Cit­i­zen K

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 Oscar-win­ning doc­u­men­tar­i­an Alex Gib­ney back fir­ing on all cylin­ders and recon­nect­ing with his polit­i­cal muse.

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

Win­ning Khodorkovsky’s trust with­out com­pro­mis­ing his own integri­ty, 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 that, Khodor­kovsky and the oli­garchs con­trolled 50 per cent 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.

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. 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 US democ­ra­cy is need­ed to bring the real­i­ty home.

Today, as he approach­es two decades in pow­er, Putin has his own cronies in place. 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 cliché́ from time to time. 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. 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 too earnest­ly on its sleeve.