Leviathan (2014)

The barren, arctic sea-shore of a small town in Siberia transforms Andrey Zvyagintsev's Leviathan into something more than a film about corruption - corruption in the human sense and in the sense of institutional corruption. Cosmic might be the word to capture the feel of it. The choice for the viewer is what level one should focus on. A theme that drives the overarching mythic tone is suffering. There are references to Job: why should I suffer? How can God allow this to happen? When I watched this movie, my friends and I disagreed to which extent these references are to be taken as direct questions borrowed straight from the Biblical story, or whether they have a more context-dependent and, thus, more ambivalent role. I haven't really settled my mind: is this film suffocatingly blunt, beating you on the head with a certain 'message', or is it more open-ended than what a cursory interpretation might suggest?

Kolja and his family live by the sea. Their home is threatened when the local - very crooked, very Yeltsin-lookalike - mayor makes claims on the property. Kolja's friend, a lawyear from Moscow, arrives to help his mate with his problems. There are dirty deals and also matrimonial infedelity. Kolja's life starts to break apart. Zvyagintsev takes a look at the vodka-fuelled structures of this small town, in which the mayor - constantly drunk - goes to see the priest every now and then, and is given a pragmatic piece of godly-worldy advice.

An essential theme of the film is what it means to stand behind one's words. In the beginning of the film, we see Kolja at the court. The scene plays out as tragic comedy: the jury reads the negative verdict in a furious-paced bureaucratic quasi-lingo: the voice of the woman reading it is completely mechanic. In the very end of the film, the priest delivers a sermon. There are bombastic formulations about the state and the church. The priest - who is he, what does it mean when he stands there before the bored/drunk parish, speaking those words?

Again: the overwhelming landscapes, underlining the vulnerability of the characters' lives. The mood of the film is established and kept up with repeated images of desolate cliffs, gray, restless sea and craggy whale skeletons. The cinematography is audacious, but not overly so. The music by Philip Glass is, however, too much - the film would have been better without it. Zvyagintsev's sense for immaculate composition is in absolutely no need of being doubled by Glass' fluttering score. (I am no fan of Glass.)

Elena (2011)

Moscow. An elderly couple, upper-class. Or he is, she is married to him, belongs to him. She goes visiting her family in another part of the town. They have money problems (the son is depicted as irresponsible) and she has a bad conscience: obligingly, she brings money packages. The husband has a stroke, and their life situation is drastically changed. The setting of Andrey Zvyagintsev's (he's the guy who made the brilliant The Return) Elena is simple, minimalist even. The chilly cinematography establishes the mood, the alienation, the repressed feelings. Every frame is a meticulous composition and the paradox of how the film works on me is its shift from distance to sudden intimacy. Most of the film takes place in apartments. From the first frames onwards, this viewer was gripped by claustrophobia. There's the sterile, luxurious apartment of Elena and her husband Vladimir. We see immediately that they cannot be happy, despite the sex. Vladimir wears expensive watches and treats human beings like - well, it is even hard to describe his coldness. Zvyagintsev probes into their unsettling relationship and the camera lingers, even when we start to feel that we cannot stand look at how they go about their everyday life. As Vladimir gets sick, Elena must confront his spoiled daughter who apparently hates everything her father stands for, even though she seems scarily similar to him. This somber movie takes a stern look at class society. It might not be the most focused film in the world, but what I think Zvyagintsev excels in is a depiction of joylessness, spiritual emptiness. He depicts a family who wastes the little money they have and the elderly couple for whom money is no problem. These class relations are most often expressed as contempt and guilt. Violence lurks everywhere, in the outskirts of Moscow and in the strangely empty luxury blocks where Vladimir shuttles from his apartment to his gym. This world is stripped to its very basics. A tv is broadcasting game shows and the volume is barely audible. A family is having tea around a table, restless gazes. Suddenly: a hand-held camera films boys fighting. The film offers very few openings to other possibilities. Yet then again, even though the ending provides no resolution, it tunes into a new sense of calm. Elena is the center of the movie and in her choices and reactions we see a stubborness and resilience that in some strange way might be rendered as a kind of hope. Or should one rather say that Elena is a story about a world that makes people harden their hearts - the purpose of life being reduced to: to go on?

