Like Zodiac and Memories of Murder, Citizen X uses a country’s real-life serial killer case to examine the weight of spending years and years focused on a single horrible question.
Unlike those movies, Citizen X had an answer to its decade-plus riddle by the time it was made, which may be why it got made first: it comes with that handy (and marketable) sense of resolution. Indeed, this is a more conventional piece than its fellows. That partly comes with its format—it’s a made-for-HBO movie—but it also comes from its sensibilities and execution.
For a serial killer film, it’s … almost comfort viewing? It involves disturbing acts—not only the murders Andrei Chikatilo (Jeffrey DeMunn) commits but the way the Soviet Union buries these “decadent” and “Western” crimes under official silence and cruel, petty power plays—but it’s rarely disturbing in form. There’s a distance here, inviting the audience’s contemplation rather than its direct experience. Part of that is avoiding extremes: our main investigator, weary forensic specialist Viktor Burakov (Stephen Rea), is bowed down by all his draining years of searching, but the wear-and-tear he goes through, while affecting, isn’t as major as Paul Avery’s out-of-control drinking problem or Seo Tae-yoon’s loss of faith in empirical proof.
Citizen X plays softly, coaxing intimate but rewarding moments from its actors rather than going big, and, knowing what approach it’s taking, it correctly adjusts its core conflict to suit its mood. (The alternative is that it’s fitting its concerns to its real-life subject matter: the work stalling for years because of bad science means a chunk of this is out of our characters’ control. They can’t meaningfully act on a major scale, so we have to observe them on a smaller one.) This isn’t Burakov vs. Chikatilo, not man vs. man or man vs. evil. It’s man vs. bureaucracy, and that means everything that highlights Burakov’s humanity and individualism is conflict-relevant. That’s why this is almost as much about the bond he forms with his more politically savvy commanding officer, Fetisov (Donald Sutherland), as it is about his long hunt for a killer. It’s half-Zodiac, half-Chernobyl.
It doesn’t have the budget or the scope of any of these comparison points, but it manages to feel like a decent portrait of years passing by all the same. That includes milestones both political—glasnost—and personal: one of the most affecting moments comes when Fetisov finds out years too late that it would’ve been standard procedure at the FBI to rotate Burakov off the case every so often, to give him much-needed rest. Fetisov did what he could, what he knew to fight for, but he didn’t know to fight for that.
Sutherland plays him as crumbling a little as he tries to explain it all to Burakov. His honor won’t permit him to hide from his friend (and his responsibility) that he was too self-conscious with the FBI to admit the truth: “I … pretended that I had known that all along.” Sutherland’s stammer there is beautifully observed.
Sutherland and Rea are the core of the film (“Together you make a wonderful person,” another character tells them), and watching trust and regard develop between them is one of the draws here. But they’re also well-supported by DeMunn and a scene-stealing Max von Sydow, who plays a psychiatrist who provides invaluable assistance to the investigation—once Burakov and Fetisov are allowed to utilize him. DeMunn is stuck with the showiest but also most standard role. He does good work as Chikatilo, but this kind of superficially mild-mannered, guilty, harried serial killer is more familiar than the movie’s other figures.
I suspect writer-director Chris Gerolmo could have pushed Chikatilo to be a little bit more memorable if that had been the part of the story he was most interested in, but again, he’s more attuned to the struggling but well-intentioned characters and to the forces pushing down on them. That’s a rare and interesting angle for a film to take … which means that by writing about how this film is more conventional than its peers, I’ve talked myself around to believing that it’s a pleasantly odd duck in its own right. I’m fond of it.
Citizen X is streaming on HBO Max.
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Lauren James
Lauren James is a writer who wears many different hats (and pen names). She lives in Connecticut with her wife and two cats.
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Anthologized
A little slice of American folklore that feels like it's been here all along.
Streaming Shuffle
You make your royal bed, and you lie in it.
Anthologized
Alone in vast space and timeless infinity: one man in a ghost town.
Streaming Shuffle
A beautiful slice-of-life film that helped make a career.
Department of
Conversation
What did we watch?
