Twentysomething lost in books

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Oct 012010
 

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In the October 4 issue of The Weekly Standard, Thomas Swick tells about a literary cruise in the Aegean that included a reading list. (“Passenger’s List : Cruising the Aegean with a company of bibliophiles“) One passage toward the end reminded me of some Russian movies:

But one morning I spent an hour in the library reading…. In Cefalu we visited the great Norman cathedral…and then repaired to the café in the square in front. At a nearby table three young women in white summer dresses sat reading books. I asked them where they were from.

“Sweden,” said one of the two blondes.

I told her what an unusual sight it was for me to see a trio of twentysomethings not talking or texting but lost in books.

“In Sweden, too,” she said. I almost invited them back to the ship.

I don’t know about a trio of young women, but in Russian movies there are scenes of solo young women reading books, usually on public transit. Probably the most attractive one I ever saw is this one in Mne Dvadtsat Let. This young woman is so engrossed in her book that she never notices the fine looking young man who is watching her closely. I don’t know if such a scene is possible, but it is very nicely done. She reacts to what she is reading, but is oblivious to everyone else. She is aware enough to move to the empty window seat when it becomes open, and does her part to relay the money that is passed from hand to hand from someone on one end of the bus to the conductor on the other end, and the same for the ticket that makes the return trip. And she doesn’t miss her stop. But she is thoroughly caught up in her reading.

I was kind of hoping to learn just what book she was reading, but we never find out, even though boy does finally meet girl. He should have asked her.

It was a fine bit of film-making just the same.

Mne Dvadtsat Let

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Sep 192010
 

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This film (Mne Dvadsat Let) looks promising. To find it I had to paw through a bunch of 18th and 19th century costume dramas.

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At least that’s what they looked like from the screenshots. It seems I’ve gone through this routine several times in my search for a new-old film to watch — toss aside a bunch of ruffles and lace (and a larger amount of war movies) to get to one that depicts life in Russia in modern (post-revolutionary) times.

When Anatol Lieven wrote, “…even though nostalgia for the pre-revolutionary past is very common in contemporary Russian cinema,” I had no trouble believing him. There is a lot of that type of film.

Some of the depictions of older times are pretty good. Nikita Mikhalkov, whom I don’t particularly like, has done a very good job with some Chekov stories, for example. However, although those can be interesting, it seems I’ve developed a greater taste for civilian socialist realism.

Maybe Mne Dvadsat Let doesn’t qualify as good socialist realism, though. It was a product of the Khrushchev thaw, but Khrushchev himself denounced it in 1963, attacking the filmmakers (according to Wikipedia), for “[thinking] that young people ought to decide for themselves how to live, without asking their elders for counsel and help.” It wasn’t released in full until 1989.

Whether or not this one counts as socialist realism, it’s very good so far. Among other things, it does a very good job of telling stories even without dialog.

Side door

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Sep 172010
 

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The above scene from 1970s film, Mimino, came to mind after reading a Wall Street Journal article about Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer titled “Breyer Makes Case for Justices’ Adherence to Constitution“. The part that brought it to mind was the following paragraph:

His [Breyer’s] concern about public confidence in the high court deepened earlier this year when security consultants persuaded the justices to close its front entrance. The marble steps and brass doors represented “dignified openness and meaningful access to equal justice under law,” Justice Breyer wrote in a dissent. Relegating visitors to a cramped side door, he suggested, sent the opposite message.

I’m impressed that Breyer thinks about the physical symbolism of government buildings. I do too, though I must admit that I never thought of the point he makes.

But I instantly remembered that beat-up side door to the building where our hero, Mimino, is on trial. The man standing in the middle of the scene has just been sentenced to five years in prison. A courtroom worker is calling for our hero’s friend, Khachikyan, to come and testify. He had been told to go away from the courtroom until he was needed, but not to go so far away that he couldn’t be found. In a scene preceding this one, the plaintiffs had entered through this same door, getting into a verbal confrontation with Khachikyan on the way in. While waiting his turn, Khachikyan tried to suborn perjury from anyone who he imagined could be talked into being a potential witness, including, as it turned out, the defense attorney’s father, her husband, and the man who had just been sentenced to five years. In a subsequent scene, the court-appointed defense attorney seems to leave the building by this same entrance, and then does a little skip and dance to celebrate getting her client off with a very light penalty.

