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Skvoz chyornoe steklo (2019)
A piece of Russian Orthodoxy instead of a cinematic work
The Russian cinema is dead after the death of Alexey German Sr., it is the sad fact of life. All Russian film directors have their brains replaced with aspergilliums, and all sorts of living thoughts, stylistic and artistic efforts with Orthodoxy dogmas and cliches. I won't even mention the performance level in this overlong Cinderella rehash. Maxim Sukhanov doesn't have to act with an exterior he has, he may simply remain himself. Although here he tries (too hard) to get rid of the constipation characteristic of all Russian macho actors. The girl just moves around. There is no one else in the entire film.
Chyornaya roza - emblema pechali, krasnaya roza - emblema lyubvi (1990)
The Ship of Freaks played backwards
Continuing with previously given promises, I re-watched this one, too. Nowadays, it looks more "together" than "Assa". In the previous "perestroika gem," the trashy crime noir was wed with a restaurant band but here we have a Mexican soap opera married to soviet kitchen dissidents. Yet the film still looks like a daisy chain of visual gags, some of them tired even at the moment of the premiere. This time, almost no Spanish shame for participants, apart from Mr. Zbruyev (Alexandra's dad) who overdoes it big time. Two scenes are especially bad: the prolonged caterwauling with strained freaky fun, "The Ship of Freaks" playing in the background; and the breakthrough into the space of frigging high spirituality through a baptismal washtub and a Christmas window with colored lights. The writer-director clearly makes a significant face here yet his problem is that he has really nothing to say. Wise face is a false friend; when all post-Soviet filmmakers had nothing to balance the ugly reality with they used the Orthodox metaphor that looked as unnatural and stupid then as it does now (however now it is also revolting). Making fun of "perestroika" was tired and bad taste even in the late 1980s. But the soundtrack record was much better than the first time.
Assa (1987)
an act of cultural appropriation
I had to re-watch this "perestroika gem" on a promise, otherwise I'd never do it for I still remember how poor it seemed when it first came out. Approximately one half of it can be tolerable if you love the city of Yalta with all your heart (I don't), and the other half is impossible to watch without a feeling of Spanish shame. The quintessence of absurdity is, of course, the final scene, with the now deceased rock underground hero Victor Tsoy making faces while singing in a restaurant orchestra, wearing a posy of red carnation, apparently symbolizing his courage and revolutionary fervor. If we remember that red carnations were a preferred decoration of French aristocrats on their revolutionary scaffolds, and juxtapose it with the strangled Russian emperor in this film, the mixed metaphor becomes obvious. In the accompanying band (apparently his band Kino) there are Victor Ryzhenko playing guitar (who never played with real Kino), and "Negro Vitya" (apparently there is a joke there, with half of the film band members named victors) who is actually a good Russian musician of a different band (again, never played with real Kino) wearing very bad blackface (rather, brownface). The band wears black t-shirts with different Russian inscriptions on them, all being clichéd Soviet slogans, like "Save the world," all in the same typeface, in real life never manufactured (those ones in the film were US-made as "perestroyka chic") but if manufactured, never worn by real protesters. So, it all comes as a big fat lie, an act of cultural appropriation, with filmmakers trying to monetize the Soviet underground culture of the time. These days, monuments are torn down for less.
Dreams, Washed Out (2018)
beautifully crafted
A beautifully crafted dreamscape, full of shadows, shades, angles, and colors. This is what cinema is for, to tell heartbreaking stories with twists and turns, and to present something we haven't seen before. This film is truly unique in this sense. Thank you.
Civilisation (1969)
Meant for a scrapheap of history
Actually, this is an old tired, imperial, colonial, Europocentric view of history and culture, unpleasantly presented and conveying nothing but the contents of British imperial trashbin, starting with the thesis that "humanity invented harmony." Even more amazing to see this lack of taste and common sense from the BBC of "the golden period." I grieve that it had not ended as a highway filler, as some truly great British TV programs had.
A Perfect Day for Bananafish (2008)
bad dialogue
The film is bad not because it's amateurish, low-budget or generally unprofessional (it is all of it) but because it is based on the old soviet translation of the story, and the text there is so clunky and awkward that you cannot but wince hearing "actors" delivering those bad dialogue lines, stilted and totally unnatural.
