Reticulator

New Year Wishes

Jan 012010

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Before midnight we watched some of the music show that was on RTR Planeta. It has been a while since I watched one of those. This was a special one for New Year’s.

I was going to make a comment about how it’s like the one that English Russia talked about a few days ago, when it pointed out that the show actually recorded over a long period, several days in advance, and that most of the fruit is fake and the champaigne is really lemonade. But that wasn’t news to me. I had figured out long ago that these shows couldn’t possibly be live. When their turns came, the performers would need more time to go from the audience to the stage to perform, for just one thing.

Then I realized that tonight we were watching the very same show English Russia had told us about. English Russia had given us a few photos of in advance. One of them is shown above.

It was interesting to watch for people I recognized. Alla Pugacheva was in the audience. And I thought I saw Dmitri Dyuzhev a couple of times, but if he was one of the performers I missed it. Some of the singers I’ve seen before — some of them have distinctive voices — but I don’t know their names.

In the movie Ironiya Sudba-2, Vladimir Putin gives a brief greeting at midnight on New Year’s Eve. I wondered if there would be the same thing tonight. Sure enough, when the time came the music stopped so Dmitri Medvedev could give a little speech.

Now that I’ve listened to it, I’ve seen more of him on TV than of Barak Obama. Maybe if you count only the words I understood, it’s about the same as what I’ve seen of Obama.

Some wishes for the New Year:

May whistleblowing police officers like Alexey Dymovskiy be able to speak out on YouTube without being fired and prosecuted. May whistleblowing bloggers like Steven Frischling be able to reveal the silliness of government regulations without being threatened and intimidated by the TSA.

May dissidents like Lyudmila Alexeyeva in Russia and the Tea Party Protestors in the United States have reason to be proud to live in countries that are liberal enough to allow them to take to the streets to criticize their governments.

Feathers

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Dec 312009

This is posted here so I can ask a Polish cyberfriend what he knows about the use of this kind of cavalry dress in the early 1600s. I’m also curious as to what birds provided those feathers, and on what occasions those things might have been worn. Presumably they wouldn’t be good in high winds when one needed to be agile. (I still don’t think this is a good movie, but it may not be Mikhalkov’s worst.)

Guns

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Dec 282009

When I first started watching Russian movies from the Soviet days, I was surprised by the prevalence of guns in civilian hands. Like in this 1970s movie, where some kids get a handgun, albeit with tragic results. Kids also get their hands on a gun in Balkon, but I’ve barely started watching that one, so I don’t know how it turns out.

I got to thinking of it because of a recent fuss over guns on the bicycle touring list. Every once in a while someone brings up the topic of packing a gun while touring. There are those who object to the idea, and I’m pretty much on their side as it applies to me. But others go a lot further than just giving all the reasons why it’s a bad idea for most people. One person doesn’t mind if other people do it, as long as they don’t ride with him. I would not discriminate on such grounds myself, though I’m a solo rider so it’s not an issue.

Others – some of them from other countries – think it reflects badly on the United States that we even talk about such things. But is the United States the only country with a gun culture, so called?

Somehow I once had the idea that there was not much private ownership of guns in the Soviet Union, except perhaps for some hunters in remote parts of Siberia. The Nazis took away civilian guns in Germany, and I had the idea that all authoritarian states did the same. In the United States I think there was some kind of gun control movement in the South in the early-mid 20th century because the people in power didn’t want African Americans to have guns. I don’t know the details, though, nor do I know where to find them.

But I also recall an earlier surprise from long before I started watching Russian movies. It may have been in January 1991 during the troubles in Lithuania. We heard reports that the government was broadcasting a demand that the people turn in their guns.

What? Civilians in a Soviet-bloc country have guns? That was news to me. Since then I’ve brought it up several times in debates when gun control advocates sneer at the idea that civilians can use them to protect themselves from an abusive government.

So maybe I shouldn’t have been so surprised about gun ownership in the Soviet Union, too.

I suppose it shouldn’t have been a surprise that in a big country like that, with a lot of forested and open spaces, that there would be a need for guns for hunting. But what about handguns? Are the handguns that we see in civilian hands in movies all legit? Or was private ownership of them officially prohibited? How prevalent was the ownership of guns in general, and handguns in particular, legal or otherwise?

Well-traveled footpath

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Dec 232009

I’m only one minute into this movie, but had to stop to enjoy this scene. I especially like Russian movies with rural roadside scenes. This one is extra pleasing because of the footpath on the right side of the road. It looks like a well-worn one, too, which means that if I were to ride my bicycle down the road, there might be someone to stop and talk to.

And that rowcrop a little further along. Corn (maize)? Maybe somebody is raising sweet corn?

