State Funeral 2022

State Funeral, a documentary directed by Sergei Loznitsa, collages archival footage filmed in the days after Stalin’s death in March 1953. There is no narration, no interviews. We see the same things again and again at different locations of the Soviet Union: mass gatherings around picture murals, crying people laying wreaths, busy streets brought to standstill, funeral procession around Stalin’s body. The mosaic the filmmakers slot together shows a Russia overtaken by grief, the fabric of social life shattered.

This isn’t a review but it’s worth mentioning what an intensely dull two hours and fifteen minutes State Funeral is. Voluntarily watching the whole thing in one sitting may qualify as self-harm. Which is likely intentional: to make the viewer feel the tedium and hypnotic repetition engendered by ideological conditioning. The pageantry and excess of the displays of mourning are stretched out for so long they become absurd in their emptiness. The film’s message is told through its form, not its content.

Despite the ‘non-judgemental’ style — all footage is static and unedited — there is a definite message to State Funeral. The only ‘narration’ comes when the film ends with text that numbers the death toll of communism. Critics — who acclaimed the documentary as one of the best of 2020 — got the message: this is a film about brainwashing, about multiple countries of people under…