I am Cuba (1964)

No doubt about it - Soy Cuba is a propaganda film about the revolution. It is marred with the weaknesses of propaganda, and also its deceit. This is a narrative that asks you to look at some people as the glorious revolutionaries, others as half-hearted pseudo-rebels and others still as traitors and people that simply have to be extinguished in the brutal path towards true socialism. For this reason, it is hard not to be intimidated by Soy Cuba. But when I watched it, I couldn't resist some moments of stunning beauty or strangenesss that the film also contains. The beginning of the film features a lengthy, very dreamy, scene in a bar. The combination of jazz, drunken camerawork and zombie-like acting in terrible English makes for a surreal and haunting scene. There are several examples of Kalatozov's sense for the floating camera and a scene that moves effortlessly (and strangely) from one thing to another. But this strands in quaint contradiction to the didactic and heavy-handed outlook of most of the film. The 'story' (a rather loose one where people are representatives of classes, rather than human beings) takes us from pre-revolutionary times in which yankees loll around on the streets, to the heated moments that paves the way for the revolution, and then the war itself, and the glorious central characters of it. Even though Soy Cuba is by no means a great film, there are still a number of things that speak for it as an artistically original piece.

Earth (1930)

Aleksandr Dovzhenko's Earth contains plenty of USSR propaganda: it even contains people dancing in anticipation of the first tractor in the village. Earth chronicles the violent tensions within the new society, USSR (and Ukraine), it explores new technology and collectivization of land. One does not need to guess where Dovzhenko stands: he cheers on the New and "kulaks" are depicted as old people who want to stick to the old ways. But what on Earth could imbue such views with cinematic quality? Well, Dovzhenko knows what to do with images (which makes a level of ambiguity slip into the movie). He is at his best when he leaves the Agenda and directs his gaze at nature, which he does - often. When I read about the film I realize that I've seen a restored version of the film that contains a few scenes that Dovzhenko was more or less forced to eliminate back in the days. In one of these scenes, we see the famous tractor appearing on the horizon (BIG, BIG sky and a small, small patch of land, on which we discern this glorious, tiny-great thing). It gets closer .... and closer ... and closer. But then it stops. The beastly machine won't work. One clever guy realizes that there's no water in the radiator and the gang on the tractor scratch their heads. Then one of them has a bright idea: they should urinate into the radiator. That kind of playfulness is not something I associate with Stalin-era movies and well, unsurprisingly this scene proved to be too much for the Soviet censors. Earth starts with a serene scene of an old man's death, continues with tumultuous debates between the young and the old about the merits of collectivization and towards the end, these societal tensions are unleashed as on guy, the young man who brought the tractor to the village, is killed. The young guy is buried and honored with new songs - no religious rituals. Even here, beyond the expected gestures, Dovzhenko makes the progress of the story engaging by using bold cinematic techniques - what feels quite fresh here is how he mixes romantic images of nature with Eisenstein-like montage images of crows and frenzied activity.

Interestingly, the reception of Earth was mixed. Some saw in it an example of perfect propaganda, while others denounced it as Spiritualism or some other stripe of anti-Soviet mentalist obscurity.

Come and see (1985)

Come and See (dir. E. Klimov) is a movie about war; the afflictions war brings with it, the endless suffering and pain it produces in people. There is no glory here, no worthy purposes and no heroes. War is not in the least thrilling - it is the view that war is an adventure that is brutally crushed.

The film starts and ends with Flyora. Belarussia is occupied by Germany and destruction is total. Everyone is afraid - and I have rarely seen such feeling of fear in film, the physical feeling of shell-shock and the fear of being caught. Flyora, a role very well acted, is the young kid who thinks about joining the partisans. Like the other kids, he plays and looks for rifles. A bunch of them arrives at his house, for the purpose of recruitment. The kid, of course, doesn't know what joining would mean. Despite the worry of his mother, Flyora tags along with the band of soldiers, and is initially a part of their routines - they have gathered in the woods, and it is evident that it is all a bit ramshackle. Flyora is encouraged to leave behind when the rest of the group goes to fight, and the kid disappointedly (he wants to be the heroic partisan) goes away on his own adventure in the woods, where he meets Glasha. Here the problems with the film starts. The boy is depicted with - it seems to me - some sort of honesty and sensitivity to what it means to be a child in a state of war, and the sorts of naivety a child might have (to see war as adventure). Glasha is immediately sexualized and this approach to the character continues throughout the film. She is the Beautiful, Deranged Girl. And there is an obvious thread in the film that I think reveals a form of horrible sexism: war destroys the purity of Womenhood (madonna -> whore).