Faust (2011)

Aleksandr Sokurov making his own version of Faust? I haven't heard of this film, but as I stumbled upon it, and as an admirer of Sokurov's, I was eager to watch it. It turned out Sokurov is perhaps just the right person to make the most of Goethe's winding and richly cross-referencing play (the film covers book one only). Instead of fooling around with a dry costume drama, Sokurov focuses on the madness, the hallucinatory and outrageous sides of Faust. Filters and image manipulations are employed to enhance the experience of dizziness. The story is a familiar one: a brooding scholar sells his soul to the devil. The devil is a scheming bastard, a moneylender in fact - and a jester - and the scholar falls in love with Gretchen. The overarching themes are power and the quest for knowledge and domination. I wish all adaptations of literary works would take as much liberty with the material as Sokurov does here. Digital skies (the cinematographer is said to be responsible for one of the Harry Potter movies!), gritty streets and eerie conversations - this is Sokurov's Faust. The film evokes smells and impressions, the life of the town along with the life of nature. Every impression is filtered through a sense of hectic dreaminess. The result is a strange oscillation between melancholy and a sort of propulsive drive.

Seven Songs from the Tundra (2000)

The surroundings of Seven Songs from the Tundra (dir. Lapsui & Lehmuskallio) are magical: the tundra of northern Russia. The film is a sort of compilation of stories from the Nenets people. This approach works well here, without the result turning out overly ethnographic (in the sense of distant). The stories circle around everyday life and even though the life of the Nenets are so different from mine, Seven Songs from the Tundra achieves this sense of the everyday. In one segment, a girl is about to be married off. The story takes place in pre-revolution times and the Nenets live close to nature, reindeer herding being the most important source of wealth. In later segments, we have proceeded to Soviet times. We see the Nenets within Soviet institutions, or as outcasts (some are accused of being 'kulaks'). In one wonderful section, two drunken men try to allure a local official to their drinking party. The official is not amused. Seven Songs from the Tundra is worth watching for its gentle pace, its beautiful cinematography and it also teaches us something important about Russian history.

Silent souls (2010)

Silent, agonized men have appeared on film before. Putting silent and agonized men (who are consoled by kind prostitutes from time to time) in ravishingly beautiful landscapes cannot save a film like Silent souls (dir. Aleksey Fedorchenko). OK, so Fedorchenko knows what he is doing. The film is visually pleasant and it is interesting to see a take on Meryan funeral rituals. But at the same time, I never started caring. I watched these sullen men in their car and I tried to tune in on their silence - without anything much opening up to me. The Meryan community has a connection with Finland but as the characters in the film said: the traditions are withering away. The film tries to zoom in on that loss but the result is, I felt, that the melancholy becomes so all-encompassing that the viewer is choked in it. The shell of the story is that a factory owner's wife dies and he asks a friend to go with him to perform a burial ritual. The film follows them on this sonorous journey with a dead body in the back-seat and two stoical men pondering life in the front seats.

How I Ended This Summer (2010)

If you've seen Andrei Zvyagintsev's The Return, I guess you haven't forgot it. I haven't at least. It was something about the atmosphere in that movie, the tension, the way the story progressed, that riveting film experience hasn't left me in peace. Great movie. From almost the first image (despite the HORRIBLE music) The Return was what I thought of when I started watching Aleksey Popogrebsky's How I Ended This Summer (he also made Roads to Koktebel, I recommend it!). However, I don't think the latter film holds up to the earlier film's subtlety, but there are still things I admire about it, above all, the remarkably grim cinematography (every single image bears an air of foreboding) and some of the use of sound (even though the machismo metal music one of the character listens to is extremely horrible, it kind of fits in). The one thing bothering me is the vacuity in how the story is developed. The film almost transforms into a weird action movie; you know, the sort of story where the only concern you will have is who kills whom. But that is just part of the film, and it starts out great.