Taynik u krasnykh kamney (1973)
Hilarious spy schlock
This is a piece of Soviet counterspy schlock, but with sudden bonuses. What they meant when they produced it I don't know, but apparently not what we see today. It turns out, the film is about how Soviet KGB loses to foreign spy rings (backed by the CIA) due to its total lack of paranoia. The Soviets lose and lose, one move after another, and Arab (presumably, Afghani) spies win and win. First, their leading field agent (Otar Koberidze) is able to inflict wounds on himself and fall into trance states purely by straining his will. Second, their mastermind (Yefim Kopelyan) gives orders to his minions by telepathy. This alone wins you any spy war. On the other hand, Soviet "chekisti" cannot do any of it. In their work they rely only on dumb traditional methods, like driving motorcycles through forests, and running across mountains with their dogs. Oh, and waiting for phone calls from stool pigeons and concerned citizens, of course. Irina Skobtseva, the elderly grand dame of the Soviet cinema, plays a Soviet spy disguised as an Englishwoman, and is totally devoid of any guile or even sense. The rest of cast are props and|or animated furniture. And the cherry on a cake is, of course the bar scene in a backwater Afghani village near the Soviet border, with hard liquor on sale, girls band consisting of bass and sax she-players with cleavages, and a half naked male dancer writhing on the floor. Oh, and the glorified hard labor colony for spies, smugglers, and hard currency dealers, all those felons who were supposed to have contacts with foreigners, of course. My dad used to say that here there were three kinds of movies, good, bad, and those produced by the Dovzhenko studios. This one belongs to the last category. Priceless.
Posrednik (1990)
A perestroika visual gem
If not exactly a masterpiece, this was definitely worth watching. Alexander Mirer's novel, only the first part of which is here put on screen, was written in the early 1970s, with no especial political agenda. However in this 1990 version, we are dealing with an exercise in perestroika thinking, for this is a genre commentary on horrors of totalitarianism for inmates of totalitarian regime, done from the point of view slightly less totalitarian, or at least no- longer-so-totalitarian-as-before. Curious, yes. All done in the space-trooper-fell-on-my-girl low-cost style with military helicopters.
As it sometimes happens, the film is much better than the original novel that was done shoddily and aimed at brain-damaged soviet kids. Shell-shocked pacing here, of course, helps, as well as the marvelous avant-atmospheric soundtrack by the premier soviet jazz giant Chekasin. Actors don't act but this is the case when they don't need to; it is enough for them to move around, and not interfere with the camera. The film has some hidden Easter eggs in it, like visual tributes to a number European and American artistes, including, of course, Tarkovsky (and his famous tile sequence), Fellini (and his carnival freaks), etc.
Godzilla (2014)
dim as filmmakers' brains
Why do filmmakers love so much to shoot their new crap in the dark? Do they really think it will give more suspense to their crippled plots and non-existent intrigues? Or is it just to save money on props, make-up and SFX? The usual result, like in the new Godzilla, is totally unwatchable, with bits and pieces of misguided action badly glued together by stretches of some dark matter (probably filmmakers' brains).
The team seems to be proud of the fact that Godzilla is actually shown for only ten minutes in this over-two-hours-long movie, but there's nothing to be proud of. Let's be honest, in monster movies we want to see monsters, not your cardboard characters' contorted faces. They also seem to take some pride in the fact that their monsters are more realistic than the original ones (
someone from Toho saw him in the 1950s and ran back to the studio to make a movie about the creature and was trying their best to remember and draw it
- I quote the trivia here). Come on. The man in his ridiculous rubber suit was far more terrifying than your digital creations that move like Lego transformers (and sound like ones, too). You sensed real madness and terror there.
To boot, the music is toxically bad. I really don't know how they still hire notorious M. Desplat to do soundtracks, honestly.
After watching it, my wife and I thought about writing a manual on how to make your own Godzilla movie at home. First, you have to crawl into some dark space with creepy acoustics, like into the cabinet under your kitchen sink. You have to have two graphic novels with you (different, preferably no relation to each other), a flashlight, and a small but resilient dog (or cat). Tie the flashlight to the dog (or cat). Turn it on. Start reading your graphic novels to each other at the top of your voices, showing panels to each other with no regard to their continuity, while kicking your dog (or cat) around the insides of the place with creepy acoustics you're in. It won't let the animal fall asleep and provide you with desired lighting effects. Don't hurt the animal, you'll need it for the sequel or the next franchise reboot.
