“Once again proves that Loznitsa is perhaps not the most subtle, but definitely one of the most powerful political filmmakers of our time.”

Because he is so renowned as a documentarian, the achievements of Sergei Loznitsa as a fiction filmmaker have always been a bit undervalued. Though ‘fiction’ is perhaps not the right word, because the events in films such as Donbass and A Gentle Creature come awfully close to the truth, despite what the sometimes lyrical presentation may belie. Always critical of Russia and its totalitarian apparatus, whether in the distant past or quite recently, Loznitsa has changed little in his latest feature, Two Prosecutors. Maybe the sober style, frames meticulously composed but mainly featuring hallways, stairs, and prison cells in drab browns and soul-destroying greys, mark the only difference with Loznitsa’s previous outing, but they fit the simplicity of this story about the stranglehold that a totalitarian state has over its citizens, slowly squeezing until any dissent is only a gasp. It is difficult to ignore the idea that the film’s message should resonate with those living in what used to be Russia’s great adversary, now sliding into a society like the one depicted in the film, except perhaps more garish in its executors.

The film opens and ends with an enormous steel gate, behind which acts of grave injustice are committed. This is the gate of a prison somewhere in the hinterlands of Saint Petersburg, and a title card informs us that we are at the height of Stalin’s terror in 1937. An old, bent man straight out of Dostoyevsky is led into a cell, tasked with the burning of petitions to comrade Stalin. One guard scoffs that he is imprisoned for ‘anti-social behavior’, a term so cynically broad that it makes ‘possible gang member’ sound like a pointed accusation. The man reads some of the scribblings, and his eyes fall on a message written in blood on a bit of torn-off cardboard. He decides to keep the scrap from its fate in the flames, and the note miraculously finds its way to a young and eager prosecutor, Kornyev (played by Aleksandr Kuznetsov). Kornyev has a vast belief in the system of which he has become a cog, but he is in for a rude awakening, one that would make him wish the old man had done his job and just chucked the note in the fire.

The message was written by another prisoner, Stepniak (Aleksandr Filippenko), and Kornyev resolves to see this man, delaying tactics by prison guards be damned. Kornyev recognizes the man as a once-renowned philosopher who gave a speech at Kornyev’s law school that might just have landed him in this prison. Stepniak relates the torture and inhuman treatment at the hands of the NKVD (the acronym stands for the harmless sounding People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs, but in reality this was the state’s brutal secret police, part of which later split off into the KGB). In his naivete Kornyev decides to take this all the way to the top, suspecting the local prosecutor’s office is part of this nefarious system of oppression. It is a journey to his own downfall. As he slowly makes his way past the rigorous Soviet bureaucracy, he reaches the top quite literally, as he has to conquer flight after flight of a seemingly never-ending set of stairs in the stately building that houses the Prosecutor General’s office. What follows is predictable, as is his arrest and imprisonment as the enormous steel gate closes behind him. The state doesn’t like questions and the people that ask them.

The predictability of Two Prosecutors‘ simple narrative, adapted from a book by Georgy Demidov from the late sixties, but only published a rough one-and-a-half decades ago, is precisely the point. Loznitsa’s aim is not to dramatize the ruthless efficiency with which totalitarian systems stifle any dissent. His goal is to take the human element out of it, as there is no humanity in such a system, only a myriad of rules set to keep everyone in place. The narrative consists mainly of two parts, opening in the cavernous prison and ending in the oppressively large and pompous structure housing the General Prosecutor’s office, but both provide a similar odyssey for Kornyev to embark on. The iron-barred gates and dark corridors of the prison don’t differ all that much from the stairs in the large office building. The only difference lies in the fact that as soon as he sets foot in that building, you know his doom is set. Climbing the stairs to the belly of the beast is like a Kafkaesque death march.

Connecting the two parts is Loznitsa’s only flight of fancy. On the train over to the city Kornyev is surrounded by peasants and city folk alike, a one-legged war veteran a particularly colorful one. Relating a prolonged tale of the time he went to Saint Petersburg to personally petition to Lenin, the scene resembles a similar lengthy interaction the protagonist is subjected to in A Gentle Creature, albeit not on a train. The scene holds little weight, but illustrates the cult of personality the Soviet leaders had created for themselves. Remind you of someone? Although squarely aimed at his favorite target, Two Prosecutors can be viewed as a blueprint of how totalitarian systems suffocate their citizens with a mixture of draconian rules and naked brutality, while keeping them in line by hyping up nationalist tendencies and hero worship. Loznitsa’s latest is not only a grim reminder of the man currently overseeing the totalitarian state from his seat in Moscow, but also the looming dangers of a megalomaniac currently occupying a similarly powerful seat in Washington.

The message is not only in the slow crushing of the film’s protagonist though, it is also deeply embedded in Two Prosecutors‘ images. Meticulously composed shots reflect the strictness and inhumanity of the system, any adornment and pomp merely there to prop up the same system that is crushing those who admire them, like the veteran on the train. Loznitsa’s cynicism and sense of irony come through in shots of Kornyev increasingly belittled and clueless as he is led into the gaping mouth of the beast that is the Russian state; at times it is almost like looking at that meme of a confused Vincent in Pulp Fiction wondering where Mia Wallace’s voice comes from, with Kuznetsov playing the hapless prosecutor to perfection. It is this congruence of its imagery and its admittedly rather blunt and banal message that is the film’s strength, and Two Prosecutors once again proves that Loznitsa is perhaps not the most subtle, but definitely one of the most powerful political filmmakers of our time.