Two Pros­e­cu­tors – first-look review

Inno­cent peo­ple nabbed from their homes and impris­oned under false pre­tences. Ter­ror-dri­ven inter­ro­ga­tion meth­ods employed to secure phoney con­fes­sions. Revolt­ing, filth-caked jail cells that wouldn’t be fit for your grandma’s old stink hound, let alone a prize aca­d­e­m­ic. Sweep­ing, instant pun­ish­ment for any­one who does not tow the par­ty line. No, not Amer­i­ca in 2025, but Rus­sia in 1937 at the height of Stalin’s vora­cious and sweep­ing purges – his attempt to cau­ter­ize what he con­sid­ered to be the fes­ter­ing wound of opposition.

Ukrain­ian film­mak­er Sergei Loznitsa’s new para­noiac dra­ma is adapt­ed from a novel­la by Geor­gy Demi­dov, a Russ­ian physi­cist who was forced to work in a Siber­ian gulag for much of Stalin’s reign. It fol­lows an angel­ic young pros­e­cu­tor named Kornyev (Alek­san­dr Kuznetsov) who responds to a note he receives on a fold­ed piece of card­board and penned in blood that con­tains a plea for help from a man who once lec­tured him at University.

Sin­cere­ly believ­ing that his slight­ly ele­vat­ed sta­tus will allow him to walk between the rain­drops of the ever-watch­ful secret police, he takes his hat, coat and brief­case and man­ages to talk his way into the cell of his old charge Step­ni­ak (Alek­san­dr Fil­ip­penko), on his last leg from rit­u­al beat­ings and humi­la­tions. Loznit­sa pro­longs the jour­ney from entrance to cell, as Kornyev is glanced top-to-toe by var­i­ous guards and over­seers, many of whom seem quite amused at his bald-faced moxie. 

Kornyev, mean­while, nev­er once rais­es his voice or does any­thing that could be con­sid­ered open­ly chal­leng­ing, and so he’s even­tu­al­ly award­ed his vis­i­ta­tion. And yet it’s clear from the off that it’s unlike­ly that he will come out of this sit­u­a­tion with his right­eous sense of moral­i­ty allowed to oper­ate in pub­lic spaces. He sin­cere­ly believes that the pen is might­i­er than the sword, and that’s all very well until some­one attacks you with with a mas­sive sword.

Loznitsa’s lack­adaisi­cal film com­pris­es three inti­mate set pieces based around extend­ed and poet­i­cal­ly-lit­er­ate dia­logue scenes. In between these moments, we see shots of Kornyev wait­ing and often doz­ing off. He fights with patience against this unseen foe, yet his naivety is all too con­spic­u­ous when it comes to believ­ing for even a sec­ond that he might suc­ceed in his well-mean­ing odyssey against the all-encom­pass­ing pow­er structure.

Two Pros­e­cu­tors offers a fair­ly stan­dard cri­tique of the bureau­crat­ic super­state in which there is always some­one a few steps ahead ready to stomp you under its boot heel. Shot in the oppres­sive­ly boxy 1.37:1 aspect ratio, the film is beau­ti­ful­ly framed, blocked and edit­ed, with edi­tor Danielius Kokanauskis in par­tic­u­lar locat­ing a series of hyp­not­ic, pen­du­lum-like rhythms in the extend­ed con­ver­sa­tion sequences.

Yet as seri­ous and pre­scient as the film may be polit­i­cal­ly, it feels too much like a quaint vari­a­tion on a sto­ry that’s been told many times before (not least by Loznit­sa him­self!), all like­ly herd­ed under the clichéd the­mat­ic ban­ner of ​“Kafkaesque”. It’s a supreme­ly well-made piece of work whose func­tion and mes­sage nev­er quite man­age to tran­scend the pro­sa­ic. Still, in the strange times we’re cur­rent­ly liv­ing through, maybe it’s worth sound­ing that nec­es­sary siren one more time for luck.

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