Loznitsa’s film does everything one might expect of it, including the long, brooding takes. It’s interesting to review the narrative’s structure. Adapted from a novel by Demidov, the film is essentially four sequences. In the first the prosecutor, Kornev, played with a deadpan naivety by Alexander Kuznetsov, visits a prison where he interviews an elderly former tutor and prosecutor, who has been the victim of the Stalin’s regime’s abusive torture. The second brief sequence occurs when Kornev is in the train to Moscow, and falls asleep as a peasant relates a meeting with Lenin. The third sequence has Kornev heading for the office of the Soviet state’s head prosecutor, a man shrouded in bureaucratic menace. In the final sequence Kornev returns in the train accompanied by two ebullient characters who are not what they seem, even if this feels quietly predictable. There is a simplicity and straightforwardness to the storytelling which perhaps betrays an exaggerated straightforwardness towards the film’s material. If there is no doubt that Stalin was a monster, ultimately responsible for heinous crimes, there is nevertheless no attempt made to contextualise Kornev’s fateful journey. It emerges as a kind of fable of totalitarianism without in any way addressing its roots. The film has a clipped, efficient feel, where the only real note of humanity comes from two murderous agents of the state.
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