It gets dull after a while, but the context—a Soviet fabricated show trial ordered by Stalin to frame and prosecute ‘anti-communists’ in the eyes of the public—is still an eye-opening look at character assassination on a national, ideological level, nearly a century ago.
Edited entirely from restored archival footage of Stalin’s state funeral, this is a cinema of profound sadness and a towering achievement from one of the great screen chroniclers of Soviet history.
There is probably no other purgatorial cinematic experience like this—a Pasolini-meets-Tarkovsky medieval sci-fi epic that finds stark beauty in all of its carnivalesque filth and revolting excess.
Part of the massive if controversial ‘DAU’ project, this entry is backed by bold performances by its two actresses even if the film doesn’t quite achieve true power through provocation.