How about the houses beyond what can be seen of the road. Are they located where a stream is flowing from right to left? In the U.S. there would probably be some farm silos to be seen in country like this. Come to think of it, I’ve never seen a silo in a Russian movie or photo. Do they even have farm silos in Russia? In the U.S., they are probably becoming a thing of the past. It seems most sileage is now made in monster plastic bags that run as big, white tubes on the ground.

Without that footpath, I probably wouldn’t have felt compelled to stop and study the scene and wonder about these things.

Pounding the table

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Dec 222009

Usually when someone loses his/her temper in a movie role I just roll my eyes. It often adds a false note to an otherwise good movie. It’s cheap acting that anybody can do. I’ll bet that even I, the worst actor who ever had a minor part in a school play, could do it.

I must confess to liking this scene, though. And the way Platanov nurses his hand as he rants is a nice touch. You can hurt yourself pounding your fist on a table. (This scene is at about 4:40 in the YouTube clip.)

Pyat vecherov

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Dec 192009

It was at this point in Five Evenings, before I got a good look at his face, that I suspected I had seen this guy before. It was the way he stood with his back straight, hands in his pockets, weight not quite balanced on both legs. It’s a younger version of the same guy who had played Uncle Vova in Kin-Dza-Dza!

I had to look up his name again. It’s Stanislav Lyubshin.

I didn’t recognize Lyudmila Gurchenko from her posture, though. It was not until she showed this facial expression that I recognized her.

I do try to read the film credits at the beginning, but I somehow missed these names. I would have recognized Gurchenko if I had read the subtitles, but I try to read the Russian instead, and am slow enough at it that I rarely have time to check the English. I’m getting better at it, but still can’t read them all as fast as they roll by.

I did catch Nikita Mikhalkov’s name in the credits, though. It’s OK. Just because I don’t like him doesn’t mean he hasn’t done some very good work Actually, his work as a director has usually been quite good, with a few exceptions like 1612: Chronicles of the Dark Times. His work as an actor is often not so good, though there are exceptions, like the role he gave himself in Unfinished Piece for Player Piano. His politics these days are not good, and sometimes his movies have a repressive political agenda – as in Twelve. Well, maybe that’s the only one. I suppose some people may see a foreign policy agenda in 1612, but if he took advantage of the opportunity (e.g. in the Russian attitude toward Poland) it was in nuances I was not able to detect even though I was looking for them.

We’ve only watched the first three YouTube segments of Five Evenings so far, but are looking forward to the rest. Myra and I enjoy watching movies about the 50s, even if it’s about countries where the 1950s were different than in the American midwest where we grew up. Or maybe especially if it’s about the 1950s in other countries.

We’re starting to get used to the idea of life in communal apartments, too. (Just the idea. We have no intention of looking for an opportunity to try it out ourselves.)

Oleg Tabakov

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Dec 182009

I’ve seen discussions on other topics that go like this one in Neokonchennaya pyesa:

Shcherbuk: All the best that humanity possesses, it owes to the representatives of the blue blood. … Where are the representatives of our high-class aristocracy? Where are the Pushkins, the Lermontovs, the Gogols, Goncharovs, Turgenevs?

Platanov: Gonchorov was a merchant.

Shcherbuk: Yes, that’s right. What?

Platanov: Gonchorov was a merchant.

Shcherbuk: Exceptions only prove the rule. So there, young man. Besides, it’s a debatable issue whether your Goncharov was a genius.

(I’m not sure these subtitles are a good translation, but I noticed one throwaway phrase that wasn’t translated, so I added it.)

I had never heard of this Goncharov, so I looked him up. Wikipedia says that author Ivan Goncharov’s father was a wealthy grain merchant. Ivan Goncharov himself was a writer and government worker. His most famous novel was Oblomov.

Well, I’ve heard of that one because I’ve seen the movie version, done by the same Nikita Mikhalkov who did this movie, a couple of years after this one. And in the movie Oblomov, the main character is played by the same Oleg Tabakov whose character is pontificating here in Unfinished Piece for Player Piano.

I’ve seen him in other movies, too, usually playing some obnoxious character, though usually it’s a more subtle, nuanced one than Shcherbuk. I wonder if he ever had a role playing a sympathetic character.

(I wish I could find Russian subtitles for this movie.)

Bad Mikhalkov and Good Mikhalkov

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Dec 172009

I didn’t care for 1612 Chronicles of the Dark Times (2007). It doesn’t help that it’s a Nikita Mikhalkov film.

I’m not a fan of Mikhalkov, in part because he defends the state of artistic freedom under a national leader who has an uncanny knack for not being able to find the murderers of outspoken journalists. This behavior affects us as well as Russia. It is not helpful for journalistic and artistic freedom in the U.S. or anywhere else, especially at a time when it is under attack around the world, perhaps like it hasn’t been since the 1930s.

