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Yahoo
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Two Prosecutors' Review: Sergei Loznitsa Explores the Stifling Climate of Stalin-Era Russia in a Legal Drama That Burns Slowly but Brightly
You don't need to wield a hammer and sickle to feel the weight of Soviet tyranny hanging over Two Prosecutors, a solemn Stalin-era drama from Sergei Loznitsa that doubles as a metaphor for the kind of oppression tormenting Russia right now. Impeccably directed and impressively acted, this slow-burn story of political injustice is filled to the brim with atmosphere — specifically the stifling, claustrophobic atmosphere of the U.S.S.R. at the height of Stalin's Great Purge. For those familiar with that period, nothing in the movie, which was adapted from a 1969 book by physicist and gulag survivor Georgy Demidov, may seem surprising. But this Cannes competition entry is more about the journey than the destination, revealing what it was like to live at a time when personal freedom was all but extinguished by rampant authoritarianism. More from The Hollywood Reporter 'Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning' Review: Tom Cruise Delivers but the Convoluted Eighth Entry Takes Its Sweet Time Getting There Nude and "Voluminous" Cannes Red Carpet Looks From Past Years That Would Violate New Dress Code David Lynch's Son Intros 'Welcome to Lynchland' Doc in Cannes: "This Festival Meant a Lot to My Dad" The first shot of the film is of a prison door opening and closing, and it's a clear prelude to the rest of what happens in Loznitsa's meticulously crafted narrative. Lensed by Oleg Mutu (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days) in the box-like 1:1.33 format, the movie was photographed in color but may as well have been made in black-and-white, so much does it depict a world without warmth or hope. Loznitsa is certainly no stranger to such backdrops, exploring the bleaker sides of both Russia and his native Ukraine in a body of work that has seamlessly shifted between fiction (My Joy, In the Fog, Donbass) and documentary (Maidan, The Event, Babi Yar. Context). Two Prosecutors is perhaps his most austere film to date — controlled as tightly as the NKVD (Stalin's secret police of the 1930s and 40s) controlled the Soviet people. It's not always an easy sit, creeping along as it moves from one suffocating situation to another. But it gradually builds into a powerful statement on Russian tyranny both then and now. A slow-burn opening shows prisoners being assembled in a courtyard. The year is 1937 and the men all look like they've been through hell. (Indeed, in the next scene one of them falls off a scaffolding and drops dead, his body quickly hauled away.) The oldest among them (Ivgeny Terletsky) is sent alone to a cell, where he's tasked with burning the letters of fellow inmates. In what will be the first of many acts of courage against the powers-that-be, he decides to save one letter in which a prisoner claims he's been unfairly jailed and asks for legal counsel. The sequence is telling, underscoring the sheer impossibility of justice within a system that has been designed to quash resistance at all levels, from the very bottom to the top. This is the trajectory the film itself takes, gradually following the effects of that one authority-defying act from the bowels of a provincial prison all the way to one of the highest offices in Moscow. Our guide through the crushing bureaucracy is a bold young prosecutor named Kornev (Alexander Kuznetsov), who receives the smuggled letter and shows up at the prison to deal with the situation. He faces hostility every step of the way, from an array of brutish guards to a dismissive warden (Vytautas Kaniusonis) who keeps trying to get rid of him, and finally to the U.S.S.R's general prosecutor (Anatoli Beliy), who receives him in his office after the longest wait of all time. What's fascinating about Two Prosecutors is that nobody directly turns down Kornev, nor do they ever let him know what they're really thinking. This is a world where everyone is so afraid that the slightest word or act could land them in jail, or possibly Siberia, that they're constantly holding their tongues as they try to strategize their way through the system. New to the game of 4D Soviet chess under Stalin's reign of terror, Kornev is the only person to truly speak his mind, and it's no surprise what winds up happening to him as a result. The irony is that Kornev thinks he's saving the very Marxist revolution that the U.S.S.R. is meant to embody. The inmate who wrote the letter, Stepniak (Aleksandr Filippenko), is an old Bolshevik worker who was part of the 1917 uprising and has spent years in prison being tortured without reason. By trying to take a revolutionary hero's case to the highest echelons of power, Kornev foolishly believes he's fighting corruption in the regime he's meant to serve. The compelling Kuznetsov portrays the prosecutor as a wise and stubborn lawyer who's also the last person to be in on the joke that was Communism under Stalin. This is most apparent in a late sequence — and probably the highlight of the movie — in which Kornev takes the train back from Moscow to his hometown of Briansk, riding along with two businessmen (Valentin Novopolskij, Dmitrij Denisiuk) who he suspects could be NKVD agents. After some hesitation, he decides to drink and be merry with them, enjoying an impromptu music performance as the train chugs along through the night, unaware of the fate already in store for him. Loznitsa is much less of a dupe than the naïve young Korvev, and the director ultimately leaves the viewer back at the same prison door where his film began. The journey in Two Prosecutors is therefore a circular one — a long and winding round-trip between a rock and a hard place. This is what life was like in the U.S.S.R. at that time, and it's no secret that life in Russia under Vladimir Putin is hardly different nowadays. Loznitsa is reflecting on the past here, but for anyone who cares to look, he's holding a mirror up to the present. Best of The Hollywood Reporter 'The Goonies' Cast, Then and Now "A Nutless Monkey Could Do Your Job": From Abusive to Angst-Ridden, 16 Memorable Studio Exec Portrayals in Film and TV The 10 Best Baseball Movies of All Time, Ranked
