234. Russian director Aleksei German, Jr.’s sixth feature film “Dovlatov” (2018) (Russia): A soulful reduction of the travails of a Russian writer of repute, intelligently collapsed into six interesting, representative days in 1971 of Brezhnev-era USSR, providing the viewer a mirror image of what director Aleksei German, Sr., endured as a creative filmmaker battling censors in that same timeframe.

“Dovlatov was a sex symbol, an Elvis Presley, a legend (in Russia)” – director Aleksei German, Jr., on the writer Dovlatov,  in an interview published in Sight and Sound

“I saw Brezhnev in my dream. We drank pina coladas and discussed socialism. He promised to help (me get published).” Dovlatov to his mother, waking up in the morning on the first of the “6 days of 1971” shown in the film

Dovlatov is an exceptional film and one of the most mature cinematic works made in 2018. Why is it exceptional?  It encapsulates the world and travails of Russian writer Sergei  Dovlatov (1941-90), friend and contemporary of eventual Nobel Prize winner Joseph Brodsky  and their interactions in Leningrad (now St Petersberg) preceding the decision of Brodsky to emigrate to the United States within a part-realistic, part-fictional representative 6 days of 1971. The year 1971 is typical of a particular Soviet mindset within former USSR (now primarily Russia, having subsequently divested off several Republics as independent countries) when Leonid Brezhnev was its leader and its budding writers and filmmakers had to be included in official Unions (thus toeing official points of view) to flourish in their respective creative fields. Dovlatov was forced to work on a shipyard’s newsletter as a journalist and write on subjects that pleased his employers (the government) while all his 300 odd creative pieces of writing would get rejected by publishers of books and journals.

Dovlatov (Milan Maric), his wife and his daughter stare at the hopelessness
of Dovlatov's future with a miserly income as a journalist
 and no scope of acceptance as a writer

When director Aleksei German, Jr., makes a film on writer Dovlatov and his travails to get his writings published, the filmmaker is merely mirroring the troubles of his own father Aleksei German, Sr. to make his own films in the same time period in USSR.  It was in 1971, the year underlined and projected in the movie Dovlatov, that Aleksei German, Sr., made his film Trial on the Road, a film banned by the Brezhnev regime and one that made the film director famous worldwide when it was released in 1986, when Gorbachev came to power. The film had argued that heroes and traitors were the same, only a matter of differing perspectives.

The wry humour/irony of the Trial on the Road and the problems of his famous father in getting his film released are recast by German, Jr. in Dovlatov through the frustrations of the writer Sergei Dovlatov using a 6-day period of 1971. In that short period, the script includes a bizarre group of actors dressed up as the famous  Russian writers Tolstoy, Gogol, and Dostoyevsky, who evidently know little of the writings of these worthies they represent and mouth inane praises of current political views that are opposite of what those writers had stood for.  The script includes a suicide of an intellectual, black marketing of books, and a sequence where Dovlatov pretends to be a government official arm-twisting the black-market bookseller to divulge the names of the buyers “who are enemies of the state.” While it is humorous to the viewer, the bookseller is none the wiser.  During that short period, the viewer gets a glimpse of how the official book publishers/censors function, how dissidents are picked up by secret police in open restaurants and even an event in a prison camp that Dovlatov witnesses. There is also Dovlatov separated from his wife due to his financial situation and teetering on the edge of divorce proceedings and doting on his loving daughter for whom he hopes to procure a German (a reference to the director’s name, perhaps?) doll from the black market.

Doting father Dovlatov and daughter. The bag contains
yet another rejected manuscript.

An "enemy of the State"  picked up by the police in public while eating a meal

The film Dovlatov has two contrarian aspects: the moody, depressive world of artists who cannot find freedom of expression and the hilarious, wry comedy that involves names of writers and contents of their works contrasted with live realistic situations in 1971 Leningrad.  The soulful, contemplative world is captured visually with fog and snow (the cinematographer is the talented Lukasz Zal of Cold War, Ida, and Loving Vincent fame) and visual compositions of soldiers marching by as a dejected Dovlatov walks by staring at his bleak future while refusing to compromise on the content of his writings with the demands of the State.  The acerbic comedy alternately lifts up the viewer (assuming of course that the viewer is well acquainted with literature).  When a woman is attracted to Dovlatov, who appears to be single, he introduces himself as Franz Kafka and the lady does not blink an eyelid! (The film audience in which I was seated did not react either!)

"Franz Kafka" interacts with one of his many lady admirers

There is a major problem with Dovlatov, the film. The screenplay will only make sense if the viewer is well-exposed to European literature. Brodsky would be another Russian name to many who watch the film, unless they were aware that Dovlatov’s friend went on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature soon after he immigrated to USA.

This critic too has yet to read Dovlatov’s famous books The Suitcase: a novel and Pushkin Hills (published long after Dovlatov followed Brodsky and immigrated to USA) but had been  lucky to have read a couple of Dovlatov’s written pieces in English  in the New Yorker magazine published in the 80s. American author Kurt Vonnegut, Jr, had praised some of those New Yorker pieces written by Dovlatov . Hopefully the lovely film Dovlatov will prod some viewers to make an effort to read those books and articles in the New Yorker and discover the brilliance of written works. If Russians today idolize him the way Americans idolize Elvis Presley the singer, Dovlatov’s writings must be exceptional.

Dovlatov (back to the camera) is a witness to an escape attempt
at a forced labour camp

There are several praiseworthy aspects to the film. One of those is the ability of script to compact the stifling atmosphere of censorship and its effect on creative people’s lives using Dovlatov, the writer, as a prime example. When Dovlatov encounters an actress dressed as Natasha Rostova (the main female character in Tolstoy’s War and Peace) Dovlatov comments dryly to her “You are very real. And better,” alluding to the state of the character towards the end of the novel.  What Dovlatov acerbically implies here in the script will only make sense to those familiar with the state of the character towards the end in Tolstoy’s novel. The film deserved recognition for its screenplay by film combines talents of Russia, Serbia and Poland.

