Sergei Loznitsa’s State Funeral (2019) is a found-footage film showing the announcement of Joseph Stalin’s death in various republics across the Soviet Union, Stalin’s body lying in state and the long lines of people waiting to view it, and the funeral itself, complete with a string of Communist Party leaders’ eulogies. 200 cameramen were sent across the Soviet Union, providing a fascinating glimpse of the vastly different Soviet republics and how their citizens live, dress, and react to the news of Stalin’s death. In 1988, Gorbachev’s perestroika policy allowed the archives to open up, making the film available for the first time since it was shot. The footage was shot in 1953, but the film-makers were able to clean up the images digitally so they are much crisper and cleaner than a lot of archival footage of the time. This crispness makes the people shown look more modern, more immediate — more like the viewer.
Stalin crafted a broad mythology of the Soviet Union’s strength, glory, and goodness and represented that mythology in human form. The cult of personality he created, lionizing himself and legitimizing anything he did in the service of the state, irrevocably tied the Soviet people to him. His widely promoted successes as a leader made the country safer and stronger. On his death, despite knowing of his many atrocities and experiencing the constant hardships of living under his brutal regime, many Soviets mourned him as a person, but also mourned what he represented. They grieved the loss of their national symbol and worried over who would take power next. Would their idealized concepts of the nation remain, or would everything change? Would their sacrifices under Stalin lead to a stronger, better Soviet Union or would they boil down to torture, misery, and death?
Before the funeral, Stalin’s body lay in state in the Hall of Columns in the House of Unions in Moscow. Thousands came to view the body. At one point, a crowd of people in Trubnaya Square squeezed together in a bottleneck and the resulting crush killed at least 109 people; unofficial death estimates are much higher. The mourners shown in State Funeral are much calmer than those in Trubnaya Square. The film shows no pushing, no urgency to the mourners. They calmly stand in line, looking dejected and sad, some crying but most just silent, waiting. Were these genuine mourners, or did they simply want to be able to say they saw Stalin’s body? Were they communism’s true believers? Or did they feel they needed to publicly mourn or risk being reported by their families and neighbors for anti-communist sentiment?
State Funeral uses the official communist party announcer’s voice as the invisible narrator and shows archival footage of Communist Party leaders speaking, the only people in the film to express the Soviet Union’s loss. “Death has come and everything is useless. Death has come and we are all alone.” At times, the announcer inadvertently references the police state, as when he says, “He was everywhere, he was always with us.” Stalin’s informers were always watching, waiting for transgressions. The announcer also ruminates on death and immortality, saying, “Stalin’s immortality is in his deeds… Long live Stalin’s immortal cause! Long live the great Soviet people, Communism’s builders, who will live to see the triumph of Communism! Stalin is dead, long live Stalin!”
There are no conversations, no interviews — simply speeches and eulogies from people in power, all shot in 1953. The thousands of citizens shown never speak, indicating they are one united monolith of grief. However, their silence also represents their powerlessness as citizens of a brutal dictator’s regime. Many of them live in fear and repression. They could not speak out about Stalin during his lifetime, and they cannot openly express their feelings about his death. This overwhelming silence creates a vacuum: using just found footage for this documentary removes all historical and social context, leaving the viewer adrift.
The footage of the funeral, Stalin lying in state, and the crowds who went to view the body was originally made to be used for a contemporary documentary, The Great Farewell, glorifying Stalin in death as he was in life. Because of the power struggles that ensued after Stalin’s death, the film was never completed and its 40 hours of footage was locked away, along with recordings of the eulogies and radio broadcasts of the death and funeral. The intent of the footage shines through, leaving the viewer feeling confused. Are we supposed to admire Stalin?
Loznitsa provides no commentary in the film and relies on the viewer’s knowledge of history to provide the missing context. The only perspective provided outside the found footage are a few toothless text statements about Stalin’s atrocities shown the final frames of the film: “According to historical research, over 21 million Soviet citizens were murdered, executed, tortured to death, imprisoned, sent to Gulag labor camps or deported during Stalin’s rule. A further estimated 15 million starved to death. In 1956, the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union condemned Stalin’s rule as a cult of personality and called for the de-Stalinization of the country.”
These few sentences are not enough, since it is impossible to learn anything about Stalin from the film itself. The film-maker seems to assume that his intent is clear, but the viewer has no idea if the two hours of film they have just watched is a glorification or a condemnation. Perhaps that is Loznitsa’s point, perhaps not. Some people do still respect Stalin. Most, however, understand him to be one of the most brutal dictators and the largest-scale mass murderer in history, which is not reflected in any way in the film’s footage. The film-maker calls his representation “the anti-world,” with a lot of energy and space still revolving around this dead dictator. However, only those who know history well will have the background to fully put the film in context and understand the “space” Stalin still occupies in the world.
In an interview led by Pietro Marcello following the film on the Mubi platform, Loznitsa discusses that the viewer’s education, culture, and upbringing will color their perceptions, so that some will see a tyrant and some a great man. “The thought I wanted to express in this film is very simple: Stalin is an allegory of all these people, who have a little Stalin in them, who share all these outlooks and who compose, like little bricks, this whole apparatus of totalitarian human destruction.” There is a “strangeness” of the people and culture that allows them to follow a dictator and both hate him and mourn him, “either annihilated or forced to serve evil” in a brutal regime. But without providing even a basic context to place the film in history, it fails to reach this goal.
A few interviews with those who experienced Stalin’s death and the funeral would have gone a long way in providing the viewer with information. Many Soviet citizens were confused by their feelings after Stalin’s death. They abhorred him, yet they mourned. This ambiguity and emotional turmoil would have been interesting to explore in the context of the exultant found footage. Perhaps I am asking the director for too much. Even a few days after viewing the film, I feel uneasy about the imagery and have many questions. That discomfort — making me feel the confusion and anxiety of the Soviets after Stalin’s death — may be Loznitsa’s aim. Overall, State Funeral is an interesting curiosity for students of Soviet history, but it leaves too much unsaid.
State Funeral is available to watch on Mubi.com.