Krylya

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Feb 022009
 

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We finished watching Krylya (Wings) tonight. That’s a very good film, at least the first time through.

Afterwards I looked for reviews with which to compare my reactions, and found this:

She is unable to come to terms with her past nor with the present, in which she is the director of a high school and the mother of an adoptive daughter. Her attempts to compensate for her distraction all lie in the direction of appearing authoritative, but the students and her daughter, with the unerring instincts of the young, distrust and despise her.

That wasn’t quite my take on it. The first sentence is a good description, but the 2nd, about “appearing authoritative” doesn’t seem right. Her character has no trouble appearing authoritative. She can’t help but be authoritative. Even when she tries to treat people well, she ends up not being able to help herself. She sets very high standards for herself — which is probably what enabled her to be a successful fighter pilot. But the authoritative part is not an attempt to compensate — it’s just the way she is. She tries again and again, but is unable to expect any less from her daughter, her new son-in-law, her students, or anyone else. And she is not satisfied with her present position in life, either, much of what is too boring for her.

That may sound like a trite Hollywood character, but it’s done very subtly. There are many occasions on which I was afraid this story was going to take a Hollywood turn, but it didn’t.

Maya Bulgakova did an extraordinary job of playing a complex character. I see from IMDB that this is just one of many roles she played. I’m now interested in seeing what other kinds of characters she was able to play.

Late edit:  I just now found subtitles for “My Friend Ivan Lapshin” (Moy Drug Ivan Lapshin) at mssubtitles.com.   Now if only I could find English subtitles for “The House that Swift Built” (Dom, Kotoryiy Postroil Svift).  But I haven’t even found evidence that subtitles were ever made.  I would even be glad to find Russian subtitles, even though that wouldn’t help Myra watch it with me.

Sluzhebnyiy Roman subtitles

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Feb 012009
 

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I downloaded Sluzhebnyiy Roman (Offfice Romance) from Memocast, but somehow messed up on the subtitle file. It was too late to go back and re-download it.

I probably could have asked the Memocast people for help, but instead I found English subtitles elsewhere. Unfortunately, they were in two files, while the movie was in one.

And the timings were way off — the words appearing well after the words were spoken. I didn’t mind that too much for language-learning purposes. Using the first of the two files, I got a chance to listen and process what I was hearing before getting to see the subtitle. But this wouldn’t do when Myra watches the film with me.

It didn’t take long to find a tool to help fix things up. I used Subtitle Workshop from URUworks. I learned about it at the Videohelp.com forum, where there was also a good description of how to use it to combine two subtitles files into one.

That program can also be used to fix the timings. I plan to use it for other subtitle files whose timings are just fine. I can use those files as is when watching films with Myra, but create a separate version with long delays for use when I’m trying to work on my Russian listening skills.

Office Romance is an Eldor Ryazanof film. It’s not quite as good as Irony of Fate or Railway Station for Two, but it is definitely worth watching. I don’t know if it’s giving me an accurate idea of what an office worker’s job may have been like in 1980s Russia, but it seems to be a plausible if partial picture. Russia doesn’t have Scott Adams and Dilbert to chronicle such a culture, but it has Ryazanov.

Industrious-Millinery Complex

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Jan 112009
 

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President Dwight D. Eisenhower (who gets a mention in several Soviet-era films, though not this one) warned about the rise of a Military-Industrial Complex. What we have in this screenshot is something a little different: An Industrious Millinery Complex.

It’s from Tot Samyiy Myunkgausen. Duke Herzog (not the major character) is the industrious milliner. He knows about tucks, seams, hems, and waists, and hates it when the proper duties of his position intrude.

His aide has been trying to turn away the Baron Munkhausen’s estranged wife who is waiting outside, saying the Duke is busy with the most important affairs of state. But he reluctantly agrees to meet her. Everyone knows the drill — quickly hide all the dressmaking equipment and pull out the globe, papers, and books appropriate to the business of a duke.

It’s a minor comic theme in the movie — one of several. I was reminded of it by some wordplay on the POLITICS e-mail discussion list that I won’t go into here. It would be too hard to explain.

Though perhaps it is not as hard as trying to explain this movie. As in that other Mark Zakharov film, Obyknovennoye chudo, it’s hard to say which characters are in the story and which are outside of it.

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This quartet, for example. Are they a kind of Greek chorus of the kind that Sophocles (whom the Baron has known personally) would have used in his plays to provide commentary? Or are they inside the story?

