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THE CHEKIST
One of the few films I can confidently assert will “shock the unshockable.” THE CHEKIST is a blistering look at an executioner going about his work in the wake of the Russian Revolution that’s guaranteed to traumatize the most hardened viewers.
The Package
THE CHEKIST (TCHEKIST) thus far hasn’t received the attention it should
have. It was made in the former Soviet Union in the early days of
Glasnost--needless to say, it could NOT have been made before then. Its graphic
and unforgiving approach was an incredibly audacious choice, before or
after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Set in 1917, the year of the Russian revolution, THE CHEKIST concerns
itself with the Bolshevik Secret Police, or C.H.E.K.A., the forerunners of the
KGB, whose job it was to round up and deal with those opposed to communist
principles. Inevitably, the Cheka “dealt” with the latter via cold-blooded
execution (foreshadowing the Stalinist purges of the coming years), something
this film makes horrifically clear.
Interestingly enough, it was released in 1992, the same
year as Andrei Konchalovsky’s THE INNER CIRCLE, another work by a Russian
filmmaker casting a critical eye on his country’s none-too-distant past. A
big-budgeted Hollywood production with American actors speaking in fake Russian
accents, THE INNER CIRCLE makes for a fascinating contrast with THE CHEKIST, in
whose shadow Konchalovsy’s film plays like a Disney cartoon. Quite simply,
there aren’t too many other films of any type as unforgiving as THE CHECKIST,
and it deserves a much wider audience than it’s received thus far.
The Story
In the early days of the Russian Revolution a secret police force called
Cheka is instigated to round up and snuff out any and all opposition to the new
communist rule, including Jews, Christians, aristocrats and friends and
relatives of the above. Cheka officer Andrei Srubov and his men decide to take
their captives into the dank basement of their building and, against a wall
lined with old doors, shoot them in the backs of their heads. The bodies are
then loaded onto a rolling cart and wheeled to the bottom of a hole; next, men
waiting above lower down a noose that is used to haul the corpses above ground,
where they’re shipped off to mass graves.
Thus a routine is established that continues over a lengthy period, with
Srubov and his men dispassionately executing hundreds of people. Srubov takes
his job seriously enough that he stops one of his subordinates from raping an
intended victim (“what’s the difference?” the guy asks, “she’s going to die
anyway”), yet his conscience does bother him...and, as the executions continue,
his fellow Chekists begin cracking up: one tries to hang himself and another
senselessly bayonets a woman. Eventually Srubov goes mad himself, stripping off
his clothes and, during one of the executions, running directly into the line of
fire.
The Direction
What makes this film especially potent is the matter-of-fact manner its
protagonists go about their grisly duties. Director Alexandr Rogozhkin doesn’t
embellish or sensationalize the film’s countless executions in any way, which
makes them all the more unnerving to watch. Rogozhkin is less effective in
presenting the characters’ lives outside the killing chamber, where they tend to
speak in political slogans rather than dialogue. The film is at its most potent
in scenes of undiluted horror, and the way Rogozhkin presents the grotesquerie
is intriguing, beginning with cutaways and then gradually adding detail until,
by mid-film, the shootings are graphically and relentlessly portrayed in a
near-montage of remorseless slaughter.
Again, the killings are rendered especially effective in the way Rogozhkin
steadfastly refuses to succumb to the lure of melodrama. His characters aren’t
presented as psychopathic killers but as workers--some politically motivated,
some not--going about their business, and we see them joking around and dealing
with the myriad problems (the doors behind the victims becoming brittle from too
many gunshots, the executioners’ aim being off, etc.) that come up just as
workers would in any job.
This may make the film sound cold-blooded, but I’d
argue the opposite. What Rogozhkin is above all else is honest, and brutally
so, about the period he depicts, and I can’t imagine any viewer being unmoved by
what he/she sees. THE CHEKIST is likely the most potent denunciation of
communism ever made, particularly when one considers that the many hideous
scenes it presents are but a microscopic glimpse of what actually occurred.
Vital Statistics
THE CHEKIST (TCHEKIST)
Lenfilm Associates/Trinity Bridge Productions
Director: Alexandr Rogozhkin
Screenplay: Jacques Baynac, Andre Milbet
Cinematography: Valeri Myulgaut
Editing: Tamara Denisova
Cast: Igor Sergeyev, Aleksei Poluyan, Mikhail Vasserbaum, Sergei Isavnin, Vasili
Domrachyov, Aleksandr Medvedev, Aleksandr Kharashkevich, Igor Golovin, Nina
Usatova