(2026 dir. Sergei Loznitsa) Date Seen: September 30 2026
Wasn't for me, but YMMV.. A hard film to sit through & deliberately so: cold, sad, washed-out, with a visual style that's supposed to make you feel the characters’ crippling paranoia (Stalin's "Great Terror" 1937). Constant fear that clearly mirrors what it must be like to live as a critic under Russia’s present authoritarian / permanent president. Claustrophobia and drained colors aren’t supposed to be a treat for the eyes. The filmmakers are trying to translate a very specific type of worry into picture form. Occasionally the compositions would have a slick, sinister film-noir look or a Jean-Pierre Melville cool —but then at other times they look as if the camera is sitting there because it was simply the only place it would fit on a cramped set. Super dull & not riveting.. Trying to think of other times I struggled with a film's impulse to be depressifying & conjure bleak realism; Where the filmmakers attempts to synthesize misery & dread actually starts killing a project's ability to function as a movie. UNITED 93 off the top of my head, is probably my nightmare example of this: an ugly joyless mess that doesn’t thrill anyone & just lies there (shakes there) dead. & I guess I had a similar problem with SON OF SAUL with its intentionally suffocating visual language, though at least there was a kind of perverse curiosity & voyeurism that could pull some viewers through to the end. There’s a lot of TWO PROSECUTORS where I just got bored. But that’s kind of the point.
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