Russian Resurrection Film Festival 2009
The 6th annual Russian Resurrection Film Festival will be held at Palace Cinemas and Greater Union Cinemas (Manuka) between 19 August and 20 September, in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Canberra, Brisbane and Perth. The festival features 10 new films not screened before in Australia, as well as 9 films in a comedy/musical retrospective with films dating from the 1930s through to the 90s. Last year’s festival featured a wide array of first-class films and from what has been previewed so far, 2009 will be no different.
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WE’RE FROM THE FUTURE: It is most unusual for Russian filmmakers to traverse fantasy/time travel themes in a film, yet Andrei Maliukov directs this cleverly made tale about a group of four friends in contemporary St.Petersburg who end up travelling back in time to World War 2 and the height of Russian and German conflict. While digging for Nazi relics to make some easy money, they discover a cache of buried documentation, including identification passes for each of them. Their cynicism gives way to shock when swimming in the area, and they emerge from the waterhole in the midst of fiery battle, in 1942. This challenging device of time travel is established by the director to reveal a great deal about contemporary attitudes to Russia’s involvement in World War 2, as well as the lessons that can be learnt by a cynical contemporary population. It is most interesting to note the way current Russian filmmakers, freed up from censorship restrictions and political ideology, can now explore tricky political issues via the cinema (along the lines the way contemporary German filmmakers are also doing the same thing). Needless to say, the experience of war challenges these young men’s cynical view of the world and causes them to re-evaluate their own lives when they return to modern day Russia. The film is an effective combination of rites of passage, political exploration, relationships between them, and the impact war has on individuals. Highly recommended. Note that the digital print viewed was a low-end Digi-Beta with poor Dolby resolution. (Peter Krausz)
TARA BULBA: Filmmakers using well known stories to provide a revisionist view of history can be evidenced in this new adaptation of the Gogol story about the leader of the Cossacks in the Ukraine in the 16th Century and his battles, his two sons and the struggle against the Tartars and the Poles. The film, as adapted by, and directed by, Vladimir Bortko, establishes itself from the outset as a heroic tale of a tough, revolutionary leader whose uncompromising view of the nature of the Russian spirit in life and death (along the lines of Branagh’s version of Shakespeare’s Henry V and England), is clearly meant to be seen as an allegory for contemporary Russia and its fighting spirit (if not its conflicted ideologies and politics). Shot in epic widescreen with plenty of bloody battles and declamatory dialogue, the film comments on Bulba’s relationship with his two sons and the tragedy involved, the hatred the Cossacks had for the Poles after they seemingly turned on them after having saved them from the Tartars, and the interpolation of a number of anti-Semitic scenes and events, which are both laughable and extraordinarily offensive. They are presented as justification for the Cossacks in attacking the Poles, and the echoes to World War 2 ripple through this adaptation. Hence Gogol’s story has been turned into a vitriolic piece of historical revisionism and political hectoring which many will find deeply offensive, simplistic and just plain ridiculous. This is the 4th adaptation of the Gogol story, ranging from a 1924 silent epic from Germany, to the faithful 1936 version from France, to the simplistic, family based Hollywood version in 1962 directed by J. Lee Thompson. This 2009 adaptation is both confused in its politics and laughable in its view of history, indeed turning historical fact into a right-wing diatribe almost like a rallying call for the audience. Not even representations of the Russian Revolution were this simplistic and propagandistic (cf Battleship Potemkin 1925 on how it could be done properly). A curious failure. (Peter Krausz)
SOUNDTRACK OF PASSION: One of the major highlights of this festival is this Hitchcockian like thriller with erotic overtones about a Government sponsored spying agency which establishes surveillance on corrupt business people. With some echoes to both The Lives of Others, 2007 as well as Hitchcock’s North by Northwest 1959, Nikolai Lebedev’s assured feature about a young woman caught up in a potential trap involving shady business deals and an Italian corporate manager, turns into a complex series of spy and counter-spy incidents where nothing may be as it appears to be. This fast-paced Bourne Identity like thriller with James Bond aesthetics, tantalizes the audience with its complex story and the passionate relationship (quite frank and startling for a Russian film) between the hunter and the hunted. The Ennio Morricone-like music score adds to the enjoyment of what turns out to be an effective thriller of duplicitousness and passion. The only annoying aspect to the film is the ridiculous dubbing of English and Italian dialogue into Russian. Nevertheless, highly recommended. (Peter Krausz)