The X-Files, “Død Kalm” and “Humbug”
I’ll always grade any horror-toned story with a mysterious, empty ship on a curve, and it’s fair to be up-front about that. (Mysterious, empty spaceships and space stations fall into the same category.) “Død Kalm” has some iffy makeup effects and a cop-out rescue–how great would this be as a standalone, non-X-Files horror tale that ends with the excerpt from Scully’s journal about hearing the wolf at the door?–but it also has effectively haunting atmosphere, a real sense of isolation and dread, and some lovely characterization, especially for Scully. This is a magnificent, unshowy Scully episode, one that highlights both her scientific drive (and its practical applications–loved watching her gather up the disgusting concoction of lemon juice, snow globe water, and anchovy run-off) and her compassion and loyalty (there’s never even the ghost of a chance that she turns on Mulder for the water, and the episode rightly doesn’t even try to convince you there is). I’ve said before that one of the consistent pleasures of this show is that Mulder and Scully are adult professionals, and one of the markers of that here is avoiding some obvious jokes. No, Scully’s not going to squeamish about conducting Mulder’s urinalysis.
I also appreciate it avoiding a moment where Scully specifically bemoans the rapid aging and the effect it’s having on her appearance. That kind of thing can be poignant, and it can also be widely human as opposed to specifically feminine, but it gets used so often and so badly that I think the show was smart to avoid it and keep Scully laser-focused on keeping all of them alive and avoiding what damage she can. Scully pretty much never, at least so far, feels like the writers’ attempt to write “a woman,” with an alien distance implied; she always feels like Scully.
“Humbug” marks our first episode by Darin Morgan, my beloved Flukeman, but while this one is acclaimed, it didn’t quite work for me. The opener, with an Alligator Man’s surprise arrival in a pool revealing him to be a loving suburban husband and father, is endearing and well-calibrated, as is the sheriff’s reaction to Mulder and Scully finding out his past–“Look how skinny I was”–and those bits keep making me smile. Pretty good last few lines, too. But Mulder and Scully both feel off to me. I don’t buy that they’d be this awkward with the circus performers and this inclined to stare and have asides about how sad someone’s life is, and Mulder gets a joke that absolutely doesn’t feel like him at all.
Also, when it comes to acknowledging the tacky-but-established pleasures of rare subculture voyeurism and still treating everyone involved as human, and caring about that, this can’t equal Freaks. Some good weird Americana and Barnum references, though.
The Hound of the Baskervilles
I’m covering this for Year of the Month in a couple of weeks, so for now I’ll just say that Peter Cushing provides one of my favorite takes on Holmes.
Somewhere on my Facebook feed is a screengrab of the aged-looking guy saying “I’m thirty-one years old.”
One of the things Morgan’s episodes get acclaimed for is that he clearly hates Mulder and he undermines the character with jokes at his expense, but I actually find that their weakest element – mainly because he clearly doesn’t fully understand him, treating him as more cruel and incurious than he actually is.
That’s a very relatable screengrab.
That’s good (if irritating) to know re: Morgan. The whole episode, I was thinking that Mulder ought to be in his element here, and he’s not allowed to be at all, and it doesn’t work. He’s curious and compassionate and naturally interested in anything unusual, and while there are ways I could imagine that irritating other characters in “Humbug,” it wouldn’t look like this.
(And while I admittedly laughed at Duchovny doing a cheesy superhero pose at the end of the episode while the Blockhead talks about how awful it would be to go through life like that, it only works because Duchovny is funny about it, not because Mulder ever naturally stands like that or has anything like the kind of pomposity the image is meant to project for someone else to deflate.)
Yeah, it feels like Morgan hates the idea of Mulder, which means he misses the reality of Mulder. The flip side is that he clearly gets and loves Scully, and Morgan’s episodes work as an exploration of her appeal.
Does he actually say that, or is this a Hans Moleman bit?
Interesting points on Humbug – that was one of the episodes that had most stuck with me from my first viewing as a teenager and it held up very well when I revisited it (although Darin Morgan will go on to provide even better ones, for sure). Would quite like to rewatch with a critical eye on the Mulder and Scully writing but alas I’m not currently on the right streaming service to do so…
When I watched the ‘30’s adaptation of Hound of the Baskervilles, I observed that Basil Rathbone was cast on the basis of nose shape, but Cushing is no slouch in that department, either.
Justified, Season Two, Episode Ten, “Debts and Accounts”
“What happens now is not with fate, or history, or God. It’s with you.”