Manuscripts/pages of books on the floor: a seminal shot of the film,
with Dovlatov dolefully inspecting one of the sheets 

It is sad that this film attracted barely 30 odd viewers at its screening during the International Film Festival of Kerala in Trivandrum (in contrast to other films at the festival that attracted large audiences) and that motley crowd evidently did not react to the humour offered by the script, possibly because they were not familiar with Russian and European literature. While Dovlatov, the film, might not appear as obviously politically critical of Russia as German, Jr.'s earlier work Under Electric Clouds (2015), the former is a more mature work, assuming of course the viewer is able to pick up the subtleties of the film. This critic is confident that Dovlatov, the film, will gain recognition with time and that in turn will lead more people to read the writings of the author Dovlatov.

In the Sight and Soundinterview director Aleksei German, Jr., makes it clear that though the film is obviously critical of the Brezhnev regime, he had full support from the current government officials in Russia.

P.S. Dovlatov is one of the top 10 films of 2018 for the author.

Read More

• Share

Russian maestro Aleksandr Sokurov speaks to Jugu Abraham on Grigori Kozintsev and Andrei Tarkovsky, titans of Russian cinema

Background note on Russian filmmakers Sokurov and Kozintsev

Russian film director Aleksandr Sokurov (66) is famous for diverse reasons. Some recall his experimental feature film Russian Ark (2002) filmed in a single, unedited 90-minute shot with over 2000 actors in elaborate costumes and 3 live orchestras exploring several sections of the Hermitage museum in Saint Petersburg (Leningrad). Some recall his more recent feature film Faust(2011), honoured with the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. The late film critic Susan Sontag, while including two Sokurov feature films among her 10 favorite films of the 1990s, stated “There is no director active today whose films I admire so much.” Musician Nick Cave, in an interview published in the British newspaper “The Independent,” revealed “I wept and wept from start to finish” on viewing Sokurov’s Mother and Son (1997), a poetic experimental feature film with minimal spoken lines.

In 1998, Sokurov made a documentary called Saint Petersburg Diary: Kozintsev’s Flat. It is indeed rare that a famous filmmaker makes a film on another filmmaker’s lodgings. Russian film maestro Grigori Kozintsev’s (1905-73) directorial career spanned both the silent and the sound era of film. Kozintsev is renowned for his two black-and-white Shakespeare films Hamlet(1964) and King Lear (1971)--his last films--made in collaboration with friend and composer Dimitri Shostakovich and Nobel Prize winning novelist Boris Pasternak.  The silent 1929 Kozintsev film, The New Babylon, co-directed by Leonid Trauberg, had Soviet film directors Vsevolod Pudovkin and Sergei Gerasimov as actors, and composer Shostakovich providing music. The film and the intended music for the silent film ran into problems with the Soviet censors who demanded over 20% cuts before its domestic release, as the film was an obvious avant garde, anti-war film.  A slightly longer version was released in 1983 in Russia without Shostakovich’s music. However, the restored “original length” version became available in 2010, long after the filmmakers and the composer  had died. This was because a nitrate print of the film’s uncut length was found intact with Cinematheque Suisse (Switzerland) to which the Shostakovich’s music was finally added as originally intended.  (Shostakovich had apparently refused to add his music to the earlier truncated versions of the film approved by the censors.)

The neglected and hungry soldier in Kozintsev's The New Babylon (1929)

Cordelia and Lear interact towards the end of Kozintsev's King Lear (1971)

Subsequent to his travails with The New Babylon, Kozintsev made his Maxim trilogy during Stalin’s regime. The police commissioner of Detroit, Michigan, USA acting as censor, banned Kozintsev's Youth of Maxim (1935)—the first part of the Maxim trilogy--in the Thirties as being "pure Soviet propaganda and likely to instil class hatred of the existing government and social order of the United States." That ban was short-lived.

The Sokurov interview with Jugu Abraham, author of the blog Movies that Make You Think,  Dec 2017

Sokurov was not merely an admirer of Kozintsev but equally of the later film maestro Andrei Tarkovsky. Intriguingly, Tarkovsky never discussed Kozintsev in his writings on filmmaking. Indian film critic Jugu Abraham interviewed Sokurov with the aid of an interpreter in Trivandrum, India, where Sokurov was being honoured in December 2017 with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the International Film Festival of Kerala. The resulting interview revealed a lot about Kozintsev, Sokurov and Tarkovsky, three major filmmakers, active in different decades of Russian film history, with unusual linkages.

Alexandr Sokurov (right) with Jugu Abraham,
after the interview (December 2017)

The interview:

Q.  I was intrigued that you made a documentary film on director Grigori Kozintsev’s flat. What made you pick up the subject?  Was it your interest in Kozintsev as a filmmaker? Did he have an influence on you? Did you like his way of filmmaking?

A. I was much, much younger than Kozintsev, so I never met him. But I was a very good friend of his widow. I visited her house many times.  When I used to visit her there, often there were routine problems in the flat like repairing a leaking pipe and I would help her with the repairs. So we had a very good heart-warming relationship. For the most part, all the Soviet directors liked Kozintsev because he was a truly honest person. He would never betray anyone. He was a moral authority for Soviet filmmakers. Kozintsev was the only person who truly defended Andrei Tarkovsky when he was under fire from the Soviet Government. Kozintsev’s film adaptations of Shakespeare were outstanding. Nobody in the world ever made films that way. 

Q.  You knew Andrei Tarkovsky very well.  I noted that Tarkovsky never mentions Kozintsev in his extensive writings on cinema. Do you know why?

A. That is too bad that Andrei forgot to mention this great director in his writings, a man who was always helping him. It happens with many great filmmakers. They forget to mention the most important person who helped them. It is very bad, that’s too bad.

Q. Did Kozintsev’s filmmaking influence you?

A. I can’t say he influenced me directly because he had his own style and I have my own style. But everyone appreciated his level of professionalism.  There were many directors in the world at that level at that time. What is important is that Kozintsev was able to adapt western and historical concepts in Soviet cinema, and in that sense, outstanding.  Unfortunately, he was in so many ways controlled by Soviet censors. It was a big obstacle for him and this prevented him from creating many films he wanted to make.

Q. Do you have any opinions about Kozintsev’s directorial partner on his early silent films, Leonid Trauberg?

A. Kozintsev worked with Trauberg when he was very young. For me, Kozintsev’s best films were made when he worked alone, when he was older. With Trauberg, we can only connect with the beginnings of his career. Kozintsev’s collaboration with Trauberg speaks a lot about the director; that he was able to cooperate with and be in continuous dialogue with another important director, film after film. Not many directors are able to do that.