Sergei, and middle-aged man with a severe sense of duty works with Pavel, a younger man, on a remote meteorological station up in the Arctic area. The younger man is often reprimanded for his unprofessional behavior and we see that the relation between the two men (who have only each other) is extremely strained. Things start to get out of hand one day when Sergei is away on a fishing trip and Pavel gets a message about something that happened to Sergei's family.  - - - What works best is the depiction of the difference in attitude towards the work they are commissioned to do. Sergei is the old-timer who takes an honor in doing everything meticulously. He is aware of their hash living surrounding, including the risks of their job. The younger colleague doesn't take his job as seriously. He's bored and his attention is easily diverted. For him, it's a temporary thing, an adventure. They depend on another, but they don't trust each other. - - - - It's the quieter scenes that haunted me. They munch on walrus meat, the sun hovers on the horizon, the wind blows hard, there are chores to do. Pavel works on an abandoned nuclear electric generator. Or: the ghostly sound of static noise from the short-wave radio, a noise that changes all the time, and seems to carry a world of secrets. Or: as Sergei receives a message from his wife, read by an official on the short-wave radio, he turns to Pavel to ask what a 'smiley' is. - - - How I Ended This Summer has many flaws, but it is also a film working with what its got: some hellish moments of tension. 

Rusalka (2007)

Rusalka (dir.: A Melikyan) is clearly a film that follows in the footsteps of Lola rennt: restless cinematography, quirky story about fate and love - and a punky girl with odd hair (Amelie also came to mind). This is not really a complaint. Even though the story of the film is nothing to write home about, I was entertained (but not moved); it is fair to call the film a type of fairy tale (references to HC Andersen). Aliza grows up in a small town by the Black sea. The girl loses her capacity to speak and attends a school for the mentally handicapped. Her mother takes her along to Moscow and there she meets Sasha, a rich, self-destructive man with a flashy job. She decides that Sasha must be a part of her life. Aliza thinks she has a personal power to make wishes come true, so why not this one? It is the vivid documentation of surroundings that make Rusalka a memorable film. First, the breeziness of seaside Smallville, then the big, cruel city. The camera pans along anonymous skyscrapers, vibrant streets and traffic jams, only to keep returning to commercial texts all over the city. If we look at the actual content of the film, things get more shady - much more. The lively girl Aliza saves the guy's life two or three times and reminds him that he has a heart as well. You know the story: the simple girl and the rich boy, full of himself. The meaning of the end is puzzling, and I am worried that if I mull it over too much, I will like this film less (the big question: is it a terribly cynic ending or is it a critical gesture?). The film contains enough memorable scenes to make it a good film, despite some disappointing erratic scenes. Even though there are plenty of gender stereotypes here, the main character is surprisingly elusive and unusual - she is not our ordinary heroine. I hope I get to see more films directed by Anna Melikyan.

Father and son (2003)

I watched Father and son in a state of half-sleep, after a long day of champagne and sun. This, I think, is the ideal state of mind for this movie. Even if my mind had been less foggy, I think I couldn't make much of the story. The film opens with a long, erotic scene in which a barely clothed father comforts his barely clothed son, who is having nightmares. The erotic tension between them continues. There is jealousy, fear of losing the other. The son is going through military training. The mother is absent. The boy has met a girl but we only see her through a window and standing on a balcony. It is the father-son relationship we see, and it seems to be all about quasi-religious bonds, depicted in religious language (a father must crucify his son! Tough love. I had a hard time developing a religious interpretation of the events in the film, even though there were clearly references to be picked up.) We see father and son at play on a rooftop. Their neighbor joins in - he wants to become them to form a trinity, but the others hesitate. The locations and the cinematography (a strange, soft light) of Father and Son are stunning, as always in Sokurov's films (esp. Mother and Son, to which this film is connected). The same can be said about the use of sound: Tchaikovsky, static noise, electronica. (I have read that Sokurov's own explication of the movie is all about rejecting homoeroticism and explaining how the film can provide a sense of moral edification.) To call Father and son opaque is an understatement. Still - it was a pleasure to watch it.

