Cit­i­zen K – first look review

Giv­en his uneven out­put of recent years – Rolling Stone mag­a­zine, Fela Kuti and Lance Arm­strong films being cas­es in point – it is some­thing of a joy (and relief) to find the Oscar-win­ning doc­u­men­tar­i­an back fir­ing on all cylin­ders and recon­nect­ing with his polit­i­cal muse.

Using the jour­ney of fall­en oli­garch Mikhail Khodor­kovsky as a lens with which to explore the cur­rent state of Rus­sia and its faux democ­ra­cy – and in turn, America’s and our own – Gib­ney reasserts two of his most vital qual­i­ties – his impar­tial­i­ty and that fas­tid­i­ous fact-check­ing. The result is eas­i­ly his best doc­u­men­tary in years.

Win­ning Khodorkovsky’s trust with­out com­pro­mis­ing his own integri­ty – this is no Arm­strong schmooze-fest – Gib­ney enlists the help of for­mer BBC Moscow cor­re­spon­dent Mar­tin Six­smith in retrac­ing the grim real­i­ty of Rus­sia post-Glas­nost. In the wake of the col­lapse of the Iron Cur­tain, the fig­ure of Boris Yeltsin’s local hero loomed large, tear­ing down the wall to cre­ate a dif­fer­ent sort of cap­i­tal­ism that was fatal­ly flawed. Sev­en oppor­tunis­tic busi­ness­men quick­ly relieved daz­zled Rus­sians of their gov­ern­ment-issued vouch­ers at bar­gain-base­ment prices, only to use them else­where to buy up the nation’s most lucra­tive com­pa­nies. Gib­ney dubs it ​“gang­ster cap­i­tal­ism”. It left the few extreme­ly rich and the many very poor.

Not long after, Khodor­kovsky and the oli­garchs con­trolled 50% of the Russ­ian econ­o­my, includ­ing TV sta­tions and oil­fields. When a sick Yeltsin played a wicked game to stay in pow­er, bor­row­ing mon­ey from the oli­garchs that his gov­ern­ment couldn’t hope to repay, the malev­o­lent sev­en reassert­ed their grip on pow­er, halt­ing any return to com­mu­nism and ensur­ing mis­ery for mil­lions of every­day Russians.

As the rich­est of these infa­mous oli­garchs, Khodor­kovsky was on an unstop­pable roll until the mur­der of a may­or in a far-flung oil town in Siberia raised ques­tions. Khodor­kovsky was accused of organ­is­ing the hit to pro­tect his Yukos oil busi­ness – the may­or was out to expose the company’s tax eva­sion – a charge that sticks with him today, leav­ing him in exile in London.

Despite los­ing his state assets to Putin – whom the oli­garchs put in pow­er to replace Yeltsin, only to see him turn against them – Khodor­kovsky clear­ly banked a lot of mon­ey. With a sly twin­kle, he doesn’t offer any real denial over the accu­sa­tion, and the ques­tion of his involve­ment in the exe­cu­tion is left hang­ing, unan­swered. Had he not gone after Putin’s admin­is­tra­tion for cor­rup­tion, he’d prob­a­bly still be liv­ing like a king in Russia.

Khodorkovsky’s own jour­ney – from socio­path­ic busi­ness­man to incar­cer­at­ed scape­goat to reformed crim­i­nal (he spent 10 years behind bars) – is told with panache and flour­ish­es of whim­sy. The film is rich in detail, yet is neat­ly pre­sent­ed as a polit­i­cal thriller, with Gib­ney and his con­spir­a­tors (edi­tor Michael Palmer, com­posers Robert Logan and Ivor Guest) on fine form. Ample footage of the far­ci­cal show tri­als of Khodor­kovsky are here, as is the media’s cov­er­age of Putin’s so-called ​“elec­tion the­atre” cam­paign of recent years. Only a brief ref­er­ence to the threat to U.S. democ­ra­cy is need­ed to bring the real­i­ty of it home.

Today, as he approach­es two decades in pow­er, Putin has his own cronies in place (here referred to as ​“Oli­garchs 2.0”). He’s been pop­u­lar with the peo­ple for bring­ing the oli­garchs to heel (Putin hap­pi­ly quotes Stal­in to push the point home), yet a shift in pub­lic opin­ion sees a reformed Khodor­kovsky emerge as an unlike­ly hero of the peo­ple, albeit with severe­ly deplet­ed influ­ence. Putin, we are told, views Khodor­kovsky as an equal, mean­ing the latter’s life remains in dan­ger. Khodor­kovsky believes Putin’s time in pow­er is limited.

Like its sub­ject, the film isn’t with­out its flaws. Gibney’s voiceover slips into cliché from time to time (“The dark­er the night, the brighter the stars,” he says at one point, refer­ring to Khodorkovsky’s time inside). The con­tem­po­rary nar­ra­tive in Lon­don could also be more ful­ly formed. And we don’t get to hear from Khodorkovsky’s fam­i­ly, despite them being ref­er­enced on occa­sion. But these are minor quib­bles. Over­all, Cit­i­zen K presents a wild­ly enter­tain­ing and time­ly pic­ture of a glob­al issue in as suc­cinct a way as pos­si­ble. It car­ries its uni­ver­sal themes effi­cient­ly with­out wear­ing them earnest­ly on its sleeve. At 65, Gib­ney, aka the hard­est-work­ing man in doc­u­men­tary film­mak­ing, just scored anoth­er home run.