Captain Volkonogov Escaped (2021)

Drama, Thriller /
7.3/10
82/100
100% – Critics
100% – Audience

Captain Volkonogov Escaped Storyline

“Captain Fyodor Volkonogov, a well-respected and obedient USSR law enforcer, witnesses his peers being suspiciously questioned. Sensing his turn is approaching, he escapes and is soon on the run, hunted by his former colleagues. Vulnerable and hopeless, Fyodor comes to realize what he had been part of. Suddenly he gets a message from hell: after death he will be sentenced to eternal torments. The only way to avoid it is to repent and to find at least one person who will give him forgiveness. But time is running out and the manhunt is closing in on him…”

Captain Volkonogov Escaped Photos

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Captain Volkonogov Escaped Movie Reviews

empire of terror

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.

Retro-surrealistic snuff rendition of Gulag as a parable

Let me try to brief you of less known to the westerners features of this award-winning movie without spoilers: if you are wondering what kind of people could perpetrate the atrocities in Bucha and other corners of the world starting 1917, you need not look any further, your only challenge will be to not look away, as this is a masterpiece of different kind of snuff, where the gruesome is not graphic and loud but the untold, or rather – expressed via multimedia art.

While the majority of art-house is aimed at niche audience the topic so serious deserves mass audience, here the writers of “Soyuz 7” (space blockbuster based on real events) in collaboration with the editor of such marvels as “Dancer in the Dark” and successful Russian music act Shortparis, who have shot to stardom while keeping their underground roots, to produce an experience seldom found since 1990s: a mass-counterculture blockbuster similar to “Natural Born Killers” or “Naked Lunch”… you name it.

So, they’ve teamed up with Shortparis who are a successful performance act with a versatile history of antiputin protest and a desire to build upon their eye-candy music videos and ready aesthetics one can see in their flicks for “Govorit Moskva” released right before 2022 and up to “HOBOE HOBOE” which set resembles the “crazy credits” of “Volkonogov’s” to make “Polyushko-Pole” the only ubiquitous sound-track of it. This eerie rendition of an ominous folk song dedicated to “Our great combat flag/farewell to drafted boy” sounds prophetic after February 24th of 2022, but is equally subconsciously unnerving as a track for grim ballet performed by young men in red/black “visual-key”-like uniforms as entertainment but resembling a dark ritual. And this ritual does render a vision from hell literally for protagonist, as it serves for viewer as a part of stylish picture of insane totalitarian society where the oppressed population toils under impending doom with everyone potentially a subject to death of unpredictable level of violence.

However, in order to see this, you will have to dive into the depth of contradicting Russian symbols where the visuals taken both from Soviet classics and recent art, are combined with decaying human side of life obvious in the buildings of seemingly recently refurbished former Imperial capital and puppet-like servitude of its citizens.

The first third of 2 hour long movie builds up conditions for protagonist to snap out of this nightmare consuming his soul in progressively horrible sins, and if you are tired of clip-like flicks like “Run Lola, Run” just watch a music video of Avatar “Bloody Angel” paying attention to its lyrics.

Then, the main character turns to seek forgiveness of his (honest at first) wrongdoings while being chased by ex-colleagues. Thus movie has enough plot to entertain the viewer while rendering the most striking episodes of non-fictional book “The GULAG Archipelago” by Noble-prize winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in the manner similar to other dissident writer Vladimir Sorokin. Interestingly, the latter was among first targets of Putin’s repressions, and (similarly to this movie forbidden in Russia along with many others) has grown into writer of dystopian parables opposed to current regime…

The russian human condition

The poetics of this hard to watch movie provides some historical explanation for an outsider like myself to what is happening in Ukraine and Russia right now and of what has happenned in Russia in other periods of history. The movie is more theatrical than historical, but it is strange how all the dystopical surrealism used in it can be at the same time the plausible exact truthful depiction of events. In tyranny you never know. It is desolating how much of nowadays russia is described there. The russian and human condition seems to be this eternal cycle of abuse and brainwashing generation after generation perpretated to perpetuate power and the only escape is unlikely and unreachable forgiveness. The film is full of unforgetable scenes like the pietà, the dance, the kid with the bonfire, the mass grave revelation, the execution lesson and so on. The sound track has pratically only one mesmerizing theme. Acting is superb. A must watch.

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