Shadrin: A Triple Agent Wojciech Bockenheim Poland 2006
Does a popular documentary need an emotional climax? Bowling for Columbine certainly seemed to think it did by having Michael Moore needlessly confront Charlton Heston for being the figurehead of the US National Rifle Association. Since Moore’s film had spent much time deftly suggesting that the USA’s obsession with firearms might have been more of a cause than say bowling or computer games, the taut conversation with Heston as a finale seemed marginal at best, more likely a cynical ploy on Moore’s part to give his film closure. Shadrin pulls the same stunt but better yet the act still seems forced.
A documentary about Nikolai Artamonov, a Soviet Naval captain who defected to the West in 1959 with his then Polish girlfriend Ewa, the film traces his journey across the Baltic and his subsequent employment in Washington. As his strategic value diminished Artamonov (renamed Shadrin) was gradually forced into intelligence as a double agent before disappearing on a mission to Vienna in 1975. Finally in the 1980s Artamonov was declared dead but nobody would inform his wife Ewa how it happened.
Alone it’s a compelling tale of Cold War skulduggery told in a contemporary documentary framework (testimony and re-enactment) until that emotional climax looms. At this point Shadrin starts to hit upon something bigger but stumbles when the staginess of the confrontation is contemplated. Similar to Bowling for Columbine the dilemma lies around trying to partially resolve a fractious issue with no straight answers with a confrontation.
Occasionally during the film Vitaly Yurchenko, a Soviet defector himself, is shown crowing in the Washington Spy Museum about the minutiae of his former trade to flesh out the story. Yurchenko, the man in charge of the operation to spirit Artamonov from Vienna into the Eastern Block, holds a version of events which is in opposition to a retired Soviet intelligence chief in Moscow who is also interviewed. Yurchenko states that the death was a mishap with the Chloroform used to abduct Artamonov whilst the former chief bluntly states that it was murder calculated to protect Yurchenko’s status as a double agent himself.
In the final encounter when Ewa is filmed piling her grief and dismay upon Yurchenko he bluntly states that Artamonov was a “casualty of the cold war”. Cold comfort indeed to the long widowed Ewa who lost her husband whilst Yurchenko is gradually becoming a US citizen, benefiting from lucrative book deals despite being the actual traitor. It’s a horrifically uncomfortable few minutes but what kind of resolution could the director of Shadrin, Wojciech Bockenheim, have anticipated other than what is shown? Artamonov’s story is re-aired and Ewa Shadrin gets the threadbare satisfaction of talking to the man who may have killed her husband to protect his position. We will never know, nor will she. But the pain of what it might feel like to be a victim of a largely hidden war such as the Cold War is numbingly brought to life.