The result will be the same, the radio show "Dinosaurs in a Tunnel."
Legenda o Tile (1977)
passing the test of time
One of the soviet cinema masterpieces, and it passes the test of time rather well. I watched the film version as a kid, and it was impressive, but this, extended, version, re-edited for West German TV to almost twice the movie length (over 400 minutes, sliced into 5 episodes) is even better for there are less holes in continuity. Alov & Naumov, production designers, and the brilliant cinematographer Valentin Zheleznyakov in the mid-1970s did what Peter Greenaway achieved somewhat later—they made Dutch and Spanish classic painting come alive, creating the total illusion of immersing in the believable (albeit mythological) period as perceived and depicted by Masters.
Although the cast is the all-star band of soviet cinema of that period (with, again, believable faces, unlike the present day actors' well-fed mugs), the voice-overs are atrocious, intonations false and theatrical, and the dialogue stilted and unnatural. This, however, with time is perceived as the conventionality, and all attention is paid to the visuals. Even the human effigy of Byelokhvostikova (Nele) is very watchable, 'cause she, of course, has an almost ideal face (but a bad actress nevertheless). As for the design and picture, again, it's like watching a living painting, and I wish there were a guide somewhere, explaining to broad public what art masterpieces were used as inspirations where (I could see a lot but not all of them, of course, I'm not that visual myself).
Another minor shortcoming is that some scenes seem to be rather bloated time-wise, but, again, this might be our impression nowadays, after all the extra-fast editing of contemporary blockbusters. And, don't forget, soviet viewers needed all the explanation one could offer them. In order to feel the pain and rage of the character, watch all 10 minutes of him being tortured on the wheel, bitches.
Elegiya dorogi (2001)
Brilliant and topical commentary
A simple trip from somewhere in Russia to Rotterdam via Helsinki is turned into a highly poetic and slightly surreal commentary on human place in history (mythological), and man's striving to transcendence (unachievable). This, of course, includes thinking aloud about Russia, and two of the principal questions are asked. They are not, traditionally, "Where am I?" and "How did I end up here?" although they are voiced in the film, too, but, "What are they all thinking?" and "Why are all those people look at me like this?" They are really important if one wants to tap into "the mysterious Russian soul."
Clearly, the Russian Orthodox church does not yield any answers, neither does it provide a safe haven for the protagonist, for people are cold there, they cast evil glances, and a monk/priest is unable to answer simple spiritual questions (not one of them could, being stupid, greedy and, generally, not very literate, not to mention spiritual). What the protagonist seeks is clearly found in the old European culture, shown through the works of Old Dutch Masters. So much for the "special Russian way" in culture, now enforced by the present "huylo's" administration.
Plus, the Russian title is mistranslated from the original French. It's not "The Elegy of a Road," it should rather be a passage or, well, transcendence.
Bezrazlichie (2011)
Three points for the attempt
to recreate the era that no one participating in the film remembers clearly, including very old, now late, crooner Edouard Khil who sang from every kettle in the 1970s, and here he does the same, pretending to be himself in an old TV seen from the street through a window (thank god, it's a very brief cameo).
So, the film has no plot, atrocious dialogue, crude digital animation, clichés money shots, the usual set of visual period fetishes, and no acting whatsoever, and one wonders why the project had to be picked up at all, after the 20 years hiatus. Love, says the director, but one suspects lower motives, like a wish not to put the past effort and material to waste. And, probably to win some awards while catching the soviet nostalgia wave.
On the good side, there is some archive footage of Moscow street scenes ranging from the 1950s to 1970s, some bits of inventive analogue animation, and the excellent (but not period) soundtrack. It looks like the whole shebang was done as a longish metaphor, to illustrate the last line, "It all began so well, and here's the end," said off screen in a disillusioned voice, while we see a rocket taking off behind two thugs' backs. Now, the film creators claim that it's the soul of the murdered protagonist but this is clearly bullshit. It looks more like an ironic comment on the "thawing off" period, which never really took off but later consolidated into the infamous stagnation, and we all know what it all came to.
However, by the irony counter, the "Indifference" lacks a lot. Even the clichés are stillborn there.