So even though it’s an unimposing side door, and lacks the dignity that Justice Breyer spoke of, this one doesn’t seem to hinder openness, at least not in a Soviet comedy.

I don’t know if this building represents a usual sort of court building in Moscow, but it’s definitely not an imposing entrance with Greek columns and a large portico to make visitors seem small and impress them with the power and grandeur of the government, as in many of our court buildings — at least the older ones. In keeping with the architecture, the proceedings are a relatively relaxed affair, though the stakes are high for our hero, considering what would seem to those of us in the U.S. to be a relatively minor accusation against him.

Our own Calhoun County, Michigan courthouse is not one of the grand buildings that we used to have in our country. The new building is not even called a courthouse. It’s called a “justice center,” which is a term that conveys an aura more like that of the Moscow court building above than one with “marble steps and brass doors.” In fact, the interior of the new building, and the interior of the courtrooms, is more in the utilitarian Soviet style than the traditional American style.

In the Calhoun County center there is opportunity for jurors, visitors, witnesses, and lawyers to mingle in the hallways. I am told that some court buildings are designed to keep the participants separated more from jurors. Ours is not. When I’ve been on jury duty we’ve been asked to stay in the jury assembly room except for necessary bathroom breaks, etc., so as not interact with the participants in any way that might taint the trial. And, of course, except for the times when we’re actually called into a court room. Time before last, the jury coordinator turned on a TV in the jury assembly room for people to watch while they waited to be called for jury selection. I can’t stand television, so I took a book out into the hall where I could read in relative peace. To cooperate with the “no mingling” policy, I stood facing a wall so as not to encourage any greetings or discussion with other people passing by. Afterwards, I complained in writing, saying it was above and beyond the call of duty to have to sit in a room with television. Maybe it did some good, because last time I was on jury duty they didn’t turn the beast on.

Next time — the physical symbolism inside courtrooms. Unless some other topic strikes my fancy, that is.

Insidious Marathon

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Sep 122010
 

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This scene from Osenniy Marafon has stayed with me ever since I first saw it a few years ago, and has led to some of my recent reading. Oleg Basilashvili’s character (seated) has been informed that his just completed work of translation will not be published. The publisher explains: “…Simon just published an article with racist overtones. The progressives are putting up a hell of stink about it. It’s hardly the moment to puff him up by printing his work.”

It struck me as a plausible sort of scene, if repeated many times over and in many different variations, that could have constituted the state of affairs that provoked Alexander Solzhenitsyn to write his famous letter to the Fourth National Congress of Soviet Writers in May, 1967, twelve years before this film came out. Among many other things Solzhenitsyn had to say in that letter was the following description of how his own work was handled:

For three years now an irresponsible campaign of slander is being conducted against me, who fought all through the war as a battery commander and received military decorations. It is being said that I served time as a criminal, or surrendered to the enemy (I was never a prisoner of war), that I “betrayed” my country, “served the Germans.” That is the interpretation now being put on the 11 years I spent in camps and exile for having criticized Stalin. This slander is being spread in secret instructions and meetings by people holding official positions. I vainly tried to stop the slander by appealing to the board of the Writers Union of the R.S.F.R. [Russian Republic] and to the press. The board did not even retract, and not a single paper printed my reply to the slanderers. On the contrary, slander against me from rostrums has intensified and become more vicious within the last year, making use of distorted material from my confiscated files, and I have no way of replying.

My interest in this state of censorship is heightened by the increasing centralization of funding and control over research and publication in our own country, and the increasingly loud and high-placed calls for even greater central control. We haven’t yet progressed nearly to the state of affairs described by Solzhenitsyn, but just the same I thought there might be some practical utility in understanding the social relationships that constitute this type of system. It’s more insidious than the way Anna Politkovskaya was handled, and possibly has a more corrupting effect on the participants.

I presume Georgi Daneliya was very intentional in putting this kind of scene in the film. It’s a great fit with the whole theme of the film — of a person caught up in a system of deceit that he will not be able to resist.

