2010 September » Kino Reticulator

Mne Dvadtsat Let

Sep 192010

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

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

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

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?

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.