LGM Film Club, Part 560: Two Prosecutors

Two Prosecutors is the new film from Sergei Loznitza. He’s Ukrainian and his subject makes a lot of sense with this context. It’s a story about Stalinism. It’s 1937. Stalin is locking all up the former revolutionary leadership class, including on the local level. One man, a lawyer, manages to get a message out, written in his own blood, demanding to the state prosecutor. Said prosecutor is young and naive. Both still believe in the revolution. The young prosectors forces his way into the prison, despite everyone strongly urging him not to. The old imprisoned revolutionary, nearing the point of death, believes that the NKVD are a bunch of fascists, but that they are doing this without Stalin knowing because how could he do that himself? Our prosecutor then goes to Moscow where he forces his way into seeing a big time legal person. This all ends about as well for him as you can possibly imagine, by which I mean horribly.

This is a quite fine film, though I think the accolades for it are more for its politics and its veiled attacks on Putinism than the film itself, which is a relatively standard procedural in the context of doing a Stalinist movie. It’s probably not as interesting or revelatory as the 1994 Nikita Mikhalkov film Burnt by the Sun, though ironically Mikhalkov is a huge Putinist. The funding for Two Prosecutors is also interesting–a lot of help from across eastern Europe. The horrifying prison where the first half is show it in Latvia and was built in the early 20th century. It probably did hold people being purged.

I assume the star, Aleksandr Kuznetsov is no longer living in Russia. I know he’s been critical of the war, so if he was in Russia, he’d probably be dead or in prison. I’m sure doing this film was extra meaningful for him. I know that the old man, Aleksandr Filippenko, is living in Lithuania, due to his opposition to the war. Again, the politics around the film are powerful. The film itself is worthy, but not an all time great or anything.