Q. Just like Kozintsev, you have taken a lot of interest in literature and in photography. Do you see that as a commonality?

A. The difference is that Kozintsev’s interest in literature and photography was evident towards the end of his life, while for me literature and photography were important from the very beginning. Kozintsev started as a revolutionary. He believed in radical art connected with socialism. This affected his earlier career. When he got rid of his childish diseases, he started to think differently.

Q. He is the only Soviet director who had his films banned briefly both in Soviet Russia and in USA ...

A. No, his films were not banned in Soviet Russia.. I don’t know about USA.

Q. I am referring to his silent film The New Babylon (1929).

A. Ah, yes. But that film was allowed to be shown later. Kozintsev was always among the top five Soviet directors like Eisenstein, Pudovkin and others. He was always considered as a classic director during his life-time. As film students, we all knew about this great director who lived in Leningrad (St. Petersburg). He had a good salary and quite a big apartment. He was never forgotten.

Q.  You had once stated that cinema cannot achieve what a novel or a painting can achieve. Could you elaborate?

A. Cinema is too concerned, too worried about showing everything, every detail. Unlike literature where there is an element of absence of the author in the work, everything is never totally said; there is always a mystery until the very, very end. In cinema, even though we try to present details, we are never able to show a person in the way a writer can.

(Though Sokurov would have been happy to answer more questions, his accompanying Russian managers insisted he had other commitments.  For those interested, the restored uncut 2010 version of Kozintsev’s The New Babylon is available free to view on "Youtube.")

The unforgettable sequence from the restored
version of Kozintsev's  The New Babylon (1929)

P.S. The author's in-depth reviews of Kozintsev's King Lear (1971) and The New Babylon (1929), Tarkovsky's Solaris (1972) and Mirror (1975), and Sokurov's Faust (2011) were posted on this blog earlier.. (Click on the name of the film in this postscript to access the specific review.)

Read More

• Share

218. Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev’s film “Nelyubov” (Loveless) (2017) (Russia), based on his co-scripted original screenplay with Oleg Negin: Indirectly encapsulating the state of politics in Russia from late 2012 to December 2015 and religion as practised today in that country.

On the very obvious level, Loveless is a modern tale of a middle-class family living in Moscow. Boris and Zhenya, the parents of a 12 year old schoolboy Aloysha, are on the verge of a divorce.  This might appear to be a tale of the disappearance of the anguished kid deprived of parental love—but the film is much more.  What is not so obvious in Loveless, is precisely what makes the film outstanding—as is the case of any Zvyagintsev feature film. The key to appreciating Zvyagintsev is to “suspend your belief” in the obvious and re-evaluate what was presented. And every shot of his films is loaded with silent commentary for any astute viewer to pick up and relish.

There is a special flavour that exudes from original screenplays conceived by directors in contrast to adapted screenplays based on novels, plays and historical events. That  flavour will make an erudite viewer sit up. Barring the exception of Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Banishment (built on the framework of the US novelist William Saroyan’s The Laughing Matter) all four other Zvyagintsev’s films are based on the original screenplays.  The last four of the five Zvyagintsev feature films were co-scripted with Oleg Negov. If there is one common thread that binds all the five works --it would be love and absence of love, often within the walls of a family. To the more astute viewer, there are two other common perspectives in all the five films: the political state of Russia and religion in Russia, as practised by the Russian Orthodox Church today.  These statements are explained in the paragraphs that follow.

Aloysha: at the mercy of parents who want to divorce

Zvygaintsev in an interview with Nancy Tartaglione published in Nov 2017 in www.deadline.com stated (http://deadline.com/2017/11/loveless-andrey-zvyagintsev-oscars-interview-news-1202209229/) “These events (in Loveless) take place against a very specific historical background. The film begins in October of 2012, when people were full of hope and were waiting for changes in the political climate, when they thought that the state would listen to them. But 2015 is the climax of their disappointment: The feeling that there is no hope for positive changes, the atmosphere of aggression and the militarization of society, and the feeling that they are surrounded by enemies.” This statement is further testimony to what any Zvyagintsev film enthusiast already knew; that all Zvyagintsev films’ plots can be viewed as political metaphors/allegories. Zvyagintsev’s and Negin’s Aloysha is an obvious allegory of Russia today.

Boris: the father who is more worried about keeping his job after the divorce
than looking after his son

Zhenya: the mother more interested in a richer lifestyle after the divorce

Zvyagintsev’s first film The Return was about two young boys who grew up in the apparent absence of love from their biological father and their affinity to him when he does return.  When the kids understand their father’s love, it is too late. In his second film Banishment, the focus is on love and absence of love between mother and father, as also between father and children.  When the husband ultimately appreciates his wife’s love for him, it is too late. In Zvyagintsev’s third film Elena, a rich man has a hedonistic daughter from his first marriage, a grown-up offspring whom he loves but that love is only reciprocated by her in an aloof manner. Elena, also has a biological son, daughter-in law and grandson from an earlier marriage, whom she loves and cares for financially. The focus of Elena is also on the love or the lack of love between husband and wife. In Zvyagintsev’s fourth film Leviathan, the husband forgives his erring wife and obviously intensely loves her and their son.  That film had included a sermon by a Russian Orthodox priest in the church (towards the end of the film) that stated "Love dwells not in strength but in love". Thus, love or lack of it within the family connects all the five Zvyagintsev films.

Apart from Zvyaginstev, much of the high quality of the last four films ought to be attributed to co-scriptwriter Oleg Negin. Their collaboration is akin to late career collaborations on scripts of director Andrei Konchalovsky with Elena Kiseleva, of director Krzysztof Kieslowski with Krzysztof Piesiewicz, of director Aleksandr Sokurov with Yuri Arabov, and of director Ken Loach with Paul Laverty. Each of these collaborations has been spectacular. In Loveless, the script reflects the socio-political Russia (mention of the Ukraine war on television is like a loss of a child to father Russia), partially cut trees preparing the ground for more concrete constructions, while older buildings are crumbling, uninhabited and neglected. (In doing so, they seem to be paying a silent tribute to Andrey Tarkovsky’s films Stalker and Solaris.)

