Movie comments » Kino Reticulator

Well-traveled footpath

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.

Against his own free will

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Nov 272009

The first time I watched Pokrov Gate, maybe a year ago or so, I thought it was just entertainment — a movie-length situation comedy. After all, while it isn’t hard to imagine that a communal apartment would be a rich source of material, it’s not easy to imagine this situation in real life. (BTW, there are spoilers here. You have been warned.)

Margarita Khobotova dumped her absent-minded, klutzy husband for another guy who was home when her husband wasn’t — dumped a brainy, literary guy for a brawny worker. It’s not too hard to imagine opportunities for that to happen in a kommunalka, though there wasn’t much you could do that your neighbors didn’t know about. But her ex continued to live in the same kommunalka with shared kitchen and bath, though he also had a separate room for himself. It’s a little far-fetched, but there were housing shortages back in the 50s, so people did what they had to do.

And she continued to run her ex’s life, including his attempts at a love life. Well, there is no shortage of domineering women (or men) in the world. If we have them here in America, why not in Russia, too? And there is no shortage of men (or women) who allow themselves to be dominated, though this seems to be an extreme case. But for Margarita’s new guy to be an active participant in this project? It starts to get a little silly, but it’s entertaining in a way that would be possible only if there is some slight connection to reality. And it does have that.

So I thought it was an entertaining film about personal relationships — one that was worth watching again, which we’ve done just this week.

But we weren’t far into it on my 2nd watching when I started to get the idea that this is an allegory of our political situation in the U.S. Margarita Khobotova is like the nanny-staters who think people aren’t competent to make their own decisions and run their own lives. Those people seem to be winning out, even though they have all the charm and finesse of Margarita.

But then, at the very end, I began to suspect that the comparison is not just something that I came up with by myself. The film is not just about personal relationships. Either the writer (Leonid Zorin) or the director (Mikhail Zozakov) or perhaps both had put in a subtle political message, too. (This was in 1982 when there were still limits on what they could say.)

All the way through the film is full of laughs. But suddenly, at the end, it gets a bit serious. In the screen shot above, Margarita Khobotova complains to those who helped her ex get away from her clutches: “You doomed him to sure death.”

And for the first and only time in the film, Kostik gets serious. He has up to this time been having a great time as a student who has come to the big city to study history. His aunt dotes on him, the communal phone rings constantly with the calls of his many girlfriends, and he is full of jokes and one-liners. But suddenly he quits joking when Margarita accuses him of being too young to know better. He tells her, “Yes, I’m young. But believe a historian. You can’t make someone happy against his own free will.”

“Believe a historian.” Ah, yes. We all know of historical examples of attempts to do just that. Some of us have had to live with them.

Hunting critics

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Nov 202009

Myra and I are still watching Idiot. One more session to go. But I need something to watch while running on the elliptical machine, so for that I’ve been re-watching Obyknovennoye Chudo. With the music and all the weird scene changes it’s a good one to accompany physical activity.

Speaking of strange twists, this is one I missed before. It’s a scene to make you go, “Huh? Where did that come from?” It takes place at the remote hunting lodge in the mountains. It’s a scene that has nothing to do with anything that has gone before, as far as I can tell. The hunter is comparing his craft to literary or artistic work, complete with the critics he has to endure.

On the other hand, maybe it does have something to do with what has gone before. The volshebnik (writer/magician) who is creating the story that is unfolding wants to do something interesting with his talents. But his creative efforts are for the sake of his wife, not for the sake of innovation or creativity.

As one who has long thought that teaching creativity is a good way to kill creativity, it could be that I agree with Mark Zakharov on the subject. (It’s risky to be absolutely certain about it, given my unfamiliarity with the language. I probably miss a lot of subtle points that would help me understand better.)

Forgive us our happiness

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Nov 172009

It’s not easy to follow the part of the series with Ipollit, partly because I haven’t read the book, and partly because his is not a type we have in our society. He is as self-absorbed as the worst of us baby boomers, but even more of a drama queen. He’s supposed to be dying of what seems to be tuburculosis, though that word isn’t used. Neither he nor the people around him have heard the government regulations about swine flu and how it’s important to cover your coughs, stay away from people when you’re coughing, wash your hands, etc.

I thought about him when I read this Mary Gordon essay at Killing the Buddha about the Prodigal Son (which I found via Arts & Letters Daily). It has to do with the difficulty the older son has in celebrating the younger son’s return, especially when there is some question whether the kid has really learned his lesson and is repentant.

In answer to Ipollit’s question of what’s the most virtuous way for him to die (he seems determined to make a grand spectacle of it) Prince Mushkin says, “You should pass us by and forgive us our happiness.” I don’t know what Ipollit does with that advice — haven’t yet got that far. But it didn’t seem to be the answer he wanted.

What this scene inspired me to do is to finally look for the Russian text on line in a printable version, and an English translation to go with it. I’ve printed the first chapter. Now to try to slog through it. It’ll take a while.

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