The film continues with the two kids' return to Flyora's village after they have suffered a heavy air raid attack. The boy is deaf and the village is desolated and it is clear that people have left it in panic. Flyora tries to find the rest of his family, stubbornly convicted they are still alive. The two kids wallow through a bog to an island on which other villagers have gathered. The laborious trudge through the bog is some of the most gut-wrenching stuff I have seen on film. Klimov makes the bog come alive to the viewer and the viewer experiences and looks at the bog from the perspective of wallowing through it. It is a landscape of horror, but the way it is evoked never gets heavy-handed.

Come and See doesn't stop there, but I think this is enough to get a hunch of what the film is like. It is a visually stunning (where stunning does not mean breath-taking in a way that encourages you to sit back and relax and enjoy the beauty of nature) and the horrors of war are transported into images in a unique way. No consolation is offered, no humor, no release, no breathing holes. This is total destruction, of the world and of the soul. Survival here means escaping death, as if that escape is itself defined or marked by death, the destroyed world. The film does not pretend to speak a supposed language of realism. It is immersed in nightmares, it conjures up the tactile and auditory elements of those harrowing nightmares. That the horror is rendered so harrowingly real is however not, as I saw it, an expression of the director's diabolic imagination. Somehow, it feels as though this film had to be made (even though some elements of propaganda can be detected towards the end - having to do with how 'nazis' are depicted - the film seems an honest attempt to say something about war).

But, as I said, the gender thing is hugely disturbing here, and it says something about very troubling ways of understanding affliction and war. But: Come and See is an important film about war. It focuses on war as a traumatizing time in a way that I didn't feel was exploitative (or nationalistic). Still, there are some scenes, especially towards the end, that should have been left out. Images of Flyora shooting at pictures of Hitler together with a montage of newsreel material about the third reich - I ask: from whose perspective is this montage seen? I find the idea of adding it ill-advised on many levels. What the film basically says is: look, this war destroyed the entire world for these people. The war becomes a form of apocalypse.

Ivan the Terrible (1944)

It's hard to tell whether the first part of Ivan the Terrible (dir. Eisenstein) is to be considered as a Stalinist propaganda film or whether it provides a critical account of power. And the interesting question is, of course, what this kind of judgment could be based on, what kind of judgment one is making when one says "this is a propaganda film rather than ..." Apparently, the Soviet élite enjoyed it. Regardless of what the answer is, Ivan the Terrible is a film full of cinematic pomp. It starts off with the coronation of Ivan - he is to become the all-powerful Tsar. Interestingly, it takes a good while before we even see Ivan's face. Instead, we see all the glory of the ceremony: the clothes, the attributes of power. But it becomes clear that Ivan's power is challenged by the rich boyars who, when Ivan is lying on his death bed after a battle, immediately start plotting about the follower. It seems as if this type of plotting makes Ivan the leader he is (we see this pattern twice): he rises from his death bed and makes some drastic changes in the administration; traitors are kicked out and men of the people are hired. Ivan is a dramatic and paranoid man. Eisenstein always films Ivan as if he is an entirely different creature than the rest, his pointed beard and dramatic posturing underlining the Tsar as performativity dependent on external attributes but also as some kind of strange inner power. And the ornate costumes! I have rarely seen a movie where so much focus lays on the costumes (Jarman's Wittgenstein comes to mind); in some scenes, the extreme costumes take up entire rooms, making the people within them almost disappear.What is more, don't forget to admire the eerie and artificial-looking set design - brilliant (for example - look at how the doors are often so small that the characters look like giants). The viewer is thrown into a messy world where angles and Eisenstein's play with distance create an unnerving claustrophobic space.

Alexander Nevsky (1938)

Bad is bad and good is good. The USSR = good, the Germans = less so. The Russians are true to their mother homeland and fight for it to the last drop of blood. Alexander Nevsky is a 13th century war hero who of course has his heart in the right place and a grand mane of hair to boot. Nevsky goes from humble fisherman to empire leader. A worker's hero. The Germans are evil, sneaky and drag priests and ugly iron armors along with them. The russians are simple and honorable people defending their homes. It is superfluous to say that this is a nationalistic film rooted in its (not so nice) times. Most scenes feel like their only aim is the rouse those belligerent feelings in the breasts of the true Soviet folks. Eisenstein mixes quiet scenes with grandiose battle scenes. There are rustic love scenes with healthy young lads and girls and then we go off to the war fronts. Alexander Nevsky was Eisenstein's first sound film. And the music - well. Grandiose feels like an understatement. - - One thing I noted about the film was the role it assigned to the female war combatant - she has a big part in the film and is portrayed as equally brave and honorable as the men.