My Joy (2010)

Cinema Village is a tiny arthouse cinema theater in East Village. One thing that amazes me about cinema culture in NYC is that it is actually - somehow - possible to show a film for an audience of seven people. I knew nothing about My Joy. Afterwards, I am happy that I didn't read reviews beforehand, because this is really one of those open-.ended films that you have to try to understand on your own before you hear somebody else's opinion about the film as a whole. I think I know what the main gist of the film is aimed at, but trying to connect the different scenes on a more detailed level is challenging, as this is a far from linear affair. The storytelling in My Joy breaks with many conventions in cinema (for example the way we expect a film to follow a certain set of characters in a "logical" way). A few times, I saw something of Claire Denis' associative, image-focused style here. But where Denis' films keep my thought and my imagination in a firm grip, I sometimes feel that My joy tries too hard, and that it thereby, interestingly, become too simple. Many scenes/segments are powerful, but few of them manage to deepen the main subject. What is the main subject? Well - borders and corruption seems to be the theme running through many of the scenes, and also providing the film with a sense of political anger and outrage. Still - the problem I had with the film, especially after having had some time to mull it over, is that it makes its viewer take on a very general form of pessimistic thinking. "The world ... humanity ... the state - rotten, all of it, all of it!" Thereby, some of the urgency of the scenes get lost in this general atmosphere of fuck-it-all. From a cinematic point of view, the film has many qualities, not only in terms of editing technique but also its cinematography, executed by the guy who shot The Death of Lazarescu. The harshness of the pictures augments the very cruel nature of the content. The film has potential. I look forward to keeping up with what Sergei Loznitsa will do next.

The Banishment (2008)

Andrei Zvyagintsev’s The Return is one of the best films of the 00’s. In comparison with that film, The Banishment is a much weaker accomplishment that doesn’t hold up to the strong emotional and cinematic quality of the earlier film. For all its visual beauty, this does not come across as an expression of personal film-making the way The Return did. I would rather say that beauty here is used in a confused way that does not have much to do with what exactly the film is supposed to show. Somehow, the style of the film was a bit derivative: the use of long takes and meticulously composed images of empty landscapes started to feel calculating after a very short while. Slow camera movements don’t guarantee a good film. If the film doesn’t give us any hints about what we are supposed to see, if it doesn’t bring about a new way of seeing, no matter how meditative the images are, I’m afraid there is not much to learn from them. Afterwards, I was left with a hollow feeling: so that was it? Story-wise, there is not much to talk about, either. Tough guy with tough business – tough guy moves to the countryside with his family – tough guy is confronted with some news from his wife – tough guy acts in the only way tough guys can act – T-r-a-g-e-d-y. So: we’ve seen this before, haven’t we? I just couldn’t move beyond the story, I couldn’t make anything of it, and, more importantly, the style of the film and the story were intertwined in a way that seems keen on creating aesthetic impressions, but little more than that. I found myself both lost in details and unmoved by the turns of the story. Even the music feels contrived. Arvo Pärt's music is of course very beautiful but when used in this setting, his music was reduced to wallpaper. Which is not very nice if you happen to like this particular composition. And lastly, the structure of the film was muddled, too. The air of mystique created out of flashbacks and the holding back of information just didn't work. – Well, this was surely a disappointment. 