Sovetskaya elegiya (1990)
boring
A fine specimen of cinematographic pen-pushing, with very mixed agenda and nothing to say whatsoever, apart from the gallery of monsters who stood at the helm of the Soviet Union at one time or another. If there's art in a rogues' gallery, this is it. What can be deduced from Boris Yeltsyn staring into the kitchen table, beats me. As for the depiction of sh*t we've always been living in, there has never been anything new in it, even in the late 1980s when this "lyrical documentary" was made. If you want Sokurov, go elsewhere. His "The Sun" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0439817/) is the real masterpiece, for instance.
Nebo zovyot (1959)
jingoist schlock
Like most soviet films of the period (and I watched the original version), in has no action whatsoever. The plot is stilted as statues at the People's Economy Achievements Exhibition in Moscow, and the story drags its feet to no end. It is a typical tableau vivant aimed at kicking imperialist America one more time, and at showing Russians (but mostly Ukrainians, as the film was done at the infamous Dovzhenko Studios, legendary for its spectacularly bad productions) at their best and foremost.
However, this propaganda poster about how Soviets and Americans tried to prove to each other whose penis extender—pardon me, phallic symbol—is better, racing each other to Mars, of all places, is nicely illustrated with analog FX. The music is abominable, and is in place only in the scene of "space madness" of the one "bad American" they let out into space. The dialogue is absurdist and as ridiculous as the gadgetry shown. More than anything else, it reminds me of the old Chapayev joke: —Pet'ka, the apparatus. —Six, Vasily Ivanovich. —Six what? —Apparatus what? In some sense, it's just as silly as Gravity. Look how much time passed, and what has changed?
Nevertheless, content-wise, the film's narrow-minded positivism and typical soviet jingoism is set off by one truly Pynchonian twist, and you can appreciate it if you read Gravity's Rainbow. The film has its own Gottfried, and there is the Gottfried glorious moment there. A-and Gottfried's name in the film is Grigory.
Vid na zhitelstvo (1972)
an insult to intelligence
A 30-years-old psychoanalyst (!) from Leningrad presumably falls in love with a high-maintenance whore who is an ex-Russian and visiting the Soviet Union, and jumps the ship in a "Western country" that looks like shabby East Germany but everyone there addresses each other "sir" all the time for no apparent reason. He claims he doesn't "choose freedom" but wants "to have everything" because "they appreciate talent in the West," thus making himself one of the first figures of the so-called "sausage emigration." However, he sticks to "Freudian" psychoanalysis (banned in the Soviet Union at the time so it remains unclear how he "practiced" it in Kolpino), considered passé in western medical circles, yet he continues to call himself a "scientist," and ends up doing regular jobs. One of them is an exterminator in a city dump (don't ask) where one of the most hilarious scenes takes place: he is beaten by a bunch of dope-smoking hippies. The counter-cultural element is also presented on screen with lewd dances by a couple of heavyset girls in tights, on a house-of-culture herringbone parquet, and two "rock bands" who sing in mock English; one band looks like an Iron Butterfly caricature with an Elvis impersonator for a front man.
All "foreign" characters on screen behave and speak like common soviet citizens, although the street crowd, for some reason, looks like a stereotype of London City. At one point I even suspected John Cleese in The Ministry of Silly Walks there but the guy turned around. Although this sounds like a Thomas Pynchon plot, the general absurdity of the film layout is unsurpassed in its deadly seriousness. The poor moron ends up raping a suicide-prevention hot-line volunteer from New Zealand, canvassing for an émigré newspaper, and facing the necessity of enlisting in an espionage training school "for journalists." Now he would be only 72, and I sure would like to ask him if he still wants to go home.
The only truth of this flick is that he wants to "have," soviet-style, but is unable to "do" anything, apart from whining, demanding, and making a general fool of himself. The rest is all revolting lies targeted on idiots who can't have the luxury of comparing notes, and seeing for themselves that the commie screen version of the life in the West doesn't correspond to the real picture. It was meant to put fright into those who thought about leaving country at that time. The special poignancy to it gives the fact that in 1972, Joseph Brodsky was mercifully forced to leave the communist pigsty.
There should be a special kind of hell for soviet film-makers, in particular the ever-undead Sergey Mikhalkov, the author of the Soviet (and now Russian) state anthem lyrics who served as the writer in this film.
