Reticulator

Agoniya

Jun 092009

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We finished watching Agoniya tonight. The film was somewhat of a letdown. You’d figure any film that was banned by the Soviet government for several years would be good, no? In this case, no.

At the part where we saw the screenshots shown here, a little past the middle of the movie, where Rasputin seems to be possessed, we told each other it could just as well be an American movie.

Alexei Petrenko did a remarkable acting job as Rasputin. Anatoli Romashin did a good enough job playing Nicholas II as a weak character. But that doesn’t make the movie good. There are caricatures but no character development. There is nothing in it to explain human behavior and its relation to the history of nations.

I see that the director, Elem Klimov, also produced Come and See. That film had a lot of the same flaws as this one. It didn’t demonstrate human behaviors as coming from normal human failings; therefore it didn’t show the full horror of war.

The interspersing of newsreel footage is a heavy-handed way of trying to show the significance of what is happening. Those parts are put together fairly well, though.

We kept wondering which of those are actual newsreel footage, and which were made up for the movie, and which (if any) might have come from older movies. Some of the English language web sites say they are all simulated newsreels. Another site says they’re real. But I don’t think they can all be real. I wish I knew just which ones, if any, are from actual newsreels.

Music for Pokayanie

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Apr 262009

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Pokayanie has some really strange musical references. Here Yelena breaks into a singing of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy,” in German. The effect is sinister. It comes after she tries to “comfort” Nino by saying the following:

Of course, the arrest of Sandro and Mikhail is a mistake. We must summon up patience, both you and I. You’ll see, Nika will do everything.
They’ll look into it and free them. You must be strong, Nino. Don’t forget that you have Keti. I’m sure it will end well, everything will be all right. They’re bound to find the truth and set Sandro free. I’m sure of it! Nino, I’m thinking now of your girl. Keti must become a good citizen and an honorable woman. Your misfortune must not lead her astray. Don’t forget that we’re serving a great cause. The future generations will be proud of us. But since the scale of events is so grand, big mistakes are inevitable. It may even happen that innocent people are victimized. But I can already hear our favorite â€œOde to Joyâ€ by Beethoven which will surely sound all overthe world very soon.

I can almost understand what that music is doing there, because of the totalitarian overtones in Schiller’s poem. I had only a vague idea of what was totalitarian about it, though, so I went to google to see if anyone else ever had the same thoughts. In doing so, I found the following in the book, “Sound matters: essays on the acoustics of modern German culture” By Nora M. Alter, Lutz Peter Koepnick (2004).

It talks about the “Enlightenment project of universal harmony [which] at once needs and loathes the dissonnant in order to define itself. The construction of hegemony through harmony cannot do without separating the world into friend and foe, self and other… “[T]he passage from Schiller’s ‘Ode to Joy,’ in which those who are not accorded all-embracing love are banished from it, involuntarily betrays the truth about the idea of humanity, which is at once totalitarian and particular.”

“At once totalitarian and particular,” it says. If that isn’t a good description of what’s in this movie, I don’t know what is.

But what about the other music? How about that brief showing of partygoers arriving with music and booze, to the accompaniment of Bobby Hebb’s “Sunny.” Is that merely meant to be ironic, given what’s happening? Or am I too dense to catch a deeper meaning?

And what about those Italian opera segments sung by Varlam and his flunkies. Those, too, are in a sinister setting. But I don’t recognize them from anywhere, mainly because I’m ignorant about opera. What do they mean?

And what about that Wagner duet on the white piano? I’ll bet there is some meaning to it, but I don’t know what it is.

The end of Pokayanie

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Apr 232009

Tonight I finished the first watching of Pokayanie.

If I hadn’t been told that this film was produced in 1984, I would have guessed it was a production from the mid 1990s or so. It’s that prophetic.