But I also don’t care much for Mikhalkov’s acting. In most movies he plays Nikita Mikhalkov rather than whatever character he’s supposed to be playing. At least in Dark Times he didn’t give himself any role that I noticed. If he did, we were at least spared another sight of him in a muscle shirt.

But Dark Times is especially bad. It could just as well be an American movie. Even the realistic parts are improbable when they’re not trite. And the minor actors look too bored to be engaged in a life-and-death struggle.

I could say a lot more bad things about Mikhalkov and his work, but I just finished re-watching Unfinished Piece for Player Piano.” I’ve watched it about once a year since 2006, and I think more highly of it each time. Sometimes I can’t believe it was made by the same Nikita Mikhalkov who made so many films I dislike (such as Burnt by the Sun, to name another). Even his acting is good in this one, here playing a doctor who doesn’t really like being a doctor, especially when the work has anything to do with patients and disease.

Life is not simple.

Back to the earthy life, forward to danger

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Dec 072009

I still don’t know what to call the 2nd category into which I’d put this scene. Up to this point Inna Churikova’s character has always been dressed in 1970s business atire. She has a family life as well as a public life as town mayor, but she has never before put on a housedress. But in this scene she does, puts some stirring traditional music on the turntable and goes to work washing floors. I take it as a sort of getting herself back to the peasant roots of Mother Russia, to inspire some patriotic/nationalistic feeling in herself in order to steel herself for the big task that lies ahead, which is to raise her voice in favor of the building of better apartments for the people of her town.

Without subtitles I wasn’t able to understand nearly as much of this film as I had hoped. But just before this scene, I think I heard her tell her son that “the people need apartments.” And that understanding seems to be supported by some of the other scenes, e.g. where she is on an inspection tour of some of the dangerously defective apartments that people are living in.

I can’t make out Russian cursive writing very well, but I’m guessing the 2nd line of her note her is the title of the movie, which means something like “I wish to speak.”

proshuslova3

And this is where she wishes to speak. This may also have been a scene in Siberiade, btw. It seems to be some big plenary session or congress. I presume it would really have taken some courage for a small-town mayor to speak up in that setting.

I’m not really sure about the “peasant” part, btw. Given that a concerted effort was made to eliminate traditional peasants in favor of communal farms during Stalin’s time, I’m not sure if peasant origins were really supposed to represent the traditional nation in the same way that American farms and small towns used to do for us, at least before a lot of people decided they didn’t like Sarah Palin talking about it.

Here is Stirlitz doing something similar in Semnadcat’ mgnovenii vesny. He has been living undercover in Germany for many years, living as a suave and sophisticated German. I’d say he had been eating German food and drinking German beer, but I don’t think any of the tavern scenes shows him with a beer stein. Cognac or wine, maybe. But at this point, one-third of the way through the series, he seems to be steeling himself for the very dangerous work ahead, by inspiring in himself a feeling of nationalism and patriotism. He does it by putting on traditional Russian music, drinking vodka and eating roasted potatoes straight from the ashes of his fireplace, getting his face sooty in the process. I would guess that that, too, takes him back to the peasant origins of Mother Russia, or something like that.

As an outsider it’s easy for me not to understand this very precisely, but it seems that in both films something of the sort is taking place.

Floor washing

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Dec 052009

Last week I tried washing our kitchen floor the way I’ve seen it done in Russian movies. It’s a way to do a good job of it, but it’s not that easy. I haven’t done enough of it to decide whether the method should help Russian women stay young and agile, or if it would age them prematurely.

Last fall I took a one-night-a-week class in conversational Russian at MSU. In a session when our teacher, a young woman from Ukraine, was teaching us how to describe some household activities, I asked her if Russian woman really washed floors the way it’s shown in the movies. She said they did. I never got around to blogging about it until now, though.

The scene above is from Proshu slova, which I just finished watching. Below is one from Vor. There is also a floor-washing scene in Komissar, in which Klavdia Vavilova, played by Nonna Mordukova, in the brief domestic phase in her life is down on the floor washing it with rags. But she is down on her knees, which is not quite the same thing. IMO it’s a lot easier that way. I would guess that the reason women would do it in in a squatting position is not because they’re trying to save their knees but because they’re trying to save their clothes. Also, they can move around a lot faster and get the job done more quickly, even though it requires more effort.

So now I have made a start on another category of scenes to collect: Floor washing scenes.

But I think the scene from Proshu Slova also fits another category that’s found in quite a few Russian movies. I’m not quite sure what to call it, but I’ll try to describe it in another post. There is a scene in Semnadcat’ mgnovenii vesny that I hope to find for the sake of comparison.

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