There may be a terminology to describe this technique of making the characters in the play conscious of those outside who are watching, but I don’t know what it is. Zakharov is a supreme master of it, whatever it’s called. It’s hard to explain, but that’s not even the hardest part of the movie. I’ll leave some of that for later, if I can figure out how to talk about it.

Insurance in the USSR

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Dec 212008
 

Cute. Music reminiscent of Pink Panther beginning at 3:24.

I’ve watched three YouTube segments of “Beware of the Car,” which will be the 3rd Eldar Ryazanov film I’ve seen.

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When I saw this (in segment 2) I thought the guy on the left might be Ryazanov himself. But I guess it’s not.

The scene is in an insurance office, and the main character of the film (on the right) is an insurance agent. The guy on the left is his boss.

I was taken aback by the idea that there was such a thing as property insurance in the Soviet Union. It seems such a capitalist thing. In fact, the following paragraph in an academic journal article about Soviet insurance almost took the words out of my mouth, except that my thoughts on the subject weren’t quite this clear:

Insurance is closely related to the origins and growth of modern capitalist economy and the insurance contract has been identified as the springboard by which small-scale itinerant commerce of the early Middle Ages vaulted into large-scale enterprise of modern capitalism. How, then, can insurance be fitted into a non-capitalist framework and what role can it play?

The quote is from “A Survey of Insurance in the USSR”, by Paul P. Rogers, in The Journal of Insurance, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Jun., 1963), pp. 273-279, published by the American Risk and Insurance Association.

This Paul Rogers also did other writing on the topic. I read a couple of his shorter works, including this 1963 article as well as one published in 1980.

A few things that I learned:

Insurance was a government monopoly, run by an organization called GOSSTRAKH (General administration of Government Insurance.) Insurance was available for agricultural and transportation. Even in a welfare state there was such a thing as life insurance and disability insurance. Insurance was also available for personal property. The purchase of insurance was mandatory for some purposes, and a matter of individual choice in others.

I presume the insurance agents did not work on a commission.

Regarding auto insurance, Rogers’ 1980 article says this:

Citizens may insure vehicles under a separate policy. The policy insures automobiles, motorcycles, mopeds, snowmobiles, sailboats and rowboats for property damage. There is no liability insurance coverage.

I suppose if there had been liability insurance, the premise of that other Ryazanov film, Railway Station for Two (Vokzal dlya Dvoikh) would have been different.

BTW, I am trying to figure out how to use Cyrillic characters in a WordPress blog set up for use primarily in English. So far I haven’t learned a way to do it.

Trial by jury

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Nov 062008
 

I didn’t know that Russia had trial by jury now. But here is a movie about it: “12”

The little YouTube blurb said it’s somewhat like “12 Angry Men.” I haven’t seen that movie, but I think I read the play script in high school. Or maybe I did see the movie way back. It sounds familiar, anyway.

I googled for some information and learned that Russia adopted (or re-adopted) trial by jury in 1993. I picked this article as something to read, just for the sake of starting somewhere. It sounds like it was written around 1999, so I’m not sure how up-to-date it is.

This paragraph reminded me of the movie Mimino:

…the institution of returning the case for reinvestigation is closely connected with a lot of other provisions in our criminal procedure. For example, the absence of the advocate’s right to collect evidence. Having no possibility to collect evidence independently, the advocate in our criminal procedure sometimes has to petition to return the case for reinvestigation.

So if that’s the case, what was that cute young attorney doing for our hero in Mimino, when she put all that work into collecting evidence independently?

The strange part of the article is the final section, which bear no connection to all the informative material that has gone before. It starts with this paragraph:

Trial by jury is, probably, the privilege of a stable society. It must be stable in the economic, social, political, and legal respects. In the opposite case trial by jury is doomed to live out a miserable existence. Trial by jury in Russia is a vivid example of that.

Say what? I’m not sure there is any such thing as a stable society. Everything is always changing. And why does that matter, anyway? The author breathes not a word of argument or evidence to support her assertion that trial by jury is doomed where society is unstable. So why did she say something like that?

RussianDVD.com

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Nov 022008
 

This looks promising: Russiandvd.com

I found it when looking for Mark Zakharov movies. Netflix doesn’t have any, nor are there any on Ebay. But there are some here.

Russiandvd.com not only sells DVDs but has a rental program, too. I’m starting to run out of Russian movies on Netflix. When I exhaust those, maybe I’ll subscribe here.