Falling Leaves (1966)

Otar Ioselliani's Falling Leaves might be the only Georgian film I have ever seen. The story revolves around Niko, a young college graduate who together with his friend applies for a job. Niko comes from a wealthy family. In the beginning of the film, we see him with his family, carefully preparing a pot of coffee and watering the plants. He is a quite slovenly kid who does not seem to take things as seriously as his friend, who tries to make a good appearance in the small job interview at a winery. They both get jobs. But it is Niko who is more successful in socializing with his fellow workers and he even goes out with a colleague whom everybody admires. Niko starts out with being difficult, protesting about the bad wine. But despite this fact, Niko rises in the company and becomes a powerful manager. The factory is a part of the Soviet system with quotas which must be filled. Groups of tourists and even pioners come to visit. Appearances are to be kept up and everybody knows that the quality of the wine may not be the best. You tell your friends to stay clear of some of the bottles. No time for principles and this is something also Niko goes along with as he is more and more integrated in the job. By and by, we witness Niko's placid idealism fade. But he still has a mind of his own. In a scene towards the end, we see him pouring gelatine into the wine, while the other managers are outraged - it is against the rules. The top managers, however, acknowledge his initiative to save the plant and secure the quotas. 

Falling Leaves works with almost documentary-like images. The cinematography has a kind of fluidity to it that makes us feel the hustle and bustle of city life with its crowds and buses. There is no very strict narrative. We follow Niko on the job but also in his romantic pursuits. There are many small gems to praise, one being a scene quite early on in which we see Niko playing ball with his mates. His friend, who is already identifying with the job, chastises him for not being aspirational enough, playing ball on the first day at the new job! I recommend this film.

The Mirror (1975)

All of Tarkovsky's film have a personal feel. The Mirror is personal in a different way perhaps, in its being partly autobiographical. But this autobiographical dimension of the film is not, at least not for me, interesting in the sense of factual correspondence. It is Tarkovsky's striking attention to details that we can understanding from the point of view of personal history. In the film, archive footage create a historical backdrop but it is never clear in what way we are to see the connection between the more personal story and the events of the news clips (a war-like situation at the USSR/Chinese border). But to continue along the same line of reasoning the relation between childhood memories and the contemporary story (a dying man) is never spelled out. Memory is not separate from imagination: as much as memory is thinking back and recalling an image of something it is also to suddenly come to think of something and to imagine what something was like. The flashbacks we see are not restricted to the man's memories. The line between personal and collective memory is blurry here. Everything exists on the same level here, the childhood images, the newsreel images and the story about a father who quarrels with his wife. In the film, the wife looks exactly like the mother which we see in the childhood memories. Memories of his own childhood is sometimes depicted as stories about his own son. It is a film defined by association, feeling rather than reasoning. This does not upset me in the least.

The Mirror is a strikingly beautiful film that contain many typically 'Tarkovskian' scenes (rain, fire, earth). Some scenes makes me think that Lynch must have admired this film. In one especially unnerving scene (very beautifully filmed), the boy is home alone in the big apartment. Suddenly, he sees two elderly women sitting at a table. The woman starts talking to him, instructing him to read from a book. He reads a letter from Puschkin. There is a knock on the door and the boy walks off to open. When he returns the women are gone, only a condensation mark from a cup of tea is a trace of their presence. It is all very eerie, otherworldly even, in the same way Lynch conjures up a glimpse of fear/the uncanny  in the midst of everyday life (remember Dr Freud on the Unheimlich!). For a Tarkovsky film, there are un unusual abundance of 'realistic' scenes in the film - but as I said the 'realism' quickly mutes into something else. This is one reason why The Mirror is a magical experience, a film to watch over and over again - lots of details are of the kind that one easily misses them the first time around. Another thing that hast to be mentioned here is the sound. Tarkovsky uses a big scale of sounds: the wind, water - but also noise and very striking music.

Solaris (1972)

Re-watching Tarkovsky’s films never fail to be a rewarding experience. All of his films are rich enough so that new thoughts keep occurring in my mind on every single viewing (discussing them with others help). Solaris is one of his best films. This is not to say that it lacks weak moments. As an aesthetic experience, Solaris is, I would say, very hard to criticize. But when one starts to disentangle its themes and point of view, it’s easy to come upon bad solutions, half-thought material and unnecessary vagueness. What is the main thrust of Solaris? Is it a critique of contemporary (Soviet) scientific ideals that turn nature into an anthropomorphic mirror? Is it a story about love and conscience? Or is it, rather, a film about consciousness and memory? Or are we taking metaphysics here, we are all trapped in Illusion, we are all inhabitants on the space station of the film? Or ... God?