Korol Lir (1970)
a false masterpiece
The "masterpiece of soviet cinema" turned out to be artificial and absurd all through its length. Boris Pasternak's translation of Shakespeare's text not only rendered the original meaningless but flattened and simplified it to the level of "simple soviet people's" understanding. In order to reach this goal, the text was also shaped in bureaucratese. All characters speak like chartered accountants, insurance agents, lawyers, or trade union activists. You constantly feel a sort of Spanish shame for actors, like you're watching a village culture club's amateur dramatics. Oleg Dal is especially bad. Apparently, actors simply didn't understand what they should, well, act, for the text itself was bad with its unpronounceable syntax, soviet clichés, and all falsity stemming from this. For the most part, the film is a sorry spectacle, filled with illogical dashings to and fro across the screen, for these massive crowd excursions are impossible to explain neither by common sense nor by strategy and tactics of the plot itself. Horses, too. In fact, one feels sorry for the poor beasts here more than for anyone else. At first, a herd of them runs across some takyr, apparently somewhere in soviet Middle Asia (pretending to be marshes and heather), and then, immediately, they are made to climb up the White Cliffs of Dover. Inexplainable.
Skazka pro temnotu (2009)
meaningless drivel
I honestly tried to understand the point of this film for the entire 77 minutes of it. I gave up. Here are several versions of what's going on there. Not a single one of them convincing enough:
- It is indeed the film about subway workers. In Vladivostok where the subway exists only for ammunition in the old fortress, not for humans.
- It is indeed a tale of darkness, as the title suggests. The darkness of mind. Director's mind.
- The director wanted us to know that police doesn't hold anything sacred.
- The director wanted us to know that police are not human.
- The director wanted us to know that police in Russia don't have any rights. Hilarious, that, in a police state.
- The director wanted us to know that police are not allowed to rent rooms in flee-houses, and there is really no choice for women in police but spread their legs, and be grateful for little mercies of nature.
There are also no traces of any kind of writer in this film, nor an editor.
Viy (2014)
meaningless but eye-catching
The other day, I decided to be with my people (in their collective hell), and watch this je ne sais quoi. What to say here. They can't write, for they're basically illiterate, and they can't act, for the mugs of the "Moscow theaters actors" (tm) are too well-fed. Everyone speaks in those pumped-up husky voices that are expected to mean passion from females, and courage with the other kind. For me, personally, though, they signify only people sitting on their potties trying very hard to give birth to something immortal, needles first.
The cinematographers seem to have learned shooting eye-pleasing pics, though they say it's not very hard to do, these days. They have also learned how to steal nice-looking stills for our desktops from others. Although, it seems that all visuals were created not by Russians but by Czechs, Germans and whom not, so maybe I should take this last statement back. You know, it's all like giving bright neon building blocks to an idiot child—he would definitely build something with them, and it would certainly catch the eye yet it would be utterly meaningless. For there is absolutely no logic in the plot, and the montage of those nice-looking pictures, there's no even the Hollywood logic in it. The sense is totally absent from this product, like lip-sync (for all actors were dubbed like in a bad TV production).
All PR effort (and the Wiki article) only confirm that the movie was targeted at brainless idiots who salivate from Photoshopped landscapes, and fast-changing camera angles. Also, xenophobia detected: the film creators seem to convey a very simple idea that all the worst in humans comes from within, and as the most humans in the film are, obviously, the Ukrainians, they look like the evil incarnate. On the other hand, Nicholas Gogol apparently thought so, too, although he didn't like all people, not only the Jews.
A slight anti-clerical pathos makes a welcome respite from all this stupidity but the creators apparently didn't dwell on this. Judging from what and how they speak in the promo documentary, they have no dwelling place in their brains. Their aim was "to catch up and overrun," like Khrushchev used to say, and "to produce the movie with the highest, globally accepted standards of intiteiment" (I kid you not, this is the word they use on a dumb card in the promo film; and I just love this provincially soviet demagoguery).
But the theme of rebooting classics is rich, no arguing about it. They now are free to re-shoot The Petty Demon, for example, creating the small dusty monster there with the multifaceted LED eyes, like what they did here. It will give much pleasure to the young and broad audience, no doubt.