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State Funeral (Sergei Loznitsa, 2019)
🕑 Added 2020-01-30 23:20:07 +0000 UTC
I run hot and cold with Loznitsa. He pretty much make three different kinds of films: narrative fiction films, contemporary documentaries, and archival found-footage compilation films. And within each of those frameworks, I have quite liked some while disliking others. I was not so impressed with My Joy or A Gentle Creature, but very much liked In the Fog and Donbass. I thought Austerlitz was one of the best films of 2016, while I found the superficially similar Victory Day almost unwatchable, and was mixed on Maidan. And of the compilation films, I have quite liked The Trial, The Event, and the early Blockade, while finding his latest to be a terrific slog.
To be honest, I'm not sure how to parse all of this. If I had seen all these films in rapid succession, I might be able to diagnose the problem more readily, as having to do with rhythm, or pacing, or approach to the material. But in the case of State Funeral, I can honestly say that Loznitsa's interventions in the source material don't strike me as complex or thoroughgoing enough to overcome the deadening experience of taking in two hours and fifteen minutes of straight propaganda.
Stalin's funeral was a massive production, of course, entirely stage-managed by Soviet authorities. As captured by the four official cinematographers charged with documenting the four-day event, we are led to believe we are witnessing spontaneous expressions of grief and shock. Random men and many, many women file past the camera with tears in their eyes or looks pitched somewhere between sorrow and disbelief. But they are all well aware they are on Candid Camera CCCP, so they'd better look good and sad.
Drawing on this original footage, State Funeral becomes repetitive very quickly. Dignitaries arrive, mourners file through the funeral hall, another gigantic wreath is unloaded... It's hard to fault Loznitsa for this approach, since I recognize that this is precisely his point. The spectacle of Stalin's memorial is overbearing and endless, a sign of the Soviet Union's self-congratulatory bloat and an opportunity for various Central Committee power players (Malenkov, Molotov, Beria -- cf. Iannucci's The Death of Stalin) to align themselves with Papa Joe's legacy, all the better to slide into the driver's seat.
Nevertheless, dull is dull. It is a mind-numbing experience to listen as speaker after speaker prattles on about Stalin's "genius," as if this homicidal thug were the love child of Aristotle and Einstein. And the introduction of each individual, along with the official designation of every salutation that emerges from every loudspeaker in every quad, is prefaced by the lengthy title and position whence it comes -- Deputy Secretary this and Central Soviet that. The layers of bureaucracy are almost comical, if we didn't know they had a body count.
At the end, Loznitsa provides a brief chyron detailing Stalin's crimes against humanity, in case anyone forgot. But this seems fully appropriate. State Funeral is a retrieval project, bringing material from the archives and allowing it to be seen by a public that now understands exactly what it is showing (and hiding). It's a film that needed to be made. But it's kind of a cinematic encyclopedia entry.
(For a very different view on State Funeral, check out Danny Kasman's interview with Loznitsa in Cinema Scope 81.)