Geek Vibes Nation
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Geek Vibes Nation
‘Two Prosecutors (Dva Prokurora)' Review - A Beautiful Yet Repetitive Tragedy About Feeling Powerless Against Corruption
Film isn't only a great medium to look at the current state of the world, for example, Ari Aster's Eddington portrays current America, but also to ensure that we never forget the past. The Byelorussian-born Ukrainian filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa knows that like no other. After becoming a controversial documentary maker because of his outspoken opposition to the boycott of Russian films, he's now taking the audience back in time in his Two Prosecutors (original title: Dva prokurora ). While the timely adaptation of the same-named novel by psychist/writer Georgy Demidov certainly is an alarming reminder of how hard it is to defeat totalitarianism with hope and determination only, it feels all too repetitive and formulaic. Teaming up again with cinematographer Oleg Mutu after working together on The Event , Loznitsa takes you back to 1937. Even before the story has fully and truly started, you can see that this work will be a stunning visualized feature. The décor feels incredibly authentic, and the dark cinematography and the cloudy vibe transport you back to the height of Stalin's terror. You feel the immense suffering of the people, the terrible circumstances they're living in, and the oppression they have to undergo. The absence of editing and lingering shots ensures that this haunting feeling comes through even more. It's that mix of the almost invisible work of editor Danielius Kokanauskis ( The Southern Chronicles , The Invasion ) and the extended scenes that makes and breaks this film. During the moments in which you see what humiliating tasks people (in this case, prisoners) are condemned to do and in which you see a broken country that's ruled with an iron fist by a totalitarian dictator, that combination truly sucks you into Loznitsa's latest work. You instantly go through many emotions. From the disgust of seeing the bleak state to feeling a bit of courage when witnessing that some people are still fighting for a better world, you certainly go on an emotional rollercoaster. Anatoliy Beliy as Andrey Vyshynsky and Aleksandr Kuznetsov as Kornyev in 'Two Prosecutors' courtesy of Pyramide Distribution. There's also a sparkle of hope in the form of Kornyev (Aleksandr Kuznetsov). After receiving a blood-written letter from a Communist party member addressed to Stalin, his ambition to finally prove his work as a young prosecutor and his more idealist mindset encourage him to find out where the letter originated. The letter was passed down to him via former intellectual Stepniak (Aleksandr Filippenko), who's now severely mistreated in jail by the NKVD (the Soviet secret police). Kornyev has to face the relentlessly powerful bureaucratic bleakness at every step of his quest for justice. He soon realizes that he lives in a world that doesn't share his vision of justice, not even his stern and undeterred superior, Andrey Vyshynsky (Anatoliy Beliy), with whom he seeks a meeting to help Stepniak. However, backing down isn't an option, as Kornyev's passion for changing the system that is larger than him is just too big. His requests to speak Vyshynsky fall on deaf ears multiple times, but when the two prosecutors finally come face-to-face, the movie finds its true power. This is because of tense and emotion-packed central performances. Like his character, the Russian rising star Kuznetsov ( Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore ) is the youngest of the two, but that doesn't mean he's being overclassed. No, the filmmaker offered him a complex role, mainly because there are a lot of silent scenes, and it's undoubtedly one that Kuznetsov loved to sink his teeth into. Whether with body language, his piercing eyes only, or the emotionally loaded (but too long) conversations, he puts on a compelling portrayal of a young man who's literally and figuratively silenced by the oppressive system. Aleksandr Kuznetsov as Kornyev in 'Two Prosecutors' courtesy of Pyramide Distribution A system that's being represented by Beliy, who embodies rampant corruption and bureaucracy in the best way possible. Even with only a few words, Beliy, who has already worked with Loznitsa on the documentary Maidan , significantly shows the oppression starting with Stalin's Great Purge of the late 1930s. At the same time, he also reminds us that even now, many governments apply that same way of thinking and ruling from the past. So why, with genuinely moving performances and the excellent production design that sets the perfect tone and mood, doesn't Two Prosecutors work? Well, that's also where