V toy strane (1997)

Lidia Bubrovka's V toy strane ("In this country") has the hazy cinematography of Sokurov's Mother and Son but rather than elegiac meditations on life and death, the film opts for the quietly burlesque. It is a funny little film with a strong sense for characters and drastic, unexpected humor. The story takes place in a not-so-modern village in the North. Life is grim & people are poor; most people, at least the men, drink as often as they can. One day, the "director" of the village tells one of the villagers, who suffers from a stomach ulcer, that he has been granted a place in a kurort by the sea. This event leads to feeling of disbelief, envy and malaise. From there, the movie dwells on the life of the villagers, and their cattle, by means of a string of loosely connected scenes. I can't really explain what is going on here, but I don't think the film is a mere caricature of the uncivilized ways of the backwoods - the film is too tender to be a caricature. As I said, the style of this film, and the cinematography, bathing in eerie and dreamy light, is really something. There is a peculiar dissonance between content and style which really .... works. I liked this film and it is a shame it is not more well known.

Alexandra (2007)

Alexandr Sokurov being one of my favourite directors, I expected Alexandra to be something special. Well, it turned out it was, sort of, but for all its originality, I would still not say Alexandra is a very good film. Even though thematically, this is a peculiar film, I constantly felt that the material could have been developed in a far more ingenious way. Something kept bugging me, though I have a hard time defining exactly what it was. The story: Alexandra, an elderly woman (played by a famous opera performerGalina Vishnevskaya), goes to a military camp in Chechnya to visit her son. She talks to him about various things, she explores the dusty and ramshackle surroundings. Sokurov undoubtedly has a way with portraying tenderness where we don’t expect to find it. How often do we see images of a tattooed soldier combing his grandmother’s hair? Not too often (the only film that comes to mind is Claire Denis’ Beau travail). This is what makes the film fascinating. Alexandra has very little to do with the stereotypical picture of Alpha-male soldiers doing everything to impress each other by means of bravura and sex stories. Alexandra is another world in comparison to most depictions of the army. Sokurov evokes untraditional images of the soldier: the frail boy, the everyday routines, curious looks without further intentions, innocence. The physical and spiritual authority of Alexandra is equally unconventional. She is not your typical grandmother figure.

The drab cinematography (the use of harsh light and almost-monochrome colors) works fine, there are a few striking scenes, and the angle is, as I said, very fresh. Well, on the other hand, the dialogue was, overall, an embarrassing and pompous affair.  The point of several turns in the story leaves me in the dark. Alexandra goes to the marketplace. She intends to buy cigarettes and biscuits for some soldiers. She ends up visiting one lady’s apartment. They have repellent tea, and it is as if they have always known each other. There is hostility in the way Alexandra is treated by the people she meets outside the base, but it is not brought to the surface. That’s why the apartment scene puzzled me. What was the intention? Well, there is something that worries me here; that the war seems so far away. The soldiers go away on missions, but still, we see very little of it, despite the devastation of the town. But maybe that’s the point? Instead of squadrons of soldiers on the front, we see grandmother and grandson climb into an armored vehicle. The grandson lets his grandmother try the Kalashnikov. It’s so easy, she remarks. We can feel her shudder of unease. Alexandra is our key to the military base. We see it through her eyes. We experience the smells, the taste of food, the bothering heat, the way she does. To her, all this is new. So – what we see in this film is an outsider’s perspective, an outsider for whom this is not everyday business. This may be an important point of view. 

OK – Let’s be honest. Maybe the reason why I’m feeling uncomfortable is that somewhere in this film, there are hints of bigger notions about Russia, Mother. That I kept thinking about it is perhaps only due to the fact that I’ve read Sokurov’s description of his own film. But the more I think about this film, I want to re-watch it to see whether perhaps some of my judgments were perhaps hasty.

Andrei Rublev (1966)