Loveless may seem to be lacking in the religious fervour of the scriptwriters more obvious in the earlier works such as Leviathan and Banishment.  Is it really so? Boris and his co-worker at work talk about their boss (they refer to him as “Beardy”) as a fundamentalist Christian who wants all his employees to be happily married, if they want to keep their jobs.  Another worker, it is revealed, who was not happily married, paid someone to act as his wife and progeny at an official get together to keep his job.  Zvyagintsev revealed in an interview that the character of Beardy was built on a real Russian industrialist with a similar mindset.  Zvyagintsev is a deeply religious director who is disapproving fundamentalist religious fervour indirectly in Loveless.  Similarly, when Zhenya’s mother invokes God briefly, it is not a religious outburst but more of a reflex comment from a “Stalin in skirts,” as Boris describes his mother-in-law, invoking God.  Zvyagintsev and Negin are clearly pointing to the lack of understanding of religion of those who profess their faith but act to the contrary. Another commentary on Russia today!

When the police force gives up on locating Aloysha, social groups get into the act without any monetary reward. Even though Zvyagintsev protests that his films are universal and not social or political, it might be a strange coincidence that the age of Aloysha is precisely the number of years Putin has headed the Russian government.

The mother is more concerned with her smartphone
than looking after her biological son,
who she claims is even beginning to smell like his father

The absence of love in Loveless is not merely between a set of divorcing parents and their growing son.  There is no love lost between Zhenya and her mother, the “Stalin in skirts,” who lives alone in a fortress, hardly ever in touch with her daughter.  In the search for the missing Aloysha, the police find a body of a similar 12 year old—evidently there are other Aloyshas in Russia today. Perhaps the current generation is behaving thus because of how their parents behaved and acted religious in the past when they did not translate their belief into actions.

What are the reasons for these instances of absence of love? Loveless suggests that it could be hedonism, the love for modern smart-phones overtaking interest in their immediate family, or it could even be the pursuit of wealth and comfort.

Much of these opinions are not said overtly but effectively captured by Zvyagintsev and cinematographer Mikhail Krichman, as they did together in four of the five Zvyagintsev films. Krichman’s camera lingers to capture more than the action, he focuses on the environment that plays a silent role in the events. Krichman is emerging as a major cinematographer alive and making films today.  The best sequence of Loveless is the silent scream of Aloysha, reminiscent of actor Rod Steiger’s final anguished scream towards the end in The Pawnbroker (1964).

Zvyagintsev is also a master of using silent sequences for effect followed by pulsating minimalist music. He had used Philip Glass’ music very effective in both Elena and Leviathan. In Banishment, he had used the music of Arvo Part.  In Loveless, he asked Evgueni and Sacha Galperine, a French duo, to compose the music by merely providing the story.  They came up with “11 cycles of E” made of one note and one rhythm, which is quite similar to the soundtrack of Elena.  The Galperines won the European Film Award for Best Composer with the interesting citation that stated the intelligent piano effects made the score work like an extra character added to the unfortunate family.

The first and closing sequences of both Elena and Loveless have a similar and familiar Zvyagintsev signature: the sound/images of a hooded crow cawing on leafless trees in bleak and cold exterior shots of an urban setting. It is depressing. Yet the subjects of these five films are broadly, truly universal. 

One of the final sequences with "Russia" in bold
to reiterate the unsaid 

Is this the best work of Zvyagintsev? Though the film Lovelessis remarkable in most respects, the lengthy hedonistic scenes make the previous works of the director more palatable.Leviathan was definitely more complex than Loveless. Yet Lovelessmight prove to have more universal appeal than his other profound works.

P.S. The film Loveless won the Jury Prize award at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival and the Best Film award at the London and the Zagreb Film Festivals. It won the Silver Frog at the Cameraimage festival for its cinematographer Mikhail Krichman, who also won the best cinematographer award at the European Film Awards. Zvyagintsev won the Best Director award at the Asia Pacific Screen awards.  The four Zvyagintsev films The Return, Banishment, Elena, and Leviathan have been reviewed earlier on this blog. (Click on the name of the film in this post script to access each review). Loveless is one of the top 10 films of 2017 for the author. Zvyagintsev is one of the top 10 active film directors for the author.

Read More

• Share

206. Russian director Andrei Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky’s film “Belye nochi pochtalona Alekseya Triyapitsyna ” (The Postman’s White Nights)(2014) (Russia): An amazing, profound elegy reconciling one to the fact that good and evil coexist in Russia, then and now

“Where does this music come from? From the heavens or from the ground? Now it’s stopped.”

--- A quote from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, used as the end quote for The Postman’s White Nights

Any serious Konchalovsky film viewer will recall that the end-quotes of his films, when used, are very important to put the tale one just viewed in its intended perspective.  He did use it with aplomb in Runaway Train (a quote from Shakespeare’s Richard III) and Shy People (a quote from Revelations in the Bible). What is the music he is referring to? It would be too simplistic to consider it to be the music of the film’s composer Eduard Artemev, the talented composer of Tarkovsky’s three monumental works—Solaris, Stalker and Mirror, and the important Russian sci-fi film Dr Ivan’s Silence. The music is most likely to be a metaphor for the waves of good and evil forces that an average Russian encounters in life and learns to live with over time.

The real postman Aleksey Triyapitsyn "acts" as himself--his army clothes
indicate his status of a paid government employee

Now, Andrei Konchalovsky’s career can easily be divided into three distinct phases: pre-Hollywood work in former USSR, some with classmate Andrei Tarkovsky (The Steamroller and the Violin, Ivan’s Childhood, Andrei Rublyev) and some alone; his Hollywood phase (which included Runaway Train, Maria’s Lovers and Shy People); and the recent post Hollywood phase in Russia working with the obviously unusually talented co-scriptwriter Elena Kiseleva. The Postman’s White Nights marks the beginning of this exciting new phase in Konchalovsky’s career when he begins his collaboration with co-scriptwriter Elena Kiseleva. His second film with Kiseleva was Paradise (2016). He is currently working on a third film with Kiseleva, tentatively titled Il peccato. This critic could see parallels in this fascinating collaboration with that of the late Polish maestro Krzysztof Kieślowski’s collaboration with co-scriptwriter Krzysztof Piesiewicz, towards the evening of his respective career that resulted in his masterpieces Dekalog, The Three Colourstrilogy, and The Double Life of Veronique.