Most of the way through, while being surprised that such a film had been produced at all, I kept telling myself that it certainly wasn’t subtle. Yes, the guards are dressed in medieval armor, the jurors and lawyers have medieval clothing, and there are other surreal elements to keep this from being any kind of docudrama. But it was pretty obvious what piece of Russian history was being represented here. In fact, the above scene sounded just like something I had read in Robert Conquest’s, “The Great Terror.” The character has confessed to being a spy and to being in charge of building a tunnel from London to Bombay. He thought that if the prisoners made their confessions even more ridiculous and outlandish than they were being tortured and manipulated to make them, that it would somehow bring it all to an end. (It didn’t work.)

Then, the last scenes in the movie started to reveal that maybe it’s more subtle than I had thought. And the final scene went a step further and made it all more complicated. And instead of my viewing it as an outsider — after all I’m not Russian — all of a sudden it seemed I was drawn in to be part of that story, too, even though I’d rather not be.

I’m not sure everyone would have the same reaction.

The end of that movie upset a lot of things. I’m still not sure where they all landed. I need to think about it more before I try to explain.

Repentance

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Apr 192009

I’ve started to watch Repentance (Pokayanie). Unfortunately, the language spoken is Georgian, not Russian. Nothing wrong with that, but I understand not a syllable of Georgian, so I’m listening to the Russian overdub while reading English subtitles. I’ve had a little practice in watching movies this way, but not enough to be entirely used to it.

I got about as far as the above scene, at about 41:50. A delegation of people has come to the mayor (a Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini character) complaining that the scientific experiments are destroying the church. The mayor is all smiles and accommodation, and then asks the young father in the delegation:

You live on the town square in a two-story house, don’t you? During the ceremony a girl was blowing soap-bubbles from the window. Was that your apartment?

Yes.

I see everything, I notice everything. So beware of me, be careful.

And if he saw that, he of course also saw what isn’t stated, that the father pulled the girl back and shut the window.

(It reminds me that in the early days of the Clinton administration it was announced that the President would be coming to Battle Creek. On a local online forum I said it would be a good time to bring the family inside to safety, shutter the windows and lock the doors until he had gone. I was surprised at the number of people who were extremely offended that I would talk that way. Maybe they had been characters in this same movie, which btw was released in 1987, after being suppressed for a few years.)

The mayor notices everything, but during that ceremony, nobody dared spoil the festivities by noticing that workmen had accidentally broken a water main which was drenching the speakers who were honoring the mayor, as well as the typist-clerk who kept on typing.

It kind of reminds me of how nobody is supposed to notice the government policies that brought on our current financial crisis, and that we are expected to respond by enacting more of the same.

There is very little about this movie on Wikipedia or any of the usual places. Anna Lawton wrote about it in one of her books, but I’ve already forgotten much of what she had to say. After I finish watching I’ll go back and find what she had said.

I understand it’s the third in a trilogy. I suspect I’ll want to watch the two movies that preceded it, too.

Russian Exceptionalism

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Apr 132009

In Dvenadsat (12), this juror is almost the last holdout to insist that the Chechen kid is guilty. He sarcastically criticizes the previous juror’s emotional personal story, saying, “Uncle Vasya the city prosecutor turns a blind eye. And the criminal remains at large! And meanwhile the entire civilized world has lived for centuries according to the law.”

The juror who responds to that is a cemetery director who in the movie has several things to say about the rule of law. This time he says, “A Russian man will never live by the law.”

“Why not?”

“The law bores him. The law is dead. There’s nothing personal about it. And a Russian man without that personal touch is an empty shell.”

He makes it sound as though it’s a peculiarly Russian issue. I, on the other hand, would argue that the tension between the “law” and the “personal” is not at all just a Russian issue. It’s a tension to be found in every society where you have a system of laws.

But before getting into all that, I was going to make a snarky comment about “Russian exceptionalism.” In our country there has been an occasional debate about American Exceptionalism. But I was going to use this scene as an example to point out that there is nothing exceptional about American Exceptionalism. There is also such a thing as Russian Exceptionalism.