There is a problem, though. A lot of them do not have subtitles, which means I’ll have to learn a lot more Russian before I can watch them properly. And even when I do, I can’t expect Myra to be enthusiastic. She likes to watch Russian movies with me, but has no interest in learning the language.

Just the same, it’s something to keep in mind.

Zavtra byla voyna

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Oct 172008
 

During the late 1950s and early 60s, while other kids learned to fear nuclear holocaust, I learned to fear the midnight knock on the door. Not that I had to fear it personally, but my mother and grandfather made me aware that such things happened to other people in other parts of the world and there was no reason it couldn’t happen in our country someday, too. There were some bad dreams about it, though nothing vivid enough to remember now.

I did learn about the threat of nuclear weapons, too, at school. I remember “On the Beach,” which was frightening enough, but I’ve always thought the midnight knock on the door would be even worse. And I’ve long had a morbid fascination with the prison-camp genre of literature. I always read this stuff looking for pointers that might be helpful when it comes to our country.

I say all this by way of introduction to “Tomorrow Was The War”. I’ve watched 3 of the 9 parts so far. I had thought I was inured to this kind of story by now. Some months ago I watched an interview with Aleksandr Askoldov (director of Komissar) where he described how as a five-year-old, the police came for his mother, whom he never saw again. They would have come for him, too, had he not run away. Extremely fascinating, but I’m afraid it was no longer terrifying. And there are Russian movies that try to convey the effect of the fear of the police during the worst of Stalin’s days.

But Parts 1 through 3 of “Tomorrow Was The War” had a way of making it terrifying like it has never been before. I can’t say for sure how director Yuri Kara did it. It has something to do with how we first get to know the young adolescents who see it happening, but that sounds too trite.

I’m watching this film slowly on YouTube, savoring every segment before going on to the next. Maybe I’ll eventually get some clues as to how it is done. (I don’t know that I’ll listen to Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” ever again without seeing this movie in my mind.)

I see that Yuri Kara was also the director of “The Master and Margarita.” In a way I don’t like that series. I read somewhere about an Old Believer who smashed a monument to author Mikhail Bulgakov, or some such thing, because of the blasphemy contained in this work. I say the vandal was justified in doing so. He had a legitimate point. But I also have to say that the movie is one of the greatest productions ever.

There is no English language Wikipedia page for Yuri Kara, but I’ve got to find out what else he has done.

Hmmm. While googling for information, I came across this book:

Kinoglasnost: Soviet Cinema in Our Time, by Anna Lawton (1992). I’ll have to read that. Here is the description on Google Books:

In this pioneering study, Anna Lawton examines the fascinating world of Soviet cinema under Glasnost and Perestroi-ka. She shows how the reforms that shook the foundations of the Bolshevik state and profoundly affected economic and social structures have been reflected by changes that revolutionized the film industry and in the films the industry produced. Lawton discusses the restructuring of the main institutions governing the industry; the abolition of censorship; the emergence of independent production and distribution systems; the problems connected with the dismantling of the old bureaucratic structure and the implementation of new initiatives. She also surveys the films that remained unscreened for decades for political reasons, films of the new wave that look at the past to search out the truth, and those that record current social ills or conjure up a disquieting image of the future. Together they portray a society in search of its roots and of new directions.

Now the question. Should I go out and get that book to read now, or should I first watch more of these films without someone else putting ideas about them in my head? It’s interesting to have a whole new world open to me one piece at a time as I get into this stuff. I kind of hate to give up my naivete just yet.

Criminal police

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Oct 072008
 

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Here is the scene from Mesto Vstrechi Izmenit’ Nel’zya where the argument takes place over whether it’s OK for cops to break the law in pursuit of the bad guys. The Sharapov character pictured here says, “If we break the law once, then once again, if we use it to bridge the gaps in our investigations, it won’t be a law anymore. It will be a bludgeon.”

BTW, it’s interesting that as the argument gets heated between Sharapov and the character played by Vladimir Vysotsky, that Vysotsky’s voice becomes more like the voice he uses in his singing. You can google for YouTube videos of it. I decided to learn more about him after watching this series. But that’s not where I’m going right now.

After watching Mesto Vstrechi a few days ago, I watched Cargo 200 (Gruz 200). That turned out to be a difficult, sickening film to watch. It was even more difficult to make myself watch some of it a second time. There are other parts of it I want to go back to watch again, but so far I haven’t had the stomach for it. But it’s an important film. It shows what kind of society you have when Sharapov’s prediction comes to pass. I’ll have more to say about this one.

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