The Postman’s White Nights is one of the finest works in recent years from Russia that can rub shoulders with the cinematic gems of Andrei Zvyagintsev. The depth of the film can be lost on a casual viewer while it can offer profound commentary on Russia for the mature viewer.

The rural Russian folk smoke endlessly, drink tea and vodka, and die often alone

What did Konchalovsky and Kiseleva do in The Postman’s White Nights that will stun the viewer? They scripted a tale set in a rural setting where the village school is in ruins; men are turning alcoholics and survive on pensions; newspapers, bread, medicines, are brought from the nearest town by a postman, an alcoholic in the past, currently a bachelor; with one other regular government employee posted in this village an unpopular lady mayor, living alone with a young son, because she fines folk caught trawling fish in the nearby water bodies to win brownie points with her unseen superiors.

Everybody smokes, but the postman has kicked his drinking habit
after it ruined his family life 

As in both the Konchalovsky and Kiseleva films, the scriptwriters build-up details that do not seem to add up midway but punches you at the end of the film. And if you blink you might miss that brilliant visual that says more than all the spoken words in the entire film. (There is a third partner in the Konchalovsky-Kiseleva films: cinematographer Aleksandr  Simonov). The Russian government obviously seems to have ignored the well being or the development of this rural township.  Not only is the school in ruins (possibly because there are not enough kids to attend school) but the folks there have only the TV sets as sources of entertainment. There are no tractors to till the land, only animal driven ploughs. From all evidence there is only one plough for the entire community. It is no wonder that people in that locality are driven to steal outboard motors of boats or trawl the water bodies for fish—an illegal act for all except the powerful generals who infrequently visit the area. But not very far away, Russia rocket/space power is quietly advancing ignoring the plight of the rural poor.

The good and the bad coexist in the rural world with the committed postman being the prominent do-gooder. The townsfolk do not go out of the way to help the postman when he faces a professional crisis with his motorboat’s engine stolen and thus not being able to discharge his duties for the rural folk.  In the world of email communication and mobile telecommunication, the postman fills a multitasking role. And he loves to do it. He has to file a theft report and wait for a replacement to be supplied.  The elders in the rural areas wistfully recall better days during the socialist regime and some even recall being in Vietnam during the war there.

The postman and the mayor's son

What most viewers are likely to miss out is an important decision taken by director Konchalovsky—all characters in the film’s rural setting are played by authentic villagers. The only professional actors are the two individuals who play the roles of the lady mayor and her delightful young son, Timur, who addresses the postman as “uncle.” Now that is incredible considering how the onscreen presence of the real postman engages the viewer.  One would mistake him for a professional actor able to convey so many complex emotions and body languages.  The Russian title of the film would read as the white nights of Aleksey Tryapitsyn, the name of man who plays the postman in the film. He is playing himself. Thus the entire script revolves around real people playing themselves.  But the script belongs to brilliance of Konchalovsky and Kiseleva.

Look at how they built the script. The entire background of the life of the postman is provided by Aleksey Tryapitsyn’s monologue as he sifts through old photographs of himself with the movie’s camera placed behind his head and shoulders.  Who is he talking to? The viewer. Such a monologue is never repeated until the end sequence where all or most of the village folk sit shoulder to shoulder on a ferry, their differences forgotten, without a word spoken, looking at the camera. Who are they looking at? The viewer.

The postman shares his childhood fears and tales with the
mayor's son.

The next striking visual is the repeated morning waking shot of the postman looking down at his boots on the carpet that he need to get into. He is living alone. There is no tap water; he has to fetch water in pails. The mayor and the postman wear camouflage army clothes—possibly because they are the only paid government employees.  His life is spartan.

The filmmaking trio emphasize rumination and natural beauty—the characters are constantly reflecting, outdoors and indoors.  Those sequences are with the music of Artemev as in the early Tarkovsky and Konchalovsky films.  And that leads on to the dark grey cat (“there are no cats in the village” the viewer is informed, and ergo the cat is a metaphor of a silent imaginary friend of the lonely postman—a cinephile will recall Tarkovsky used totemic images of a dog in Stalker).  The silent cat comes through the window, follows Aleksey Tryapitsyn during his imaginary visit to the school ruins, and finally sits on the stomach of the reclining postman. Does the cat have a common link with a cat’s images on the postman’s tablecloth?

Simonov's cinematography and Artemev's music can be stunning 

...and who wouldn't ruminate on contemplating the natural beauty of Russia
captured by cinematographer Simonov?

Apart from the good actions and the bad actions of the characters in The Postman’s White Nights, the overarching philosophy of the film is to accept this truth and reconcile what is left of one’s life with this attitude. The postman runs away but decides to return to the same community where, not surprisingly, he is still welcome. Konchalovsky “ran away” from USSR to work in Hollywood only to return to Russia with all its continuing faults and greatness. The film might be a great anti-smoking film with almost all the elders addicted to tobacco and evidently not healthy but the young boy also learns to smoke following the actions of the elders. But in the end segment, Konchalovsky, Kiseleva and Simonov are pointing out with their tongues firmly in their cheeks that Russia is launching spacecrafts and rockets not very far from the world of rural folk who can’t fish in the water bodies without asking for trouble or have any entertainment beyond state TV. And guess what, these Russians on the fringes of Russian society addicted to tobacco and vodka are still happy and content as long as they get their pensions.

Where does the strange sustenance of the Russians come from? From the ground, or from the rockets? A Shakespearean conundrum indeed!

It is a meaningful film for the serious film viewer, and richly deserving of the Venice film festival honour.

P.S. The Postman’s White Nights won the Best Director Award (Silver Lion) for Andrei Konchalovsky.  Detailed reviews by the author of Konchalovsky’s earlier films Runaway Train (1985) and Paradise (2016) were posted earlier on this blog. A link to the Konchalovsky written paper/lecture on the "Russian Soul" is provided on this blog and the contents are closely linked to the basic mood of the film. A critical line from that lecture reflects the essence of the film's ending "Why Russians can build a rocket and send it off into space, but not make a decent car?" Mr Konchalovsky is also one of the author's 15 favourite active filmmakers.