Well, all of these themes are present. The relation between them is not always clear, and this makes, in my opinion, interpretation quite difficult. Kris Kelvin, a psychologist, is sent to a space station that circles around a planet, Solaris. Solaris is covered with a mysterious sea. The sea has a strange influence over the crew on the space station, some of whom have disappeared, some have committed suicide and some are on the verge of insanity. As Kelvin boards the space station, he learns that it is haunted by “visitors”, materializations of memories. Thus, he finds his dead wife, Hari, in his room. Throughout the film, it is unclear how we are to view Hari. In many senses, the film asks us to see her as a human being; she is a human being in the light of Kelvin’s concern for her. On the other hand, we are challenged to view her as a manifestation of the allure of science, the utmost mirror of human desire. Is Hari a representation of Kelvin’s bad conscience or is she a human being? The film, the ending in particular, doesn’t really provide an answer. All I can say is that the film sometimes fall into the trap of muddled dichotomies between Love versus Science but other moments it does not work with dichotomies like that at all.

What is most confusing of all is how to understand the very ending of the film. Is it a tragedy - or a story about redemption? I am torn between different intepretations here.

The sci-fi part of Solaris is not very important. Yes, the story is based on Stanislav Lem’s novel. The novel is not very good. The film is far better than the book. But what makes the film so appealing is not the sum of narrative twists and turns.

What is interesting about the film is not the “science fiction”. And maybe it is the wrong approach to talk about Tarkovsky’s films in terms of being “interesting”. He is a religious director, rather than a philosophical director – what I mean by this is just that if we want to understand what drives the films, the religious themes are all-important, the level of “thoughts” and “ideas” less so. There are many, many stunning scenes in Solaris. In one of them, we see a car drive through a futuristic landscape. Dissonant, eerie noise/music enhance the feeling of uncertainty. Where are we going next? Those moments of uncertainty, of the unknown, are what has made me return to Solaris over the years. On the level of aesthetics, Tarkovsky is a good interpreter of something that appears as absolutely Other/Unknown (the sea on Solaris). When transformed into ideas (science tames & domesticizes the Unknown, turning it into an alluring, but dangerous mirror – the Unknown strikes back) the film is less convincing. 

PS: Don't watch Soderbergh's version. It's crap.

Pisma myortvogo cheloveka (1986)

Before watching Pisma myortvogo cheloveka (Letters from a dead man) Konstantin Lopushansky's work was entirely unfamiliar to me. Letters to a dead person has many connections with Tarkovsky. Lopushansky worked as Tarkovsky's assistant. His film has many things in common with a movie like Stalker. The most prominent features of this film are perhaps the bleak, yellow-tinted cinematography and a creaky world of sounds. Actually, the use of sound, water, rusty machines, voices distorted by masks, along with ominous music, is A-M-A-Z-I-N-G! Letters from a dead man is a morbid sci-fi movie, set among desolated landscapes and shabby-looking underground rooms. A nuclear catastrophe has taken place. There seems to have been a war. The film, for the most part, follows a few characters in the quest for meaning in post-nuclear existence. A scientist living with his wife and co-workers addresses his son Erik in lugubrious letters. Of course, paints a very repulsive picture of "Science" (that this film made it through the claws of the censors is an interesting fact). Letters from a dead man might not have the existential depth of Tarkovsky, but, I must confess, this film is very good.

This movie can be compared to two other "post-apocalyptic" ruminations: Chris Marker's La jetée and the movie version of Cormac McCarthy's The Road.

Revue (2008)

A small boy is asked to recite a poem. In a dramatic voice, he recites a poem with a metaphoric message pointing towards the rottenness of capitalism. More questions are fired at the boy. What profession would he like to have? Would he like to study? Then: do you like to work? The boy stares in front of himself with a blank face and says nothing.

This is one amazing scene in Revue (2008), a compilation of Soviet propaganda movies. Most of the movies celebrate labor & technology. There are images of factories and machines, agriculture and railways. Interwoven with these themes are different forms of art; dancing, singing, poetry. The intimate connection between labor & art in this compilation of archive footage made me think of one point that some philosophers have made and been criticized for making: the development of community can be seen as a form of artistic work. Labor takes on a double meaning. Labor is not only the crafting of products but it is also the process of developing community. When watching Revue, the double meaning of work is very obvious: the images of hard labor (preferably manufacturing steel) and sophisticated technological innovations are supposed to be seen as the development of society, of a new Man. Community is thus understood as a form of (self-)production. This idea may have something to do with the idea that work is not only a concrete activity but also work as civilizing and domesticizing the world.

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.