Two Prosecutors Review: Bolshevism and Its Discontents

A large metal lock clanks against an imposingly tall gate as a guard inserts a key to open the unidentified structure. That clanking sound of padlocks opening and closing is, perhaps, the signature sound of Two Prosecutors. A half-dozen scraggly men enter the vast space behind the gate, looking as though they hadn’t seen a meal or shelter in quite some time.

The film notes that the time is 1937, the height of Stalin’s terror. One man, who is carrying a stuffed gunnysack, is led through several locked chambers of what we can now identify as a prison, each padlock opening and closing with a resounding clank. The man, whose crime is “antisocial behavior,”  is led into a room with a tiny stove and ordered to burn all the letters contained in the sack. He opens a few of them, all from prisoners and addressed to Comrade Stalin, beseeching the leader to absolve them of the false accusations made against them or that they were forced to confess to. The pile, once spread out on the floor, is a couple feet high. Each letter reads fairly identically until he discovers one written in blood from an old Bolshevik asking for a prosecutor to come to the prison to hear his testimony.

Soon, a young man approaches the gate seeking entry to interview a certain prisoner. Again we hear the loud clang of locks opening and closing as he is led through the bowels of the prison to the man in charge. The man is Kornyev (Aleksandr Kuznetsov), a recent law school graduate and firm believer in the Bolshevik ideals. Kornyev is made to wait for what are designed to be soul-crushing hours amid prominent busts of Lenin and Stalin, before being allowed to meet with various prison overseers. Eventually, Kornyev is permitted to see the prisoner who has summoned him, and hears the old Bolshevik’s account and witnesses the physical injuries the authorities inflicted upon him. Kornyev heads back to Moscow to pursue the case, believing he has uncovered corruption in the local NKVD (a precursor to the KGB) and will bring to justice those who have done wrong. 

Two Prosecutors is based on a novella by Georgy Demidov, a Russian writer who was imprisoned in 1938 before spending 14 years in the Gulag. The film is very reminiscent of stories by Gogol and Kafka, full of sardonic ironies, sly cynicism, impassive interlocutors, and omniscient observers. The film moves at a slow and deliberate pace, much like the wheels of justice. As viewers, we come to feel ensnarled in the grip of bureaucratic entanglement, much like Kornyev, fighting for justice against diminishing odds.

What’s most startling about the film for me, however, is not the Russian history and filmmaking per se, but the relevance Two Prosecutors has to our present day. Surveillance states, the trampling of judicial systems, the absurdity of each small gesture – all are issues that are front and center, particularly for North American viewers. Justice is an ideal rather than a fact, and each generation and locale is entrusted to secure its survival.

Two Prosecutors

2025, NR, 116 min. Directed by Sergei Loznitsa. Starring Aleksandr Kuznetsov, Alexander Filippenko, Anatoli Beliy, Andris Keišs, Vytautas Kaniušonis.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Find movie times.

The post Two Prosecutors Review: Bolshevism and Its Discontents appeared first on The Austin Chronicle.