Consequence is so intoxicating. Everyone has to live with what they’ve done now; Mags is hardening, Winona is just barely restraining herself from going full Justified villain, Boyd is becoming even cooler (pursuing crime because he’s good at it rather than for attention), and Raylan is starting to think about getting out of the game. Mags’s rationalisation that Dickie shouldn’t have killed Coover and, if he’d killed Loretta, killing him in response is classic baffling conservative small-town logic when it comes to justice – punishment being logical but prevention being nonsensical, and notice that it’s escalated the entire conflict by driving Dickie into war – for his own ego if nothing else.
Art gets the great monologue here. “You are who you are. Nothing I say has ever made any difference. No punishment that I can dream up will ever change you. [..] You just keep on doing what you do, and I’ll keep cleaning up after you, and sooner or later this problem’s gonna solve itself.” I love it so much – a declaration of autonomy and a refusal to take responsibility for someone else’s decisions. Art knows that everyone gets what they want and everybody pays, that you can’t control other people, and you certainly can’t control what other people want. He’s just gonna focus on surviving whatever happens, and as a result, he doesn’t have people with guns coming after him and his loved ones.
Nobody else in the episode gets it. For everyone else, it’s about trying to control the world. It’s amazing how much smarter Raylan generally looks in episodic plots, where he’s just doing his job (or when he’s informing Mags that she can’t see Loretta, or dropping Loretta off). Boyd is the one exception, although he takes it in the exact opposite direction to Art, gleefully embracing his talents knowing they’re gonna get him killed one day. The advice I got when I was a kid about looking for a career was to chase your passion; the advice I see now is chase your talent, and Boyd is doing what he does because he’s good at it and doesn’t care about impressing anyone anymore.
“If it helped you find your way in the world, Boyd, I guess it was worth it.”
Biggest Laugh: “Now, you know that thing that never happened that we never talked about? We’re not gonna talk about it.”
Biggest Non-Art Laugh: “I don’t know what colour it is, it’s the one with the ringing bells!”
Top Ownage: The final gunfight.
I love that Art monologue, especially with the coolness of the ending: that going on like he is now could get Raylan killed, and that he (Art) sees that coming, and the best warning he can give Raylan is effectively “I’ve already resigned myself to you dying.”
Art and Raylan love each other. I don’t think anything quite shakes Raylan like Art accepting he’s probably going to get himself killed.
Hello from Seattle! Watched The Karate Kid on the flight. Believe it or not, my first tme. Pleasant little movie, perfect for the occasion.
Live Pub Quiz (or “Trivia” as it’s called in the US, maybe?) – not really within the remit of these daily discussions but it’s all I’ve got. First time I’ve done one of these in a while but I’m pleased to report that we were victorious!
I hope that on your side of the pond, it’s still true that one of the best parts of trivia is coming up with a cool team name.
Haha, it’s funny you should say that. We picked the name “Denzel’s Washing’s Done” but the announcer – who is charmingly terrible at all forms of public speaking – read it out as “Denzel Washington’s Done” which loses the play on words and also makes it sound like we were calling for his retirement. Oh well!
The Equalizer 4: No, YOU’RE Done
Wooooooo live trivia and winning!!
Cheech and Chong’s Up in Smoke
Not a lot of big laughs (even under the influence), but it’s such a great distillation of a hyperspecific time and makes it look like so much fun that’s it hard not to be charmed anyway. Also the home of two of the greatest custom cars in movie history (the Love Machine and the “Fiberweed” van)
Year of the Month update!
This August, we’ll be covering 1959. Check out all these movies, albums, books, et al
TBD: Bridgett Taylor: Pillow Talk/Some Like It Hot
Aug. 15th: Gillian Nelson: I Captured the King of the Leprechauns
Aug. 20th: John Bruni: Shadows
Aug. 22nd: Gillian Nelson: Khrushchev Goes to Disneyland
Aug. 25th: Sam Scott: Imitation of Life
Aug. 27th: Lauren James: The Hound of the Baskervilles
Aug. 28th: Cliffy73: Sleeping Beauty
Aug. 29th: Gillian Nelson: The Monorail
Aug. 31st: Tristan J. Nankervis: North by Northwest
And in September, we’re covering these movies, albums, books, from 1938!
TBD: Cori Domschot: Bringing Up Baby
TBD: Bridgett Taylor: Rebecca
Sept. 22nd: Sam Scott: Holiday