Read More

• Share

199. Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky’s Russian film “Ray” (Paradise) (2016) (Russia): A very well-made and intelligent Holocaust film built on an outstanding original screenplay

“ A real director is not a director that makes films but who understands people. Or, in any case, tries to understand them because understanding people is, of course, impossible”–Andrei Konchalovsky (quote from his official website)

When Andrei Konchalovsky is in his elements, he can be amazing.  His latest work Paradise is one of his best works, carefully crafted and entertaining for attentive and astute viewers, a film in which difficult questions beyond the obvious horrors of the Holocaust are placed and answered by characters that we can possibly associate in our contemporary daily life.

Konchalovsky is not a filmmaker to be ignored or scoffed at—he studied cinema with Andrei Tarkovsky. The two classmates went on to be co-scriptwriters of Tarkovsky’s first three films The Steamroller and The Violin (1961), Ivan’s Childhood (1962) and Andrei Rublyev (1966).  Tarkovsky made a film The First Day (1979), totally based on Konchalovsky’s script, which ran into problems with political censors of the day and was hidden (and now believed to be lost) but not actually destroyed as Tarkovsky publicly claimed. A well-known admirer of Akira Kurosawa, Konchalovsky got the nod of the Japanese maestro to make the film based on Kurosawa’s original script of Runaway Train, after Kurosawa gave up on the idea to make a film out of it. Konchalovsky’s Runaway Train (1985) was made in USA in English language with major Hollywood actors—a profound film that most viewers dismissed as a mere prison escape film. If one studies Paradise and compares it with Runaway Train, there are interesting parallels between the two films. More on that, later, in this review. According to IMDB, Paradise was also partially shot in USA.

Interrogation of Olga by Jules, interrupted by a tortured
resistance fighter being dragged to another room for further questioning

What is Paradise all about? Many films have been made on the horrors of the Holocaust that show the brutality and lack of pity for the prisoners by the German Nazi militia. Very few works of cinema have looked at the situation from the point of view of the Germans [a glorious exception being Hans Jurgen Syberberg’s Hitler--a film from Germany(1977)] and other nationalities involved closely with the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps. Paradise is less about the Jews that perished and more about the mindset and self-evaluation of three distinct fictional personalities carved out of the Russians, the Germans and the French communities by co-scriptwriters Elena Kiseleva and Andrei Konchalovsky on their second feature film together.  Their first collaboration The Postman’s White Nights (2014) and their second Paradise went on to win the Best Director awards at the Venice film festival in 2014 and again in 2016. Their craft was also recognized by the Mar del Plata international film festival by honouring it with the Best Screenplay award.  The magic these two individuals are able to weave are reminiscent of the Kieslowski and Piesiewicz collaboration in the evening of the famous Polish director’s career.

Kiselava and Konchalovsky, being Russians, built the tale around Olga, a Russian émigré in Paris, an aristocrat, and an editor of the Vogue fashion magazine. The Nazi Germany had occupied Paris and Olga is close to the French resistance and hides two Jewish kids only to be arrested for the good deed. The co-scriptwriters then create Jules, a French upper middle class “collaborator,” a senior police official, who serves the Nazis by identifying the members of the French resistance using torture and sending off Jews to concentration camps while leading a comfortable life with his wife and son. Finally,  the scriptwriter duo sculpt a well-read, well-appointed  German aristocrat named Helmut, who admires the Russian works of Chekov and who had once contemplated doing a thesis on the Russian writer, and yet surprisingly believes in Aryan superiority concepts of Hitler and Himmler.

The comfortable family world of Jules in Paris

The amazing script also sculpts the contradictions in the three well-to-do characters.  The attractive Olga (Yulia Vysotskaya, wife of director Konchalovsky), who is not a Jewess, offers sex to Jules, her interrogator to avoid torture and free her friends in the Resistance. Jules (Phillipe Duquesne) who has no compunction in torturing his own countrymen lives with his wife and son as respectable Parisian family man. Helmut, (Christian Clauss/Kristian Klauss) who believes in the extermination of Jews, saves many from being sent to the concentration camps if they were only a quarter Jew by their family tree and would shoot German officers to death if found to be corrupt. The lives and death of the fascinating trio intersect as the film progresses. Olga could have escaped and lived with a man, who she once knew as a benign cultured person and unfortunately had transformed into an evil man. She chooses not to escape death by helping another live in her place.

Helmut (back to the camera) is recruited by Himmler (looking out of the window)
because of Helmut's perfect Aryan credentials, with Hitler's bust
between them--a shot reminiscent of  Syberberg's film
Hitler--a film from Germany (1977) 

Add to the interesting trio of characters developed by the scriptwriters, an interrogation of the trio, each separately done, as if they themselves are inmates of the concentration camps wearing prisoner outfits by an interrogator you never see.  Yes, Olga was an inmate. But the other two were not inmates but safe outsiders. These interrogations are intelligently spliced within the films main narrative. Jules is shown making statements to his interrogator after the film shows he is killed. Only the interesting end scene put all what has preceded in the film in full perspective.  That is when you realize how different and creative the script and direction of Paradise is compared to other popular Holocaust films such as Schindler’s List and Son of Saul. The master stroke of Paradise is that the interrogator is only heard on screen, never discussed beyond that for obvious reasons.

Olga in the concentration camp fighting for a personal bar of soap

...and Olga (extreme right) enjoying her soup after recovering
 the shoes of a dead inmate to cover her bare feet

Olga and Helmut--reality and cinema--enjoying a brief interlude
of comfort and love

Konchalovsky and Kiseleva provide two parallel ways for the viewer to evaluate the film. One is the obvious actions of the trio and the resulting feelings for the viewer. The second is the self assessment of the trio of their actions. The self appraisal transcends the obvious actions and therefore provides the viewer an opportunity to contemplate the power of good cinema over the conventional film narrative. In a larger context, the film assesses the role of three nations in the world war and the complex attitudes of individuals to the Holocaust.