the absent editing comes into play. Many prolonged conversations feel formulaic. The filmmaker puts down the camera in front of the actors and lets them work their magic for minutes on end, uninterrupted. There's nothing wrong with this approach, as it can help increase the human and emotional level; if every scene is like that, it's all too repetitive. Even the more extended scenes of the scenery can't break through the monotonous feeling. That being said, despite the lengthy lead-up and the sameness of many scenes, the transportive performances, and the astonishing set, Loznitsa's return to fiction is a beautiful tragedy about feeling powerless against corruption but never giving up hope. Two Prosecutors held its World Premiere in the competition section of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. Director: Sergei Loznitsa Screenwriter: Sergei Loznitsa Rated: NR Runtime: 118m
The Guardian
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Two Prosecutors review – a petrifying portrait of Stalinist insurrection
An icy chill of fear and justified paranoia radiates from this starkly austere and gripping movie from Sergei Loznitsa, set in Stalin's Russia of the late 30s and based on a story by the dissident author and scientist Georgy Demidov, who was held in the gulag for 14 years during the second world war and harassed by the state until his death in the late 1980s. The resulting movie, with its slow, extended scenes from single camera positions, mimics the zombie existence of the Soviet state and allows a terrible anxiety to accumulate: it is about a malign bureaucracy which protects and replicates itself by infecting those who challenge it with a bacillus of guilt. There is something of Dostoevsky's The House of the Dead and also – with the appearance of two strangely grinning, singing men in a railway carriage – Kafka's The Castle. Loznitsa moreover allows us also to register that the wretched political prisoner of his tale is a veteran of Stalin's brutal battle to suppress the Ukrainian nationalist Symon Petliura. And given the nightmarish claustrophobia and disorientation in the scenes in cells, official corridors, staircases and government antechambers, there is maybe a filmic footnote in the fact that Demidov worked for the scientist Lev Landau, the subject of Ilya Khrzhanovsky's huge and deeply pessimistic multi-movie installation project Dau in 2020. The first prosecutor of the title is Kornyev, played by Aleksandr Kuznetsov, an idealistic young lawyer, given a startlingly early promotion to a state prosecutor role – his beardless youth fascinates and irritates the grizzled old time-servers with whom he comes into contact. He has received a bizarre 'letter' from Stepniak (Aleksandr Fillipenko) an ageing and desperately ill high security prisoner in Bryansk – written in blood on a piece of torn cardboard (which has escaped the bonfire that prison authorities make of protest letters like these). The letter alleges that the security services, the NKVD, are without reference to the rule of law, using the prisons and judicial system to torture and murder an entire older generation of party veterans like him, to bring in a fanatically loyal but callow and incompetent cohort of Stalin loyalists. The prison authorities make the politely persistent Kornyev wait hours before being allowed to visit Stepniak in his cell, transparently hoping he will just give up and go away – Loznitsa shows this weaponised inertia is the traditional official approach to petitioners everywhere in the Soviet Union. They also claim that the prisoner's ill health and possible infection mean Kornyev really should 'postpone' his visit. It is an obvious obfuscation and yet the idea of getting infected by Stepniak has a weird and queasy relevance. Horrified by Stepniak's appalling condition and the evidence of torture, and aware of Stepniak's own respected legal scholarship and expertise (he is perhaps the second prosecutor of the title), Kornyev gets on a train to Moscow to raise his concerns with the highest possible authority – convinced that the locals will do nothing – and this is the deadpan chief prosecutor Vyshinsky (Anatoliy Beliy) who makes Kornyev wait hours just like the prison governor and listens to his explosive allegations with unsettlingly attentive calm. From here, there are more bizarre hints of an occult conspiracy to frighten and deter and contain Kornyev – meetings with people who appear to have nothing to do with each other but who, like the various neighbours in Rosemary's Baby, are in fact connected. On the train to Moscow, Kornyev encounters a garrulous old soldier with a wooden leg who is an eerie doppelganger of the prisoner Stepniak (and played by the same actor) and who makes wisecracks about young Kornyev being a virgin which are to be uncannily echoed later. In the government building, Kornyev meets a young man who claims to be his law-school contemporary, pointedly asking about this case he is pursuing – but Kornyev can't remember ever having met him before. And most disturbingly of all, Kornyev runs into a strange man, perhaps a petitioner, who stands up against the wall motionless, evidently paralysed with fear, hoping that no official person will talk to him and who asks Kornyev in a low whisper which is the way out of there. Perhaps Kornyev himself should himself become very inconspicuous and motionless before making his own exit. It is a very disturbing parable of the insidious micro-processes of tyranny. Two Prosecutors screened at the Cannes film festival
