Two Prosecutors. It seems a very straightforward title, promising something pretty specific. Yet, the number of prosecutors in Sergei Loznitsa’s adaptation of actual gulag prisoner Georgy Demidov’s novella feels like much more of a matter of debate. There’s for sure one, the young and idealistic Kornyev (Alexander Kuznetsov), investigating NKVD corruption and terror in the Soviet Union of 1937, at the height of Stalin’s purges, and the prisoner he’s advocating for, staunch Leninist Stepniak (Aleksandr Filippenko) probably used to be one. But the problem arises from the fact that, in reality, anyone and everyone here could be a prosecutor, an omnipresent paranoia and sense of betrayal that powers Two Prosecutors past its slow, stagy trappings.
After getting a smuggled note, written in Stepniak’s own blood, Kornyev launches his investigation with a complete refusal to morally budge, whether he’s in the prison itself getting stonewalled by the guards or in the halls of power in Moscow, directly petitioning Prosecutor General Vyshinskiy (Anatoliy Beliy). It’s a quest he quickly understands might kill him, but one he can’t let go, convinced deep down despite everything that Soviet truth and justice is something that people are genuinely striving for, that the problem he’s facing down is due to individual failings, not an entire state apparatus of pointless terror.
Loznitsa mostly has his plot play out in a series of monologues, lending Two Prosecutors an incredibly stagy feel, especially in the first half as we spend about an hour in the halls, cells, and courtyards of the prison as Kornyev is forced to play the guards’ waiting game. With a very Loznitsa organised chaos scene in the middle as Kornyev listens to a rambling old man’s story of meeting Lenin on a crowded train to break things up, we’re then right back into the theatrical mode in Moscow, the action there again concentrated on a maze of corridors and rooms where the main activity is waiting.
We’re forced to feel Kornyev’s boredom, frustration, and humiliation alongside him, the first barrage of discouragement measures the Soviet state throws his way before they resort to threats and violence, and the result is both immersive and exhausting. With a two-hour runtime, Two Prosecutors actually manages to feel a little shorter than that, even if it’s never particularly thrilling, clever editing expanding and contracting time, while Kuznetsov makes for a compelling lead even when yet another waiting scene threatens to send you to sleep.
I would have liked a more affecting sense of horror in the third act as the walls close in, and while the first few scenes conjure some incredibly striking imagery, Two Prosecutors only gets less visually interesting as it goes on. This is, of course, part of the point, embedding us in Kornyev’s head as he faces defeat not just from direct hostility but from a bureaucracy that will not budge for anyone unless it wants to harm them, but you can only be immersed in so much inertia before you tune out, waiting for a grand crescendo that may never come.
Jack Blackwell – Film Reviews 