Konchalovsky, either intentionally or unintentionally, has developed the tale of Paradise on the basic structure of his earlier Runaway Train. In Runaway Train, there were two male escapees (Manny/Jon Voight and Buck/Eric Roberts) and one unwitting female passenger (Sara/de Mornay). The first two were convicts, while the innocent third was on the train by happenstance. In Paradise, two men and a woman are being interrogated.  The two men have committed war crimes of different hues, while the woman is essentially a good individual who helped two Jewish children hide from the Nazis initially and helps two Jewish children and their mother at the end of the film. In Runaway Train, the relentless warden does not dispense justice but gets his moral due. In Paradise, the mysterious interrogator dispenses justice.

The title Paradise is very interesting as nothing in the film except for the finale has any relevance to the word. What happens in the film is far from any concept of paradise. Is it the idyllic Aryan dream that Helmut believed in that title refers to? Only the last few minutes of the film reveal Konchalovsky’s key to understanding the film and its purpose to the full extent. Konchalovsky, like Tarkovsky, is deeply religious and influenced by the Russian Orthodox Church. There is no overt religious symbol in the entire film and yet it is a religious film. The end of the film gives the truer meaning of the title. That is the capability of Konchalovsky who made Jon Voight’s final posture in Runaway Train atop the hurtling train engine unmistakably religious without a word spoken in the film that was religious. You learn a lot when you have to bypass censors in Stalinist Russia that Tarkovsky and Konchalovsky endured.

There is another common strand between Tarkovsky and Konchalovsky.  Both were born into aristocratic families that gave importance to literature. Tarkovsky’s father was a poet. Konchalovsky’s family (the Mikhlakovs) can be traced back to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Andrei Konchalovsky is the half bother of another important Russian filmmaker, Nikita Mikhalkov.

Perhaps this element of aristocracy has something to do with Konchalovsky’s interest in Chekov and Turgenev, rather than Dostoevesky or Tolstoy. Two of Konchalovsky’s previous films are adaptations of the former pair—Uncle Vanyaand The Nest of the Gentry. Helmut’s character in Paradise, who loves Russian literature, refers more than once to Chekov rather than Dostoevesky or Tolstoy.

One would be intrigued by the choice of black and white and the Academy format aspect ratio of 11:8 used in Paradise. These concepts, the static camera placement during interviews and the recurring suggestion of film rolls running out has been obviously introduced to give the feeling of an interrogation where those interviewed have to tell the truth often from their own volition. All that makes sense, if the viewer is patient right up to the end and all what had preceded up to that point falls into place.  And what an ending!

Olga and the two Jewish kids in the concentration camps--
a throwback to the two kids
she tried to save earlier that got her into her current plight

Paradise is definitely one of the most intelligent films made in 2016 with a remarkable screenplay and three lead actors chosen carefully from three countries: Russia, Germany and France, to provide veracity few directors care to indulge in these days.

P.S. Paradise is one of the author’s top 10 films of 2016. Konchalovsky’s Runaway Train (1985) was reviewed earlier on this blog and is one of the author’s top 100 films. This film, for those interested in Christian theology, provides an interesting insight on the Russian Orthodox Church's view on the concept of purgatory. In that context, note the hair growth on the recently shaven head of the lead actress--a detail that says a lot about the filmmakers. Mr Konchalovsky is also one of the author's 15 favourite active filmmakers

Read More

• Share

196. Russian director-duo Grigory Kozintsev’s and Leonid Trauberg’s silent film “Novyy Vavilon” (The New Babylon) (1929) (former USSR/France), with music by Dimitri Shostakovich: One of the most laudable silent films ever made that has surfaced recently

The exaggeration of the film's actors...

...is fundamental to the film

The New Babylon is a Russian silent film, made in 1929, centred on the events related to the rise and brutal suppression of the 1871 Paris Commune.  As the Germanic Prussian army defeated the French army and advanced to conquer Paris, the rich in the city went on with their escapist lives without caring to protect the city. On the other hand, the working class of the city refused to capitulate and set up a Paris Commune with a socialist fervour to protect the city of Paris from the Prussian army. The Paris Commune achieved its primary aim of protecting the city but was in turn crushed by the French Government working from Versailles with financial and moral support of middle class in Paris. Thousands of members of the Paris commune were killed by the French Government instead of being grateful to the brave hearts. These events deeply influenced the writings of Karl Marx. Very few moviegoers are aware of this laudable film’s very existence and hence, The New Babylon rarely, if ever, gets mentioned on lists of important films of the silent era.

Graffiti of the movement scribbled by a dying member of the Commune  

There are several reasons for the lack of awareness about this film.

Louise selling clothes to the rich with a mannequin next to her

First, it was made by two Soviet Russian filmmakers who ran into problems with the Russian censors. The released version did not have the full approval of its principal filmmakers: directors Kozintsev, and Trauberg and composer Shostakovich.  Some versions of the original 2 hour film were chopped down to ridiculous 84 minute and 93 minute versions when shown in Russia and abroad post-censoring, respectively.  The film was considered by the Soviet censors to be an anti-war and not a communist film. Both charges were essentially correct, in retrospect. It was merely a film made in the wrong country at the wrong time.  The New Babylon incorporated composer Shostakovich’s first explicit work for cinema, written when he was only 23 years old, and his friendship and subsequent rich collaboration with director Kozintsev continued up to the final Kozintsev film King Lear (1971). (Shostakovich’s music, not written specifically for cinema, was used in Sergei Eisenstein’s October, released a year earlier in 1928.)

The rich of Paris captured in an interesting perspective,
 aided by an interesting camera angle

The second reason was the political climate that slowly disintegrated the interesting theatre movement called the” Factory of the Eccentric Actor” (FEX) developed and headed by Kozintsev and Trauberg that led to the making of several silent films, including a comedy called The Adventures of an Octoberite (1923) (now lost), Shinel(1926), based on Gogol’s The Overcoat, which many consider to be best cinematic adaptation of the literary work, The Devil’s Wheel (1926) and The Club of the Big Deed  (1927), which the Russian critic Viktor Shklovsky considers “the most elegant film of the Soviet Union.” The Russian director duo tried to infuse futurism, surrealism and Dadaism in their creative outputs. The satirical elements in the film The New Babylonand the music in the film (“The Marseillaise” being diluted with Can-Can music) did not go down well with the Soviet censors. Shostakovich increasingly fell foul in the eyes of Josef Stalin from then onwards. He was denounced twice politically: once in 1936 for being “coarse, primitive and vulgar,” and later in 1946 for being “formalist and non-Russian.”   Shostakovich’s friends and relatives were either deliberately killed or imprisoned.  After the death of Stalin, the world recognized Shostakovich as a major composer of the 20^th century.