Most of Andrei Rublev is filmed in black & white. Only the last scenes are in color. The transition from black and white to color is a marvelous thing to watch. I think I haven't seen another film that uses colors with such a startling effect (another Tarkovsky film is a competitor). The last scenes show the icons painted by Andrei Rublev, and last of all, The Trinity. The colors are so bright that they almost hurt the eyes. It's a stunning scene. 
The film traces the story of the 15th century iconographer Andrei Rublev, who, in the film, is engaged for a project by an artist called Theophanus. He is to go to Moscow. He goes there with a younger apprentice, Foma. Along the way, we learn more about Andrei's outlook on art and what kind of man he is (but this is not a biography: this is more a film about ideas). Andrei and a few other men work in a church in Vladimir. Andrei has doubts about the projects. He is to paint pictures that have a certain function. He doesn't want to paint devils with smoke coming out of their ears. Tartars invade Vladimir. The place is in ruins. After saving a girl from being raped by a Tartar and killing a man, Andei takes a vow of silence and gives up painting. Things change, however, when a boy is hired to construct a church bell because he claims that his father told him the secret of the craft before he passed away.  
Andrei Rublev is an enigmatic film. It's fairly easy to describe the major themes: the relation between religious art and craftsmanship, is one. The impact historical events (in this case: vulgar power politics and brutality) have on art is another. A third one is how the creation of art in the film is described in both secular, moral and religious terms.  It is clear that the film provides images of art as a vocation that is maimed by compromise and political repression but also by moral corruption. But what it means to compromise does not have anything to do with the artist's absolute right to his work of art. Rather, the film revolves around what it means to have a pure or impure relation to art and crafts.
For all this, there is lots and lots I don't know what to think about. Does this film make any claims about the historical events that take place in the film? Is there any statement here about "the essence of Russia"? What, exactly, is it about the successful completion of the church bell building project that moves Andrei ("blind faith"?)? 
Andrei Rublev features all of the things we associate with Tarkovsky: long takes, careful composition of frames, and, most of all, nature is evoked not as a background of and for events but rather as something that characters are a part of and interact with. I'm not sure if it goes for all of his film, but in Andrei Rublev, Tarkovsky's cinematographer uses movement of the camera in a very ingenious way (the initial scene with the air balloon, the invasion of the Tartars, some of the scenes within the Vladimir church). 

In many ways, this is an unusually structured film. It consists of small vignettes that are not always obviously connected. Andrei himself is absent in many of them. For a great portion of the film, he is silent (because of his vow). Not even once do we see him paint.

Stalker (1979)

I watched Stalker for the nth time today with some philosopher friends and I couldn't stop thinking about one thing. Have I completely ignored the music in the film while watching it or is it indeed the case that there are several versions of the film? The ethereal flute sounds on this score should be generally prohibited (maybe restricted to the world of dancing elves) for human ears to hear. As a matter of fact, composer Eduard Artemyev made two versions of the soundtrack. But then as I read further it turns out that the final version of the film contains the soundtrack with synthesizers. I'm confused. But apart from these small mishaps, the use of sound and music in the film is extraordinarily evocative (trains, dripping water, wind). When reading this conscientious review, it seems like the version I saw now is some particular DVD version. Mhm. As the reviewer points out, what sets these two versions apart is that one is more trance-like than the other. That is, in my opinion, the better one. But I will consult the VHS version to resolve this immense mystery.

What was striking about Stalker when finally having the opportunity to devor it on a bigger screen is how the haunting transition from black-white-sepia grainy monochrome to colors really comes as a shock to the eyes. Not to mention the switch back and the vivid ending image. Wow!

Especially the last mesmerizing hour of the film is an overwhelming journey through doubt, disenchantment and faith. The interesting thing about Stalker is that even though it contains lots of philosophical conversations on various topics, the dialogue never exhausts the content of the film. There's really a rich interplay between dialogue and - what should we call it - quiet moments and this prevents the dialogue from becoming heavy-handed. One must also say that Stalker is surprisingly funny - even though this is something I've come to see after finally having had a look at the book on which the film is based, Roadside picnic. Actually, I was quite taken aback by my own reactions (On the threshold of the room in which one's truest desires are said to be fulfilled, a phone suddenly rings, "No, it's not the clinic!" That was funny on several levels.). Tarvosky masterfully grapples witht existential fear and he does this in a very ruthless way, not shying away from the petty desire to spare oneself. There is no "existential hero" here. Tarkovsky's treatment of most important theme of the film - desire - leaves no room for easy interpretations. While watching it now, I realized it being far more complex than what I remembered it to be.