Saturday, 14 March 2020

Citizen K (2020) - Movie Review



Alex Gibney is one of the strongest documentarians working today. He’s basically the embodiment of the more investigative, journalistic side of the art form, diving head-long into incredibly intricate and invariably depressing subjects, managing to unearth gold more times than not. We last caught up with him with the 2015 Scientology documentary Going Clear, a film so effective that I still can’t listen to Bohemian Rhapsody without feeling slightly ill. And with his latest, he’s getting into a topic that might be even dicier than going through David Miscavige’s dirty laundry: Putin’s Russia.



At the forefront, this is a look at Russia after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, in particular the experimentation with capitalism that led to the Russian oligarchy. It’s quite incisive in its depiction of the raw mechanics involved, transitioning from communism to free-trade capitalism to the oligarchy of seven businessmen that basically controlled at least half of the national economy, eventually leading to Putin. It’s a real ‘one extreme to the other’ situation, and beyond the information upload it provides, it also gives way to something quite unexpected: Comedy.

The film’s title is likely a reference to the legendary Citizen Kane which, given the film’s exposés on the banks, mass media and how the two intermingle with the political sphere, ends up being very appropriate. But it also embodies the film’s perspective on Russian politics in a more upfront fashion: It’s one big narrative production. It’s a farce where the punchline is a conveniently-disposed opponent. It’s a drama written by the hands with the highest tax bracket (not that they usually bother with taxes to begin with).

Despite being told from the perspective of an American, it shares an artistic sensibility with modern Russian cinema, particularly the nihilistic predeterminism of Andrey Zvygintsev’s Leviathan or Kantemir Balagov’s Beanpole. It’s just filtered through the kind of pitch-black humour that Armando Iannucci would sink his teeth into. Whether it’s the insanely cringey propaganda clips (no matter how many times I see it, Putin singing Blueberry Hill will never not be morbidly fascinating), the frankly bizarre charges brought against the titular Citizen, or his grin-inducing response to said charges, there is a much-appreciated vein of darker comedy that helps the heavy cargo loads of intel sink more easily into the audience’s ears.

But what about Citizen K himself? Well, while the film is ultimately a timeline of post-Soviet Russia, it is also a stranger-than-fiction biography that continues to highlight Gibney’s knack for being in just the right room at just the right time to get just the right info. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, in keeping with the farcical tone of the bigger political insights, is the unlikely hero. A man who went from middle-class banality to a place as one of Russia’s men-behind-the-curtain, and then the enemy of the state, and in turn, friend of the people.

Aside from his depiction during his egregiously kangaroo court case, which flips modern political perceptions by showing the Russian troll as the good guy, his character arc as captured by Gibney is quite captivating stuff. When it seems that ultra-rich philanthropists are being treated with more cynicism than ever, the film doesn’t try and change that perception, but rather show a rather fascinating exception to the rule.

Or, more accurately, a possible exception to the rule, and it’s here where the film earns the height of my respects. Gibney shows a clear and deep fascination with the story, and his subject’s place within it, but at no point does he start broadcasting his own propaganda in the process. He doesn’t exonerate Khodorkovsky’s past oligarchic actions, nor does he treat them as a nullifier for his more recent political activism. Instead, he shows the whole timeline as the story of someone who went through some major changes as a person. Someone who went from caricature capitalist to dry hunger striker in advocacy for someone else’s rights. It doesn’t demand sympathy, but it does proffer the capacity for redemption, and in a cancel culture world, that might be the most optimistic thing that can possibly be said. 

Not that Khodorkovsky is the be-all-end-all of the film’s scope; he’s mainly a focal point for everything else happening around him. And while said happenings aren’t always enough to carry the run time (there are some unfortunate dead spots that hold this feature back somewhat), it still makes for an informative feature that is equal parts slyly humourous and depressing as fuck.

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