It’s been three days since I saw ‘Captain Volkonogov escaped‘ (the Russian title is ‘Kapitan Volkonogov bezhal‘), the 2021 film directed by Natasha Merkulova and Aleksey Chupov, and the faces and experiences of its heroes do not leave my memory. The two Russian directors managed to re-create in this co-production of studios from Russia, Estonia and France, the nightmarish atmosphere of a dictatorial state and its apparatus of repression based on terror. The meeting between the realistic Russian school of acting and action thriller films with modern editing and fast pace has in the case of this film an original and lasting effect.
The story in the film takes place in 1938, in full Stalinist terror. Fyodor Volkonogov is a captain in the political police whose job it is to arrest enemies, extract confessions from them by any means, and then execute them. It does not matter if those arrested are guilty or innocent. If they are not guilty today, they will be tomorrow, says one of the higher rank officers. This also applies to police officers, who are in permanent danger of ‘re-evaluation’. When he feels that his own re-evaluation is imminent, Fyodor flees and in a matter of minutes the hunter becomes the prey. His superior – Major Golovnya – and his former colleagues are on his trail. His girlfriend betrays him. His colleague and best friend is ‘re-evaluated’, arrested and executed. Is there any chance of escape? Maybe only after death, and that on the condition that at least one of the relatives of those who had been his victims forgives him. His flight becomes a search for absolution from sin, at least on the part of one person. It is a kind of inversion to the point of absurdity of the biblical principle according to which he who saves one man saves an entire universe. But can the crimes committed against innocent people by those who served a system based on terror be in any way forgiven?
“Captain Volkonogov escaped” alternates the parable with a religious tone with the grim reality of a system that transforms the entire society into a huge penitentiary system, based on fear, denunciations, torture. The visual part is remarkable. The filmmakers don’t attempt a precise recreation of the era, but filter it through what the characters feel. We are dealing with a decrepit urban landscape (I think it is Sankt-Peterburg – then Leningrad), with ruined palaces now occupied by police headquarters, with squalid tenements where people live communally, with streets and buildings that seem in permanent decay, with people closed in on themselves looking around in fear all the time. Dark colors dominate, the only patches of color that stand out are the red uniforms of the secret police agents. Violence and mistrust dominate relationships between people, oppressors fear bosses, whistleblowers denounce in turn, anyone can become a victim at any time. Yuriy Borisov is excellent in the lead role, at the head of a remarkable cast, in which each character lives his own drama on screen. The action scenes are also excellently done, but even more impressive are the ones depicting the police school training. Young officers learn how to extract confessions with ‘special methods’ or how to execute convicts saving every bullet. Through its almost theatrical style of staging, ‘Captain Volkonogov Escaped‘ is both located in a precise era and timeless enough to be a warning about the dangers of the present and the future.