I thought I was being clever, but a quick google search shows me that I am far from the first person to use the term “Russian Exceptionalism.”

Oh, well.

When first we practice to deceive

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Apr 062009

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Warning: The following contains a spoiler for the film Depuis qu’Otar est parti. Go away if you want to see the film first.

I’ve long been bothered by the part near the end after Eka learns that Otar is dead. I was content to just let it go as one of those open-ended things that make the movie like real life, until I read the explanation on Wikipedia:

Eka breaks down with the initial shock, but soon recovers and returns to meet Ada and Marina, as they are due to return to Georgia. In a reversal of roles, and to the bemusement of the two younger women, Eka decides that it would hurt them to know of Otar’s death, and pretends that he has gone to America without telling them.

But it can’t be just a role reversal. Because now Eka knows, not just that Otar has died, but that he died some time ago. What then about all those letters she had received from Otar since he died? She has to know at this point where they came from.

In the first big lie, Marina and Ada were keeping the truth from Eka, who truly did not know that Otar was dead.

But in the 2nd lie, Eka has to know that she’s not fooling anyone. I took it to mean she just found a way to decide that even though she knew what had happened, and they knew she knew, and she knew that they knew that she knew, that they were all going to pretend it didn’t happen.

I also found it interesting that the filmmaker (Julie Bertucelli) also saw fit to introduce the topic that during the Soviet days they had been living a lie. Marina’s boyfriend Tengiz explains this to Ada as part of an attempt to convince her not to be too hard on her mother. So living a lie during the Soviet days may have influenced the characters to play these games now in which they lovingly tell big lies to each other. I’m going to have to listen to that part again, though, to see if there was something more profound that I’m supposed to learn.

BTW, I liked how all the characters grew in the movie, including Eka. She is a sweet old grandmother who is much loved by her granddaughter, but she is also somewhat selfish. But she finally learns to let go of Otar and also to let go of granddaughter Ada, whom she always preferred over her own daughter Marina. She is willing to go back to Georgia to life without her beloved Ada, where she will have to get along with Marina, with whom she had always clashed. And it’s all accomplished without any histronics. It’s just the right touch.

Right-sized slices

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Apr 032009

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Due to a Netflix accident, we’re watching Depuis qu’Otar est parti again. We’ve not dropped Netflix entirely, even though it’s gotten a lot more difficult to get Russian films from them. So many are now marked “short wait,” “very long wait,” and “unavailable.” We hung on to the subscription so Myra can get some English-language movies while I get Russian ones from Memocast. But the movies Myra had at the top of our queue were also unavailable, and somehow Otar was next in line. This is not at all a disappointment.

Myra enjoys watching a lot of the Russian or other non-English movies me, but usually only watches them one time. I watch them multiple times if they’re good for language-learning, but Myra usually finds something else to do the 2nd or 3rd time through. Occasionally she’ll watch one twice. This one she’s watching a 3rd time — perhaps a first for her. It’s that good.

I’ve been trying to figure out why I like it so much. In my mind I put it in the same category as Vozvrashcheniye. Anna Lawton in one of her books referred to “slice of life” films. Maybe this one and Vozvrashcheniye could be categorized that way.

Wikipedia says this about slice-of-life stories:

A slice of life story is a category for a story that portrays a “cut-out” sequence of events in a character’s life. It may or may not contain any plot progress and little character development, and often has no exposition, conflict, or denouement, with an open ending. It usually tries to depict the every-day life of ordinary people, sometimes with fantasy or science fiction elements involved. The term slice of life is actually a dead metaphor: it often seems as if the author had taken a knife and “cut out” a slice of the lives of some characters, without concern for narrative form.

But these films do have some plot progress, character development, conflict, etc. Maybe the thing is that they don’t try to do too much of any of these elements. They tell us about people and relationships, but don’t try to tell more than movies are capable of telling. Some of Tarkovsky’s work, great as it is, suffers from trying to do more than is possible to do with film, IMO. His work becomes overly symbolic, because how else can you use a camera to deal with such grand topics?

