Worth: $17.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Alexei Navalny, Yulia Navalny, Dasha Navalny, Zahar Navalny, Maria Pevchikh, Christo Grozev, Leonid Volkov
Intro:
… a thoroughly absorbing documentary …
As of writing, Russian opposition leader, Alexei Navalny resides in a Russian correctional colony, where he faces up to 20 years imprisonment for various charges thrown at him by the current government. It’s worth keeping this in mind when watching Navalny, from documentarian Daniel Roher (Once Were Brothers). For regardless how often Navalny seems to get the upper hand, the sober truth cuts through the Hero’s Journey narrative. It’s like watching The Wicker Man and hoping against reason that maybe this time, a squad of police helicopters will storm Summerisle just in time to save Edward Woodward.
Brandishing Twitter, Facebook and even TikTok as a weapon, Navalny and his team have rightly put the wind up Putin. So much so, the Russian president has resorted to refusing to use his name, like he’s the antagonist of a popular wizarding franchise.
Navalny knows the impact he has had and is still having on the people of Russia. As such, it’s perhaps no surprise when, at the start of the film, he suggests to Roher, “Let’s make a thriller out of this movie.” And to some extent that’s exactly what the filmmaker does.
Navalny largely focusses on events surrounding the politician’s poisoning in 2020. During a flight from Tomsk to Moscow, Navalny suddenly became ill and, after an emergency landing in Omsk, was taken to hospital where he was put in a coma. It never occurred to Navalny that he might have been poisoned by his opponents. Surely, he spends too much time in the public eye to be subjected to such a dramatic assassination. And yet, he couldn’t be more wrong.
As his wife was refused entry into the hospital to see him, the Russian state press went into overdrive to bury the truth; accusing him of everything from having low blood sugar, to taking hallucinogens, to participating in ‘homosexual orgies’.
Recuperating in Germany, Navalny investigates his own poisoning, including prank calling his assassins. The calls themselves are the centrepiece of the film and it’s best to go in as cold as possible. When the other shoes drops, all that’s left for Navalny to say is, ‘Poor guy. They will kill him.’
Histrionics aside, Navalny is a thoroughly absorbing documentary. One which holds its subject in great revere. However, Roher is happy to let Navalny squirm at times. For example, how he responds when the filmmaker brings up Navalny’s somewhat casual dalliance with Russia’s extreme right. Navalny practically chokes on his water when he’s asked how many cries of ‘Sieg Heil’ he heard at a rally back in the day.
Looping back to Navalny’s plans for the documentary to be a thriller, it should be noted that he also has an idea in case of the worst eventuality: “…if I am killed, you can make a boring movie of memory.” While Navalny is very much still alive and languishing in prison, these words resonate. Whatever happens to Navalny, he doesn’t want to simply just be remembered. He wants Russians to keep fanning the flames of rebellion. He wants them to have a better future. And you can’t do that with a boring movie.
