I recognize 15 of these photoshopped scenes from Russian film classics. What I don’t recognize are most of the American actors’ faces that have been photoshopped onto them, except for Sean Connery in place of Pyotr Mamanov, which I recognize with the help of the transliterated name that’s printed on the poster.
In re-watching the end of Ostrov tonight, I was even more irritated by some of the flaws at the end. The movie is a great one, but now I think the climax is sloppily done. (Go away if you don’t like spoilers.)
One part that bugs me is the exorcism. It’s done well, but the Father Anatoly character doesn’t quite fit. He has already announced that he will be dying shortly, but here he is, looking younger, stronger, cleaner, healthier, and better dressed than he did anywhere else in the movie, either before or after. He wears that heavy coat shown in the above image, where in other winter scenes he’s simply wearing his black robe. And no, it’s not that this scene takes place in bitter cold. There is a pool of water from which he washes Nastya’s face. In bitter cold that pool would have been iced over.
My best guess is that this scene was shot early in the process, while the filmmakers were still trying to feel their way as to how to portray the character. What they finally settled on was perfect. It’s too bad their earlier, less successful experiment (if that’s what this was) couldn’t have been redone.
The following paragraph might be considered a spoiler.
The other part is the final scene with Nikhon. I’m glad it wasn’t done Hollywood style, with hugs and over-dramatization. But the scene doesn’t seem to have made any difference. It doesn’t seem to have mattered much to the characters, and it doesn’t develop either of the character’s characters any further. The first time through I thought maybe I was just too dense to get it, or maybe there was something in the language that didn’t come through in the subtitles. But now, after a second viewing, it just doesn’t seem to work.
It’s still an excellent movie, though. Here is a scene that I just now found on YouTube. It’s one that does work. (Sorry, no subtitles.) It includes the prayer for the healing of the boy. It has especially good acting and good camera work. Note the camera position for that prayer by Pyotr Manonov/Father Anatoly.
Late edit: I said I just now found this clip? I see I had already posted a link to it several days ago. Oh, well.
I’ve already mentioned how some of the camera work in Ostrov reminded me of Vozvrashcheniye. But it’s not just the camera angles and panning of the scenes on the northern seas. There is a similar washed-out quality to the colors. And some of the music is similar. The use of simple piano and woodwind notes helps build a tension, but gently.
This YouTube clip demonstrates some of the color effects (in the scenes that aren’t dominated by the actors’ presence). But I haven’t been able to find a clip that captures the music.
Well, maybe I remembered wrong. Here is a clip from Vozvraschcheniye. Some of the music starts at 6:30, and in many ways it’s not at all like that on Ostrov. But the pacing and effects are somewhat similar. At least they had a similar effect on me.
I think the two clips do show the similarities in the washed out colors. Northern latitudes tend not have the deep blue skies that one gets near the equator, but the effect was exaggerated in both movies.
I had read in several places that Pyotr Mamanov became a convert to the Russian Orthodox Church and left Moscow to live in a village. Here is a YouTube clip that apparently shows the village he moved to. I like scenes of peoples’ back yards like in this one, where he goes out to feed his dog and cats.
I wish I could understand more than a few disconnected words and phrases of what he’s saying.
One thing that strikes me from the movie, Ostrov, is how on one hand the character he plays can say to the boy with the leg that won’t heal, “on dobroye” (speaking of God) and on the other he is tormented by his sins and afraid to face God after he dies. But that’s a way that people can be.
(OK, I just now learned that BlogDesk, which I usually use for posting, couldn’t handle Cyrillic characters. But the WordPress editor can.)
I’ve moved my old posts about Russian movies from www.reticulator.com to this blog. It’s something I had thought about doing anyway, but when Alexander Sedov brought up some interesting comments and questions about them, I decided it was time.
Tonight we finished watching Ostrov. Some random comments:
I’ll be watching it at least once more before sending it back, for language-learning purposes.
Tonight we got up to section 6 of Ostrov. It’s reminding me a little bit of C.S. Lewis’s, “The Great Divorce.” Pilgrims come to Father Anatoly for prayers and healing, and he has a knack for finding the real problem, which is not necessarily the one they asked for help with. It’s something the petitioners don’t want to let go of, but which they need to do to find joy. (I say joy because it’s a term one might find in a C.S. Lewis book. I’m not sure whether or not it’ll ever appear in a Russian movie.)
We started watching Ostrov tonight. (Especially in summer, we only have time for a little bit of movie-watching here and there — maybe 20 minutes on those nights when we have time. On a weekend we might go crazy and watch a half-hour’s worth.)
I was surprised at the reference to abortion. I didn’t know it was allowed to say things like that in movies, even in Russian movies.
We’re well over halfway through watching An Usual Wonder on YouTube.
It’s hard to know what to make of it. Just when we think we’re getting the idea of what it is, it does something unexpected. There is music that might be from an old James Bond movie, but what is that with a magician and scenes from the wild west (or east, in the case of a Russian movie)? The magician and his wife are definitely not a Usual Magician and spouse. And it’s not a Usual Bear-turned-into-a-man. The role of king seems made for Evgeni Leonov, but it’s not a Usual King. If you like swordfight scenes, there is one with a charming end to it. It’s a love story, maybe three or more love stories, but it’s hard to say whether they’re silly or profound. And it’s hard to say how all the parts are going to come together in the end.
Most of it seems made more for the stage than the screen. The movie is from 1978, from the Soviet days.
Wikipedia tells us that socialist realism requires the showing of the typical life of people, and there is certainly a lot of that in movies from the Soviet era, but there is also a lot that’s far from it — in unusual combinations.
This is a mixed up explanation, but then the movie a mixed up thing, too. We’re liking it so far.
Yesterday I started reading the 1990 edition of Robert Conquest’s, “The Great Terror.” I had long known about Conquest’s work, but had never read any before.
In a way I’m glad I waited until after I watched a lot of Russian movies. Not that Russian movies give an accurate portrayal of life in the Soviet Union any more than American movies give an accurate portrayal of life in our country. But they give me a picture of how the authorities wanted the Revolution to be seen, and (more importantly) of what sort of portrayal the population needed to see in order to be part of it. And now more than ever before, I see all the players as real people.
One thing that’s surprising to me is how much dissent there was in high places in the Communist Party in the late 20s and early 30s. I had known about Mensheviks, and I had known about people like Trotsky, but not about this. Chapter 1, which follows a long chapter of Introduction, tells us, referring to one of the opposition groups that were led by people who had been Stalin’s followers:
They seem to have circulated a memoir criticizing the regime for economic adventurism, stifling the initiative of the workers, and bullying treatment of the people by the Party. Lominadze had referred to the “lordly feudal attitude to the needs of the peasants.”
There is a lot more like that.
In the Introduction there is a good section summarizing the crackdown on the people. It points out that the starvation of perhaps 10 million people, mostly in the Ukraine, was not an accidental byproduct of Moscow-centered economic policies, but a deliberate attempt to show the people who was boss.
There seems little doubt that the main issue was simply crushing the peasantry, and the Ukranians, at any cost. On ehigh official told a Ukrainian who later defected that the 1933 harvest “was a test of our strength and their endurance. It took a famine to show them who is master here. It has cost millions of lives, but the collective farm system is here to stay. We have won the war.”
It was an important learning experience not only for the peasantry, but for the police and Party officials. It prepared them for what was to follow.