WARD NO 6: Unfortunately, the choice of Opening Night Film for the Melbourne season of the Russian Resurrection Film Festival is an under whelming one that was greeted by a strangely muted response by the audience. Karen Shakhnazarov’s Ward No 6 is a modern treatment of Chekhov’s most pessimistic story about a doctor in a mental institution who eventually becomes an inmate himself. But what could have been a powerful look at one man’s nightmarish descent into a hell of his own making instead becomes a rather dull and pretentious exercise that will leave most audiences cold. The film is full of philosophical discussions and intellectual concepts as the introspective Dr Ragin becomes obsessed with one of his patient’s unconventional views. The film has been shot inside a real life psychiatric hospital, with real inmates performing as extras, which adds a sense of authenticity to the film. But the decision to shoot in a mixture of faux documentary style and narrative style doesn’t work, and the confusing structure is just one of the problems with this unsatisfying film. (Greg King)
WARD NO. 6: Karen Shakhnazarov is a highly regarded Russian filmmaker, whose films, including Vanished Empire (2008) which played at last year’s Russian Film Festival, Poisons (2001) which is playing in the retrospective part of this year’s film festival, Rider Named Death (2004), Day of the Full Moon (1998) and Zero City (1988), are all intricately observed films around the human condition and the impact social issues have on that existence. In the case of Ward No.6 it is hard to fathom what went wrong, as one would have thought that a combination of rich source material (a Chekhov short story) and the screenplay of Aleksandr Dorodyansky, would create a compelling piece of filmmaking: it doesn’t. Set in a mental asylum, the film is an 83 minute look at how various inmates, medical staff and family cope with the situation. Presented as a faux documentary, the key inmates and medical staff are all actors in this real asylum, culminating in a series of interviews, observations and reflections. The problem is that the structure of the film, in particular what is said and its constant repetition, and the circumstances for everyone, is not particularly engaging or intriguing, despite the potential for this to be a sub-textual examination of Russian politics and history, as well as contemporary exploration of mental illness. There is a clear disjuncture between intent, source material and execution. A real disappointment from a usually reliable filmmaker. (Peter Krausz)
HIPSTERS: Russia in the 1950s. Hip teenagers defy the accepted orthodoxy by dressing in forbidden Western gear, listening to decadent American and British music, and flout the authorities who appear to not want to act too decisively. However there are other young Communists who cannot tolerate this situation and frequently disrupt, occasionally violently, the haunts that these hipsters visit. In a subtextual nutshell, director Valery Todorovsky has created a Russia where nothing is particularly as it may seem, and where the ruling hierarchy finds it difficult to act against these young Russians whose crime centres on flirting with the West.
The film is presented as a musical comedy along the lines of “Grease” and “Footloose”, focusing on one young man and his tentative relationship with a young woman. Shot in luminous widescreen and featuring an array of smart young actors, “Hipsters” is a light-hearted film with serious intent beneath its surface. Indeed, as the story progresses, the situation becomes grim and occasionally unnerving, demonstrating the political turmoil in Russia at the time, especially as it was amidst a looming Cold War, yet contemplating alliances with the US. This film is a prime example of contemporary Russian filmmakers exploring their country’s problematic political history, and finding ways of redefining what that means, then and now. Highly recommended. (Peter Krausz)
ADMIRAL: This is a powerhouse of a film, mixing the true story of Admiral Kolchak, a war hero commissioned by the Tsarist Government in 1916 to defend Russia during World War 1, and the events that unfolded when the Russian Revolution occurred in 1917. The film does not flinch from being openly critical of the Communist revolution and the lesser understood negative impact it had on the Royal Family (See also “Nicholas and Alexandra”), the military, and other people. Andrei Kravchuk (who did a great job with the film “The Italian”) has made a compelling piece of cinema that dovetails the Admiral’s stoic military campaigns, his disdain at the events of the revolution, and his romantic entanglements with his wife and his mistress. This is clearly a big budget film that also has a well-researched and acidicly written script that forces the audience to re-evaluate those historic events, and the simplistic view that has been taken about the benign nature of the revolution. Highly recommended. (Peter Krausz)
ADMIRAL: A sweeping historical epic and moving love story reminiscent of David Lean’s epic Dr Zhivago, Admiral is a big budget film set against the turbulent history of Russia between 1914 and 1920. The central character is Admiral Aleksandr Vasilevich Kolchak (Konstantin Khabenskiy), a genuine Russian hero – Arctic explorer, hero of the Baltic campaign in World War I – who became leader of White Russia after the revolution and was executed as a traitor by the Bolsheviks in 1920. Kolchak also embarks on an affair with Anna Timireva (Elizaveta Boyarskaya), the wife of his best friend and fellow officer. This marvellous film from director Andrei Kravchuk (The Italian, etc) explores the destruction of the opulent way of life of Imperial Russia as well as the brutal horrors of war. A stirring story of love, honour, patriotism and heroism, Admiral has been beautifully shot in widescreen and its visuals are often breath taking. (Greg King)