With all this in mind, I found and read the book Nomenklatura (1984) by Michael Voslensky. That was a fascinating read, but one thing I learned from it is that contrary to what I had imagined, the movie scene is not showing the direct workings of the nomenklatura. The nomenklatura were a different stratum of society, I guess. Voslensky knew about the nomenklatura, having been part of it himself, but he did not have anything to say about careerism and social relations in, say, literary fields like the one portrayed in the film.

Now, if only I could think of a movie that would give me an excuse to talk about what I learned from Volensky’s book. Gray Wolves, maybe?

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Back to Osenniy Marafon. I can now affirm that it stands up very well to repeated watching. I’ve put it on my Droid X after having learned that my AVS software has a built-in profile for converting to the .mp4 format that’s needed.

All the actors in the film did excellent work — including all three of the women who are complicating Andrei Pavlovich’s life. But the more I watch Natalya Gundareva (the wife) the more impressed I am with what she did. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone play the wronged wife the way she played it — but it’s a very believable, nuanced character. It would be interesting to read an analysis of her work, but I haven’t found much information about her in English other than a comment saying she played a wide variety of roles. She would be my age if she was still alive, but she died five years ago. I guess I’ll have to watch some of her other films and try to learn more for myself.

Packed ice

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Aug 062010
 

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The snow packed down on a footpath forms ice that is the last to melt in spring. Scenes like this are one of the superficial reasons for liking Russian movies. You can’t do something like this with fake snow in California.

The movie is Kalina Krasnaya. I just started watching it.

Zloy dukh Yambuya

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Jun 272010
 

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The Evil Spirit of Yambuy was enjoyable to watch even though the plot was nothing special. The scenery was good and would probably look even better if we had a high quality version of the film. Some of the characters are interesting, though there isn’t much in the way of character development. It’s the novelty of the setting and the culture that held our attention.

A team of surveyors is finishing up its work in eastern Siberia in 1949 and heading home when they learn of the disappearance of other surveyors in the region of the Yambuy mountain. They go back to look for them. Some of the native Evenki herders offer advice, such as “Don’t be stupid, there is an evil spirit there.” The old woman, Yangara, especially has a charming way of dispensing advise and information. The Evenki knowledge of the region and its inhabitants proves to be indispensable to the Russians, who are far from home.

I liked the inevitable bear-human encounters in this film better than those in adventure movies that we used to take our kids to see on Saturday afternoons, mainly because the violent encounters are not drawn out to wearisome length.

More interesting than the bears are the reindeer. I had known that reindeer could pull a sleigh (and not only on Christmas Eve) but had no idea that they could be saddled and ridden. I don’t recall that the movie ever showed anyone climbing into the saddle, but the dismounting technique is very graceful, considering that it’s done without first bothering to bring the animal to a stop: Swing your left leg around in front of you and step off in one quick and easy motion. It went so quickly that it was hard to get a screenshot of the above woman doing it. Here she is shown almost at the end of the motion.

After watching the film, I went to google to learn more about reindeer and the people who live with them. How domesticated are these caribou, really, and how does one go about training one to be useful? That led me to a fascinating book, “The reindeer people: living with animals and spirits in Siberia” by Piers Vitebsky (2005).

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One thing I learned is that although domestication of caribou has taken place only recently, i.e. over the past 3000 years, good luck trying to domesticate a caribou now and turn it into a reindeer. It won’t happen.

The two are a single species and can interbreed. Caribou males can and will come in to camp to impregnate reindeer females. Reindeer can run off and join a caribou herd, never to be seen again. But nobody has succeeded in taming a wild caribou in recent times.

I also learned that different peoples in northern Asia and Europe use reindeer differently. The Sami people of northern Scandinavia don’t ride theirs. The people who do ride reindeer don’t all use the same methods. Some groups ride on their backs, using a saddle and stirrups like are used on horses. But the Evenki people in this film place the saddle on the shoulders of the animal. Instead of stirrups, they tap the ground with a long staff to help keep their balance. The reindeer can carry loads on their shoulders much further without tiring than they can on their backs.

Piers Vitebsky spent some time among Eveny people, who are similar to the Evenki in the film. When perestroika first came to the Soviet Union, he took the opportunity to go and learn how their subsistence economy and shamanic worldview had adapted to Soviet rule.

