The Case: The Mystery of Putin's Formative Political Years

On Friday, April 26th, my arts criticism course and I attended the D.C. Film Festival’s screening of The Case, directed by Russian filmmaker Vera Krichevskaya and Ksenia Sobchak. It was a full audience, and I, like many others it seemed, were excited to ease in and learn more about the controversy behind our president’s apparent BFF (I jest, I jest! Sort of!) .

The film started moving pretty quickly, after one realizes that the narrator of the film is Ksenia Sobchok, daughter of Russian politician and first mayor of St. Petersburg, Anatoly Sobchok.

Anatoly Sobchok (photo from here). 

Now, it’s important to consider that I’m a millennial, and the only time we ever talk about Russia in history class is when we touch on Joseph Stalin, WWI & WWII-- all of that. When it comes to Russian politics from the 90s to early 2000s, I quickly realized that I know nothing, and I mean nothing, particularly since from the very beginning, this film assumes the audience is at least relatively familiar with all of the *many* key political players, the only of whom I recognized being Putin himself. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I do wish I could have had a head’s-up so that I could have at least done some sporadic google searches to somewhat prime myself.

Anyways, this being said, following the film was challenging for not only myself, but also many of my fellow millennial classmates, who, too, quickly realized how uniformed we were of Russian political history. Nonetheless, it was undoubtedly a fascinating footage of Vladimir Putin hanging out a Sobchok’s house in a track suit, other shots of him running the political circuit in his younger years. The interviews are pretty shocking, with quotes such as Putin admitting that he undoubtedly believes that Sobchok’s fall from power was due to his honesty and transparency. Yikes.

Current President of Russia, Vladimir Putin (photo from here). 

In regards to technical elements, the editing is a little overdone and seems more awkward than artistic, with strange overlapping of film and convoluted side-by-side shots that are honestly just plain confusing. Also, the titles of the interviewees, for someone such as myself, are far too quick since I have no idea who 99 percent of them are. Some added sound effects are also a little distracting, and at times, the white font of the subtitles was difficult to read atop of the footage.

Nonetheless, like I said, the interviews themselves are engaging, even though the pacing of the story is hard to follow. Most significantly, I and those who I attended the film with were kind of uncertain as to whether, in a way, the film perhaps praised Putin? I'm still really not sure how I feel about how he was represented in the film.

The shots of Ksenia were kind of annoying because I really just wanted to hear about her dad and Putin, but the concept of her “journeying” to find answers is a typical, easy-to-employ documentary through-line, I suppose.

Ksenia Sobchak and her mother talking about her father's past (photo from here). 

I think it’s important to address, too, that the filmmaker most likely has a Russian audience in mind— a group of people who are familiar with the nuances and in’s-and-outs of past and present Russian culture, unlike someone like myself. During the screening of the film, there were several jokes that I didn’t understand, but I realized that made complete sense to the Russian audience in attendance. In this way, I feel like I’d like to watch this film again, but only after I’ve done some more research to understand the cultural context that a Russian audience would be quick to comprehend.

At the end of the day, I’m glad I saw the film, and I would certainly recommend others to watch it, too— perhaps just in segments since it’s a lot of information to strap in for straight-through in an hour and forty minutes. Certainly, I would say that it was a successful film, and as an American viewer, I definitely feel propelled to learn more about this history and, especially, how it is shaped the Vladimir Putin that is in power today.