It’s not that the makers of Otar and Vozvrashcheniye were slackers. It’s obvious that an enormous amount of attention to detail and nuance went into them. The acting is excellent throughout. And because their reach does not exceed their grasp, they end up being great works of art.

[Sunday afternoon spelling correction]

Medical TV

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Mar 242009

My crusade to outlaw television in public places is not going very well — certainly not as well as other crusaders’ measures to outlaw smoking.

I figured it would probably be an issue when I took my wife in for outpatient surgery this morning. But I’ve been able to deal with it in the past. I usually complain politely, or just find a place where I can turn off an offending television and wait in relative quiet. Last time I was hospitalized myself I made my opinions known, and got paired with a roommate who was willing to leave the thing off. A big HMO-type dentist place I used to go to wasn’t so bad — the large waiting room was divided into two parts, TV and non-TV. It was somewhat like restaurants that have both non-smoking and smoking sections; some noise still ended up in the non-TV section. But it was tolerable.

Last time my wife was hospitalized, she was paired with a roommate who refused to turn the thing off. My wife couldn’t get any rest. The thing was so loud her physician couldn’t talk to her. The roommate refused the physician’s requests to turn the thing down; which led to my wife getting moved to a private room.

Anyhow, this morning we ended up in a new, improved waiting room. But now there are even more televisions, not fewer. Big, flat-screen television screens were everywhere. There was no getting away from them. After my wife was taken to surgery prep, I tried all corners of the room, but couldn’t get away from the sounds of idiocy coming from CNN or whatever was on. Finally I found a chair in a location that was a little less bad. I sat and held my hands over my ears while I read Anna Lawton’s book, “Kinoglasnost”. Just cupping the hands over the ears doesn’t quite work, but I can block out the sounds well enough by pushing on the tragus (I think that’s the term) — not just holding it still but pressing on it repeatedly and continuously. I had to take my hands off to turn the pages, but occasional blasts of noise like that are tolerable.

I tried to resume that routine after my wife went to surgery, but finally my arms got tired, and I asked the person at the desk if there was any place to get away from the televisions. I didn’t want to get so far away that I wouldn’t be around when the surgeon came out to talk to me; finally, I decided to just stand in the hallway outside the waiting room and read. If I can walk around a little, and if I stand straight, I can stand up and read for long periods, like I did once outside a jury assembly room. That worked OK, and a person at the desk came and got me when the surgeon came. (My wife’s surgery went very well — we are thankful for that. Maybe they don’t have television blaring in the operating room.)

I suppose a person could get used to the television noise, but I don’t care to. I’m not sure, but I think the purpose of all that television is to turn peoples’ brains to jelly so they’ll vote Democratic. In looking around the waiting room to see if it made anyone else unconfortable, all I saw was people — even elderly people — looking at the idiots on the screen. Maybe it was because I was reading about Russian movies, but at one point while looking at the people I was reminded of a scene from Gruz 200. It’s pretty close to the one in the above screenshot.

The old woman spends her time watching the TV and drinking vodka. Some reviewers say she’s senile; but really, she’s worse than that. The movie is one of the filthiest, most disgusting I’ve ever seen — but there is an important point to it, which I won’t go into here. The son is a police chief, and is also a crook and rapist. He discusses the rapings with his mother, who has a perverted solicitude for her son. She tries to convince the girl to like it. But mostly, she just watches the television, oblivious to the evil and violence going on in her house except for those times when she is facilitating it.

I wondered if that’s what all the television would do to us someday. It also occurred to me that we’re coming to be more like North Korea, where it is said radios in public places are constantly blaring at people. You can’t get away from them there, either.

My kids give me a bit of a hard time about my inability to stand radio or TV noise, because when I watch Russian movies I tend to crank the volume up. It’s true — I do — mostly because I can make out unfamiliar sounds better that way.

