quite good, but casting himself as a Russian paragon of fatherhood and fatherland gives his critics something else to key-in on. However, his supporting cast is a more mixed bag. Subtle and thoughtful, Oleg Menshikov is fantastic as the former White partisan turned Red enforcer. Sergey Garmash also shines (far too briefly) as the compassionate priest, Aleksandr. However, many of the assorted prisoners and military characters are portrayed with a distracting theatricality.

Regardless of Mikhalkov’s vociferous critics and his rather unsettling Slavic nationalism, Burnt 2 is a big film by nearly any measure, well worth seeing. It is hard not to get caught up in this sort of sweeping historical epic, with its liberal helpings of melodrama. His critique of the Stalinist era is also quite trenchant, which why it is so frustrating he is unable to apply the same rigorous standards to the Putin regime. Indeed, it was definitely the most talked about selection of Russian Film Week, which concludes tonight (12/9) in New York.

Romanian Film Festival ’09: Silent Wedding

Stalin’s demise in 1953 should have been reason enough for celebration. Yet even in death the dictator causes suffering for common people. Such is the case for a betrothed couple whose wedding is disrupted by events far beyond their control in Horaţiu Mălăele’s Silent Wedding (trailer here), which screens during this year’s Romanian Film Festival in New York.

There once was an idyllic rural community where now stands the rusting husk of a Communist era industrial behemoth. Something very bad happened to that town, which the crew of a paranormal reality show intends to investigate. Interviewing the mayor of the town remnant, they come to understand the tragic events that left him the only surviving male resident in a town full of widows.

In what is initially a dreamy flashback sequence, Mălăele introduces viewers to Mara and Iancu, young lovers so passionate they can hardly keep their hands off each other. When their families resign themselves to their obvious ardor, it seems wedding bliss is finally within their reach. However, that evil old tyrant inconveniently dies. It might seem like even more reason for a party, but the Soviets impose a strict one-week ban on celebrations of any kind, lest anyone get the wrong idea.

With all the food bought and prepared, Mara and Iancu’s parents cannot simply postpone the wedding, so they improvise. The wedding continues as scheduled, but in absolute silence. Yet even notwithstanding the village’s grim state in the opening sequences, the appearance of a ghostly apparition suggests all will not end well with this plan.

Based on a true story of a Romanian town destroyed by the Soviets, Wedding is a strange and haunting film. Mălăele constantly shifts the mood and tone, incorporating magical realism, earthy comedy, high tragedy, political allegory, and even an episode of slapstick humor (which one festival patron likened to the Three Stooges during a Q&A exchange that proved devilishly difficult to translate). Yet, somehow the film never suffers from a whiplash effect. It all just seems to work together in the strange fable-like screenplay co-written by Mălăele and Adrian Lustig.

Employing a cast of actors largely drawn from his highly regarded stage productions, first-time film director Mălăele elicits many fine performances in keeping with Wedding’s somewhat surreal vibe. Meda Andreea Victor has an affecting screen presence as Mara, giving the film real heart as the tragic bride. Also making a strong impression, Valentin Teodosiu brings the perfect physicality and a genuine vitality as her bearlike father. While Ovidiu Niculescu is surprisingly memorable as the paranormal reporter, setting the film’s tenor with his ribald humor and sensitivity to historic calamities that continue to linger in the air decades after the fact.

Wedding is funny, sad, and not a little bizarre. It is an excellent selection to showcase the richness of contemporary Romanian cinema while also taking stock of the country’s tragic past on the Twentieth Anniversary of the Revolution. Highly recommended, Wedding screens again tonight (12/6) as the Romanian Film Festival continues at the Tribeca Cinemas.

Russian Film Week ‘09: The Gift to Stalin

One of the scarier aspects of Stalin’s reign of terror was the effectiveness of his cult of personality. His image was omnipresent, investing his iron-fisted rule with a secular idolatry which brooked no criticism. (Thankfully, nothing like that could ever happen here, right?) In fact, reverence for his personality cult was so deeply ingrained in the Soviet people, many of those who suffered personal persecution under his regime reportedly still wept when news of Stalin’s death was released to the public. That emotional dichotomy is sensitively dramatized in Rustem Abdrashev’s The Gift to Stalin (trailer here), which screens as part of the 2009 Russian Film Week.

Under Stalinism, Kazakhstan became the dumping ground for massive deportations of Soviet ethnic minorities (including a surprisingly large Korean community). As Gift opens in 1949, young Sashka’s Jewish family is on one such cramped transport making its way through the Eurasian steppe, in a scene that bears an obvious similarity to tragic events from Europe’s recent history. The train stops at each provincial station just long enough to unload the freshly deceased, but it is sufficient time for Sashka’s family to smuggle him off the train in the company of corpses, where he is discovered and essentially adopted by Kasym, a fierce looking, but gentle track worker.

Given the risks inherent in sheltering Sashka, the Muslim Kasym has the village spiritualist rename him something less suspicious and more Kazakh sounding: Sabyr, meaning humble. Though still physically powerful, Kasym is old enough to be the boy’s grand-father, so he gets welcome help from his neighbor Verka, the exiled widow of an alleged traitor. Unfortunately, the village cannot openly come together to raise Sashka/Sabyr. Even on the lonely steppe, the Party apparatus, represented by a venal policeman and the sadistic regional military commander, maintain the Stalinist atmosphere of fear.

When not victimizing the local women, the party leaders are preparing the town’s commemoration of Stalin’s big seven-o. Gifts from children across the USSR are being collected for the nationwide birthday celebration. The child offering the best sacrifice wins the privilege of giving their gift to Stalin personally. It might sound like a questionable honor, but Sashka covets it as an opportunity to petition Stalin for the release of his parents. However, the gift Stalin really wanted was the first successful Soviet test of an atomic bomb, which will soon literally rock Kazkhstan.

Abdrashev dramatically employs the vastness of the steppe to express the alienation of his exiled characters and deftly handles his many young actors. The physically imposing Nurjuman Ikhtimbayev turns in a legitimately touching performance as Kasym, the gentle giant. Dalen Shintemirov comes across quite naturally on-screen, neither cloying nor affected in the role of young Sashka.

Told in flashbacks by an adult Sashka now safely residing in Israel, Gift is an unabashedly sentimental story of sacrifice and thanksgiving, but honestly earns its emotional pay-off. To its credit, the film does not whitewash the realities of life under Stalinism, particularly regarding ethnic minorities banished to the Eurasian republics. One of the best films of this year’s New York Jewish Film Festival, Gift makes a welcome return to the City under the auspices of Russian Film Week. It screens Tuesday (11/17) at the Brooklyn Public Library and next Sunday (11/22) at the Millennium Theater in Brighton Beach.