This is a quiet but riveting fly-on-the-wall documentary showing the world of Colony 56. For the prisoners locked up for life here, this is a completely isolated, dilapidated maximum security system that allows no hope of escape. To visit, relatives have to travel 8,000 kms deep into Siberia for 60 hours. Incarcerated in this small prison are the worst of the worst: the serial killers, those who have committed multiple murders and rapes, sometimes of women and children.
They have been utterly traumatized and subdued by this brutal system and their hard life. Two thirds of them live a primitive sort of communal existence in this freezing cold gulag. We see the prisoners at rest, at play, at work, working out, washing, eating, meeting with relatives, sharing their innermost thoughts, and so on. The despair, hardship and hopelessness is etched on their unsmiling faces and evident in their broken bodies.
About a third of them do not live in this community, but had their death sentences commuted to life in isolation in a cell five square metres in size (just slightly larger than the bed). They are not allowed to sit or lie on the bed. We see them pacing up and down their tiny cells for the day. That's all they do. For decades. Life for them amounts to hell -- it's torture, really, although they are allowed some basic things like a steady supply of food, one hour of daily exercise in a slightly larger area outside, and visits twice a year. Not surprisingly, some of them wish they had been executed instead (and disturbingly it is difficult not to agree with them). We are shown their zoo-like existence, the despair and fatalism, but not the suicides, mental illness, physical violence and blood. This is not a sensationalist or gory documentary.
There is no narration, apart from a few explicative lines of written text. This movie raises many questions that are simply not answered. Prisoners and guards tell their own stories, sometimes in some detail. Yes, the guards are also in a hell of their own.
We don't see what has caused them to voluntarily adopt such distorted, immobilizing positions whenever a guard comes to the door. They are all extremely obedient and eager to avoid conflict. They all readily admit to the horrors of their crimes (although many seem to have been inebriated at the time). This is not the romanticized prison world of American television or even Shawshank Redemption.
Amazingly, and discomfortingly, Read succeeds in making us feel sorry for them, despite their heinous crimes. I wonder whether this is what the Russian authorities expected when they allowed Read to film. Some viewers may think that this "no mercy for murderers" system is appropriate, but even the strictest proponents of law and order amongst us will pause when they see where this can lead.
They have been utterly traumatized and subdued by this brutal system and their hard life. Two thirds of them live a primitive sort of communal existence in this freezing cold gulag. We see the prisoners at rest, at play, at work, working out, washing, eating, meeting with relatives, sharing their innermost thoughts, and so on. The despair, hardship and hopelessness is etched on their unsmiling faces and evident in their broken bodies.
About a third of them do not live in this community, but had their death sentences commuted to life in isolation in a cell five square metres in size (just slightly larger than the bed). They are not allowed to sit or lie on the bed. We see them pacing up and down their tiny cells for the day. That's all they do. For decades. Life for them amounts to hell -- it's torture, really, although they are allowed some basic things like a steady supply of food, one hour of daily exercise in a slightly larger area outside, and visits twice a year. Not surprisingly, some of them wish they had been executed instead (and disturbingly it is difficult not to agree with them). We are shown their zoo-like existence, the despair and fatalism, but not the suicides, mental illness, physical violence and blood. This is not a sensationalist or gory documentary.
There is no narration, apart from a few explicative lines of written text. This movie raises many questions that are simply not answered. Prisoners and guards tell their own stories, sometimes in some detail. Yes, the guards are also in a hell of their own.
We don't see what has caused them to voluntarily adopt such distorted, immobilizing positions whenever a guard comes to the door. They are all extremely obedient and eager to avoid conflict. They all readily admit to the horrors of their crimes (although many seem to have been inebriated at the time). This is not the romanticized prison world of American television or even Shawshank Redemption.
Amazingly, and discomfortingly, Read succeeds in making us feel sorry for them, despite their heinous crimes. I wonder whether this is what the Russian authorities expected when they allowed Read to film. Some viewers may think that this "no mercy for murderers" system is appropriate, but even the strictest proponents of law and order amongst us will pause when they see where this can lead.
