‘Navalny’ Review: Russian Dissident Doc Plays Out Like An Entertaining Thriller [Sundance]

What do you have to say to the Russian people in the event of your death? Filmmaker Daniel Roher (“Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and the Band”) asks his subject, Russian political dissident Alexei Navalny, at the beginning of his engrossing new doc “Navalny.” “C’mon,” Navalny scoffs, dismissively, as if highly attuned to Roher’s “gotcha” question he could frame posthumously in the case of the political agitator’s untimely death. Though Navalny doesn’t provide Roher with his soundbite, illustrating his media savvy which will soon come into play, what this moment acutely sets up are the high stakes of the dissenter’s life. As a political adversary of Russian President and authoritarian Vladimir Putin and having already survived one assassination attempt, Navalny risks it all if he continues to poke the big bad Russian bear.

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A documentary shot in the wake of Navalny’s August 2020 assassination attempt, “Navalny” plays like an entertaining espionage thriller and acts as a rousing tale of standing up for the right thing no matter the cost. The background context, for those unaware, Navalny had been the Russian opposition leader since 2013; a constant thorn in the side of Putin, the Russian President, and former KGB foreign intelligence officer who runs his government like a mob and doesn’t take kindly to be challenged publicly.

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“Navalny” essentially starts in Siberia in the summer of 2020 and behaves like an intriguing murder mystery. After years of calling out Putin’s despotic rule— a regime utterly hostile to any form of dissent— Navalny is poisoned, and a plane traveling from Siberia to Moscow has to make an emergency landing. Navalny is dying. As his wife Yulia Navalnaya rushes to his aide, and Siberian doctors try and stonewall everyone with answers, Navalny is eventually evacuated to Berlin where more forthcoming doctors reveal that the Russian activist has been infected with Novichok, a nerve agent that’s Putin and his goon’s signature kill-sign toxin of choice (mainly because all traces of it leave the body quickly, making proper post-mortems untraceable; “What the fuck, that is so stupid!?!” Navalny says in the hospital, in utter disbelief that Putin would be so brazen and careless).

While he recovers in Berlin with the full intention of going back to Russia—and the army of an already gigantic social media following at his disposal—Navalny partners up with various groups to start his own investigation. One of those groups is the remarkable data investigative journalism outlet Bellingcat and another is the independent news website Insider.

And Roher and his documentary crew are there to document it all. What ensues is a propulsive, fly-on-the-wall look at an extremely clever investigation, much of which is made possible by Bellingcat, who draws outside the lines of traditional journalism, buying information on the dark web, and able to procure insane amounts of data. Through their supercharged form of data trigonometry, hypothesis, trial and error, and investigative process of elimination, they are soon able to positively conclude members of Putin’s Federal Security Service (FSB) were onboard Navalny’s flight to Serbia, tracked him there, and poisoned him. In fact, they’re soon able to determine that the FSB have been following and monitoring Navalny’s every move for years.

In a breathtaking scene that’s part “Jackass” and “Punk’d” pranks, and something out of Laura Poitras’ chilling Edward Snowden doc, “Citizenfour,” Navalny and journalists and data experts from Bellingcat and Insider call up members of the FSB, posing as a senior agent on the phone trying to understand what went wrong with Navalny’s assassination attempt. And of course, one of them, Putin spy, Konstantin Kudryavtsev, is totally duped, essentially confirms it all, obliviously answering all their questions, outside of a few too-sensitive for phone call confirmations (not for nothing, Kudryavtsev has been missing since that call and is suspected of having been murdered for his huge blunder).

This “Crank Yankers”-like moment is not only unbelievable and unbelievably amusing, it also speaks to Navalny’s appeal. Beyond his role as a political rebel, the man is charming, shrewd, cunning, and with a mischievous streak to his form of agitprop, perhaps revealing why Putin—who refuses ever to speak Navalny’s name— despises him so much. Navalny is also cocky and annoying, something of a sly talkshow host that likely gets under the Russian leader’s skin. Eventually, many damaging investigative reports co-published by The Insider and Bellingcat in co-operation with CNN and Der Spiegel, are publicly released, further injuring the Kremlin’s reputation as criminal thugs (which of course are all strenuously denied, the doc showing throughout how the many state-owned Fox News equivalents of Russian media are happily doing the government’s propaganda bidding using smears, lies, disinformation and all and any attempts to discredit any anti-Putin reporting).

“Navalny” is an interesting doc because on one side, it’s talking about the death of democracy in Russia and how the corrupt thieves that are in power—Putin and his cronies—have ruined the country and turned it into a tyrannical police state. On the other, there’s the blue-eyed Navalny, grinning his Cheshire cat smile, even as he has a major brush with death. While this twinkle toes-like, light-on-its-feet element threatens to undermine the seriousness behind the doc and almost entertains at the expense of its subject, Roher manages to thread this needle even if “Navalny” sometimes feels a little too glib and slight.

At its best, “Navalny” plays like a taut and tense investigative procedural or spy thriller with a good dose of humor. The reality is though, there are real lives at risk here. “Navalny” beings and ends with the Russian opposition leader about to renter Russia on January 17, 2021, and instead of a triumphant return and victory, it all gets too grim and real. For all his prankster-ish games and his smug needling of the Kremlin, what Navalny receives, in the end, is brutal imprisonment (he remains there to this day and almost died from a hunger strike) and the designation as a terrorist and extremist in Russia. If he’ll ever see the light of day—and or if he conveniently dies the day before he gets out, anything is possible—remains to be seen.

Navalny’s story is incomplete, and “Navalny” is simply the latest chapter. Roher’s doc ends awkwardly, raising a fist in the air with inspirational music, trying to act as a portrait of one man’s courage and heroism against the tyranny of Russia’s Putin. While the doc does serve as a chilling reminder and warning about the abuse of authoritarians—and how completely fucked a country and be once that despot has entrenched himself in the fabric of how everything runs—it’s hard to swallow the film’s would-be inspirational pill while a gaunt and hollowed-out Navalny rots in jail. “You’re not allowed to give up, utilize the huge power,” Navalny finally says, in his message to the Russian people. “Navalny” warns that the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing. The distressing flip side—the kind of severe real-world intimidation and terrorization that Putin and his assailants routinely employ— at least for Navalny, is, what he is willing to sacrifice in the name of his country, may be everything. [B]

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