It’s not as though opportunity came in the form of an open door and eager invitations, though. It took years of preparation and great persistence in dealing with recalcitrant bureaucrats. In Vitebsky’s telling, he seems to be what Indiana Jones would have been if he had been a real person (and if he had been an anthropologist instead of an archaeologist). One of my favorite passages so far is this:

We camped on a stony riverbed the first night and I found time to stop being frightened and look around at the wiry figures of my companions in the flickering firelight. After my years of fieldwork in India, their weather-beaten North Asian faces seemed completely new and exotic. Some wore flat caps and some headscarves tied around the backs of their heads. With their rifles and padded cotton convict jackets, they resembled brigands or mountain guerrillas. The vet asked if I had really ridden a horse before.

‘Actually, no,’ I said, ‘but I was afraid you wouldn’t take me if I said so.’

The men roared with laughter. This was my first inkling of the self-reliant and anarchic spirit that coexisted with the delicate discretion of traditional Eveny culture as well as with the nervous fear under Communism of doing anything that was not officially authorized.

I’m getting a real copy of the book so I can read the rest of it, including the parts that aren’t available on Google Books.

Beethoven Repentance

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Jun 252010
 

I just now submitted the following comment to WeeklyStandard.com in response to a review of “Beethoven and the World of 1824 by Harvey Sachs. The review, written by Lawrence Klepp, was titled: “Freedom’s Symphony : The world of Beethoven’s Ninth”

I challenge Mr. Klepp to watch Tengiz Abuladze’s 1984 movie, Pokayanie (Repentance) and then continue to speak of Beethoven’s Ninth as freedom’s symphony. If that isn’t enough, think about the totalitarian overtones in the Ode to Joy, in which all men become brothers. And those who don’t? Well, tough for them.

The part I was thinking about is what I blogged about over a year ago: http://kino.reticulator.com/2009/04/26/music-for-pokayanie/

Here is a YouTube clip of the segment of the movie that features the Ninth Symphony. Naturally, it doesn’t have the same impact out of context.

This will end badly

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May 112010
 

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Well, that was a waste. Last October I quit watching Voditel dlya Vera at this point, where the tension was too much to take any more. I was waiting to get up enough nerve to watch the rest of it.

Myra and I just now watched the whole thing, all the way to the end.

What a letdown. It’s a great movie up until this point. But it’s as if the filmmaker (Pavel Chukhraj) lost his nerve at this point, too, and tacked on an ending that’s out of character with what had happened to this point. I wish I could ask him what happened. His other movie that I’ve seen (Vor) didn’t suffer from a weak ending, so I know it’s not due to a lack of ability. After seeing Voditel dlya Vera and Vor I would gladly watch (and probably rewatch) anything else he’s made. But he lost his way here, or something.

BTW, one of the best movie endings ever is the one in Vozvrashcheniye. IMO.

Оксана Дацкая

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May 042010
 

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When I first started watching Russian movies a few years ago I wondered to myself, Where do they get all these good child actors?    I have since learned that Russia has plenty of not-so-great child actors, too, but about half way through this movie I found I was back to my original question:  Where do all these great child actors come from?  How is something like that taught to people who are so young?

I’m not able to follow this movie very well (no English subtitles) and I’m only about 2/3 of the way through.   But the young woman in the center is putting on quite a good performance.    Her name is Oksana Dackaja.   I haven’t been able to find that she ever appeared in another film after Личное дело судьи Ивановой.

This  makes me wonder, have there been any good child actors in Russia who went on to successful acting careers as adults?    It’s probably a rarity for that to happen in any country.

Oleg Tabakov, again

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May 012010
 

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While watching Meri Poppins, do svidaniya, Myra commented that Miss Andrew looked like she was played by a man. I hadn’t noticed that. But it turns out that she was — by Oleg Tabakov, who we’ve also seen in several other movies. As in Mary Poppins, he often plays an obnoxious character.

In a post a few months ago about his role in Unfinished Piece for Player Piano, I had wondered if he ever played a sympathetic character. I still don’t know. We’ve seen him in Moskva slezam ne verit, Neskolko dney iz zhizni I.I. Oblomova, and Semnadtsat mgnoveniy vesny. But those are just a few of his many roles. So maybe we’ll find one yet where he played a nice guy.

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