NOBODY BUT US: Based on the experiences of the filmmaker, Sergei Gavorukhun, who survived (despite losing a leg) as cameraman involved in the Russian effort in war in Tajikistan in the 1990s, this is a searing film that has powerful autobiographical and political overtones. A Russian soldier, fresh from fighting in the bloody battles of Tajikistan, is on two weeks leave. He is clearly melancholic and very concerned about where all this will lead. He strikes up a relationship with a young woman which eases his psychological concerns, but he remains restless, to the point that he decides he must return to the scene of battle but in another guise, to support his friends who are dying in battle. He cannot bring himself to tell his mother, and he decides to become a war photographer, recording the battles despite him no longer needing to return to war. This is an emotional and tragic film, capturing the Russian paradox of fighting battles that may or may not be germane to the country’s future. The film does not shirk from the dramatic elements contained in the story, and pointedly forces the audience to question the role that these external wars have on the population. Highly recommended. (Peter Krausz)
WILD FIELD: Existentialism has never felt as inviting in this carefully modulated drama about a doctor in a remote outpost in the steppes of Russia, treating various individuals from the surrounding areas with a wide array of illnesses and wounds. Everything from self-inflicted wounds, alcoholism and the impact of Chechnyan fighting all intrude into the solitary life of this doctor who only seeks to be left in peace with his dog and an occasional visit with his girl-friend. The film develops into a dramatic trajectory however as more external incidents impact on his life, leading to an incident which brings his situation into stark reality. The film is shot in a moody, earthy tone, defining the doctor’s life and his surroundings as ones that have a limited time-span, with tragedy and bloodshed just around the corner. In its own pointed, political way, this film, as directed by Mikhail Kalatozishvilli, lulls the audience into a false calmness, reflecting the current state of a country still trying to find its feet. Recommended. (Peter Krausz)
MORPHIA (MORPHINE): From the opening frame of this mordantly fascinating film by Aleksei Balabanov, you know you are being transported into a world where death and destruction are not far away. A train pulls into a remote village with just one passenger alighting, a young doctor recruited to a small hospital. As soon as he arrives he encounters an array of medical issues, but it is the time period that is so crucial. It is 1917 and the Russian Revolution was blazing away in the cities, yet no-one was immune from its ramifications. Based on a number of autobiographical stories by Mikhail Bulgakov, the film is presented as a series of chapters that become progressively more appalling. The doctor, learning rapidly various operational techniques, encounters a series of grisly events: a difficult child-birth, a woman with mangled feet from a factory incident, diphtheria victims, heart attacks, and burns from fires caused by the revolution. His solace is from taking morphine, originally as a reaction to the pain of a diphtheria immunization, but then developing into a severe addiction. Somewhat reminiscent of Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man (1995), this superbly directed, quite confronting film, exudes politics throughout, despite only featuring aspects of the impact of the revolution, directly, near the end of the film. The existential nature of the doctor’s life amidst the chaos and random violence of the revolution, creates a world of gloomy foreboding that inhabits the whole film, right down to the final scene set in a movie theatre, reminiscent of Preston Sturges’ Sullivan’s Travels (1941) where the world of the cinema is a safety valve for the horrors of everyday existence. Another example of Russian filmmakers revisiting historic events and challenging some of the orthodoxies that permeated earlier films on these issues. By far the best film of this Russian Film Festival. Not to be missed, but be prepared for some very graphic scenes. (Peter Krausz)
POISONS: Leaving aside the disappointment of Karen Shakhnazarov’s adaptation of Chekhov (Ward No.6), this film in the retrospective season as part of the Russian Film Festival is a delightful black comedy with subtextual references to the state of play of Russian politics in 2001. When a neighbour decides to move into a married couple’s flat, a series of events occur leading to the owner of the flat seeking revenge by poisoning his nemesis. All is not what it seems as this ménage a trios turns into a scheme of retaliation with the help, through a cleverly constructed fantasy sequence, of historic figures including the Emperor Nero, Pope Alexander VI, Catherine Medici, Cesare Borgia, Genghis Khan and Caligula! The jilted young man, who is also a stage actor, finds solace in the advice given to him by these historic figures, culminating in an unexpected resolution. The chaos that underlies Russia’s political situation with the breaking up of the Soviet Union, is never far from the surface in the narrative. An unusual, but quite compelling, film from a director who has usually challenged the traditional view of narrative construction in the cinema. Highly recommended. (Peter Krausz)