And I do watch some television. Some years I watch the baseball playoffs and World Series, though maybe the last time was 4-5 years ago. And I watch the NCAA basketball tournament with my wife. When we do this I want to listen, not just watch. But even so, it is a blessed relief when the games are over and we turn the TV off. It’s as if a oppressive weight is lifted off my head, and I can breath free again. I wish more people would find out how wonderful the sounds of silence can be.

But it doesn’t have to be silence. While my wife was recovering after surgery, a one-year-old baby nearby was bawling its head off. Some people seemed to be bothered by it, but to me that sound is almost like music in comparison to television. Crying is not as good as laughter, but either way, it was the sound of a real person, not a TV idiot. I hope we don’t create a TV-drenched world for that baby — like that apartment in Gruz 200.

Glasnost movies

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Mar 222009

This Family Circus cartoon for March 22 reminds me of me when I’m reading anything in Russian. The little girl goes on for 7 frames reading her book — sitting up, lying down, shifting positions, enjoying herself all the time. Then she reports to her mother: “This is a GOOD BOOK! I’ve been reading the first sentence and it’s interestin’ already!”

I’ve sometimes wondered whether I’ve already seen most of the good Russian movies. But in reading Anna Lawton’s book, Kinoglasnost, I’m learning that there are a lot of good ones in store for me. I’m especially interested in seeing more of those from the glasnost years. I need to become more proficient at reading and understanding Russian if I’m going to be able to take all of them in — maybe a little beyond the skill level portrayed in the cartoon.

In the part of her book on the mid-late 1980s, Lawton has helped me understand why My Friend, Ivan Lapshin is considered such a great movie. There is one piece of information I haven’t been able to reconcile with what I’ve read on the web, though. I’ve read that Ivan Lapshin was produced in 1971, and was not allowed to be released until 1985. Lawton says it was made in 1983. It’s not a huge point, but 1971 was a very different time from 1985, and it would be nice to know which period it came from.

I recently purchased a download of Repentance from Memocast. Lawton tells how it portrays a dream within a dream within a dream. “The way the narrative is constructed is disorienting because of time discontinuity and unclear transitions between reality, dream, memories, and fantasy.” Lawton then goes on to give a synopsis. In this case, I think I’ll be glad to have read it before watching it the first time.

It seems I made some lucky choices in my last purchase from Memocast. But Lawton tells about many, many films that I had never heard of that I now want to see, including some that deal with gulags and prisons — always a topic of morbid fascination to me. What else would you expect from a person who predicts that he’ll end his days in one of Hillary’s internment camps?

Gulag hair

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Mar 212009

The film Railway Station for Two begins and ends with a scene in a Siberian gulag. The above screenshot is from the opening scene. Excellent gulag photography in this film, btw. I love the above scene — not as a place to be, of course, but as an excellent portrayal of a northern winter in such a setting.

In Anna Lawton’s 1992 book, “Kinoglasnost: Soviet Cinema in our Time”, she says this about the movie:

Because of a car accident caused by his wife — a materialistic woman representative of the nouveau riche mentality — he is serving time in a labor camp, and is in fact hurrying back to prison after a brief leave.”

That’s not quite the way I understood it. I hesitate to say so, because Lawton speaks Russian and I don’t — certainly not enough to understand the parts of the movie where this is explained. But I can see what’s told in pictures.

My understanding is that most of the movie is a flashback. There are occasional flash-forward scenes to the gulag, but at the railway station, the character played by Oleg Basilashvili had not yet begun to serve his three year sentence. You can tell just from the haircut. At the railway station he still has the full head of hair appropriate to a concert pianist. In the prison it’s cut very short — there seems to be a standard-issue haircut for all Russian movie prisoners. It helps to make the point of how people in prison are dehumanized. (Though I think in some of the scenes they cheated a little and let him have a little more hair than most movie prisoners get.)

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