The situation with the Jewish director duo Kozintsev and Trauberg (in today’s political geography they would have been Ukrainians) was not very different from that of Shostakovich.  The duo continued to work together until 1947, after which they began making their own individual films. One of Trauberg's celebrated works is a 1960 film Dead Soulsbased on Gogol’s literary work of the same name. Trauberg was again attacked by Soviet authorities for being a Jewish intellectual, post-World-War II. 

Ironically all the three individuals were recognized by the country that almost demolished their creative talent at their peak. In 1964, Grigori Kozintsev was named as the “People’s Artist of the USSR.”   Leonid Trauberg, initially in trouble for his early works, was awarded the Stalin Prize in 1941 only to be attacked once again by the Soviet Authorities post-World -War II. Dimitri Shostakovich, was denounced twice during the Stalin years and yet was honoured with the Lenin prize, three times with the Order of Lenin, the Hero of Socialist Labour, etc. Outside his own country, he was honoured in UK, Denmark, Finland and Austria.

Trauberg thought his early work with Kozintsev-- the full version The New Babylon--was lost until the film was re-released in 1982. Kozintsev had died in 1973. Both filmmakers were not alive when the film was restored fully and re-released in 2010.

Thus, the third reason for the obscurity of The New Babylon was that its re-release and restoration only occurred some 80 years after it was made, and this was done outside Russia. Its relevance seemed to have been diluted by time. It is now freely available on You Tube for cineastes to enjoy.

It is with this background, one ought to evaluate the film The New Babylon. Why is the film important beyond the “The Marseillaise” and Can-Can mix of music that irked the Stalinist censors? What did it offer beyond the silent films of Eisenstein and Pudovkin?

Jean, the simple, starving soldier

...and Louise, the happy, idealist salesgirl 

Evaluating the film The New Babylon, one will realize the directors were directly projecting their views on socialism through the sad love tale between Louise, a working class shop assistant in Paris and Jean, an army deserter begging for food with tattered shoes meeting for the first time who had joined the army for a better life than what he had in his village.  Louise’s character is developed by the directors as a feisty woman who dislikes her employer but needs the job to make ends meet. Louise’s interest in Jean is a mix of charity and disgust as he has deserted. She feeds him and as he in turn is repelled by her overt dislike tries to leave the place while another elder male is repairing his tattered shoes. Louise cautions him that he needs to wait and wear the shoes that are being repaired before he leaves. The idealist Louise asks Jean to fight the Prussians but the disillusioned Jean is not interested.  Eventually Jean re-joins the French Government armed forces again as a lowly worker who is ironically commandeered to dig the grave of Louise, now condemned to death.  Kozintsev and Trauberg were evidently giving their own take on socialism—the idealism, the poverty and the irony of fate of two individuals who could probably have loved and led a peaceful and happy life in an ideal world.

The directors achieve this irony by an unforgettable sequence of light and shade (or black and white, if you will) as Louise’s face is illuminated with light as she contemplates her imminent death after being condemned to death by a kangaroo court, and watches the once–hungry man she had fed bread digging her own grave because he too has few options but do as he is told.  The smart lady laughs as she understands the irony of it all and shouts at Jean, a man whom she had come to love and understand, the words “We will meet again, Jean.” The film connects with the viewer both with the melodramatic story that unfolds and the use of visuals, editing, and music.

Women wearing aprons fire guns to protect the city,
only to be given death sentences 

A British librarian turned film critic Matt Bailey, writing in notcoming.com  (posted on 11 July 2004) pointed out the eloquence of the editing of The New Babylon thus “While the film is a rather unsurprising parable of revolutionary fervor and the tyrannical efforts of the bourgeoisie to suppress it, the visual style of the film is anything but conventional. While perhaps not quite as radical in form as the work of Eisenstein or Vertov, the two directors of the film, along with their gifted cast and crew, used the tools of cinema in a lively and invigorating fashion that still gets the blood flowing even today. Multiple storylines and locations are cut between with brisk fluidity; the camera is tossed, spun, raised lowered, and put in places you would never expect; the visual references to French painters of the fin-de-siècle come at a rapid pace and quite out of nowhere; and the performances of the cast are, as the school would have it, eccentric, yet never out of place or out of keeping with the tone of the picture. The film has all of the vigor and pure cinematic originality of Abel Gance’s Napoleon without all the pretensions to greatness shouldered by that film.”

There is more to the editing in this film. The directors give the viewer the impression that characters in the film are aware of incidents in real time by their reactions, when that could not be possible if you look at each sequence carefully.  

Visually the sequence of the columns of the Prussian army advancing on Paris is terrifying.

Everything in the film is visually exaggerated, not real. And that was the directors’ intention. But the satirical effect is profound even today where computer graphics hold the sway. Similarly the visuals of Jacques Demy’s celebrated 1964 film The Umbrellas of Cherbourg possibly took an idea or two from the early sequences in The New Babylon.

If one assumes the film is to be assessed by the revolutionary content of the words in the film “We are working for us, not for the owners.We do not work more night. Our children are not cannon fodder for the rich.. " this would only be partly true. The film is essentially a satire--a typical product of FEX--what the directors had set out to do, which understandably did not find favour with politicians of the day. Even the title of the film is cleverly chosen to represent the big shopping store, where Louise works, catering to the rich of Paris.

Does God care for the conditions of the poor and oppressed
(a rare but important shot in the film bringing into focus
the rich Catholic community of Paris/France)?

It is unfortunate that Soviet Russia never appreciated their greatest filmmakers Kozintsev, Andrei Tarkovsky and Sergei Paradjanov during their lifetime just as the US film institutions refused to acknowledge Orson Welles, Abraham Polonsky and Terrence Malick. Malick is, of course, still alive and making films.

P.S. Kozintsev’s King Lear made with the collaboration of Shostakovich remains the author’s favourite film and one of his top 10 films of all time and is reviewed on this blog.

Read More

• Share