Naslednyy prints respubliki: A dusty artifact that shows its age

Is this thing worth the time?

Honestly, only if you are a completionist for Soviet-era cinema or you have a weird fascination with how period dramas from the mid-30s handle political identity. If you want something snappy or fun, look elsewhere. People who love historical context might dig the costumes, but anyone looking for a tight script is going to be disappointed pretty quickly.

There is a specific moment early on where a character stares out a window for what feels like an eternity. I checked my watch. It was a solid forty seconds of nothing. It felt like the director was trying to force a sense of gravity, but it just made me want to grab a snack. 🍎

Nikolai Urvantsev tries his best to anchor the mess, but the dialogue is so stiff it’s like listening to someone read a manual on how to be a revolutionary. The staging is very stage-y, if that makes sense. Everyone walks into the room, stops, delivers a monologue, and walks out. It’s not exactly naturalistic.

I found myself thinking of The Spoilers while watching this, mainly because of the sheer difference in how they handle action. Where that film feels like it has a pulse, this one feels like it's being kept alive by a ventilator. The weight of the era is heavy, and it frankly makes the whole thing a bit exhausting to sit through.

Small details that caught my eye

• The way the extras seem to lose interest in the background action whenever the camera lingers too long.
• The weird, overly dramatic lighting in the interior scenes—it’s like they were using a single, incredibly aggressive candle.
• There is a chair in the background of the third scene that looks like it was borrowed from a different production entirely.

It’s not all bad, though. There are flashes of genuine craft. Some of the framing during the dialogue-heavy segments is actually quite sharp. It shows that someone behind the lens knew what they were doing, even if the script was working against them the whole time.

It makes me think of The Bride of Hate, which also had that weird, suffocating feeling of a story trapped by its own premise. This one doesn't quite escape that trap either. It’s a bit of a relic, really. A dusty one, but a relic nonetheless. 🕰️

Anyway, don't expect to be changed by this. It’s just a movie. Some people will argue it’s a masterwork of its specific political moment, but I think it’s just a bit clunky. Sometimes a movie is just a movie, and that’s perfectly fine.