Brat-2 fulfils its purpose

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Nov 072009
 

brat2

I recognized the above scene near the end of Brat-2. It was from the cover to one of Anna Lawton’s books.

The main purposes of sequels is to exploit us and disappoint us, I suppose. Brat-2 fulfilled its purpose better than, say, the sequel to Irony of Fate, which while not as good as the original, was worth watching twice, and which I’d like to watch again sometime.

After it was over, I was hoping Brat-2 could be excused by having been made by someone other than the maker of the original Brat, but IMDB tells us that Aleksey Balabanov made them both. Balabanov also made another excellent film: Gruz 200. Maybe sequels are just too limiting even for someone of Balabanov’s abilities.

Both Brats are violent films, but the violence in Brat-2 is merely senseless violence. In Brat-2 we aren’t even made to feel horrified by what it does to the victims or the perpetrator. Victims just pose so they can be easy targets to be gunned down.

There is nothing of Doestoevsky in Brat-2, like there is in Brat with the relationship with Daniela’s brother, or the girlfriend, or the German or Kat. In Brat-2 the brother is just dropped out of the picture at the end, which is symbolic of what’s missing in the entire film.

Viktor D. Huliganov

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Jul 212008
 

No movie comments today, even though Alexander Sedov brought up some good topics, and even though I just learned that the great actress, Nonna Mordyukova, died two weeks ago. Her passing deserves more than I’m going to have time to write about tonight.

What I do have is a new YouTube link for learning Russian. It’s a series of videos produced by Viktor D. Huliganov. My wife says he’s like Garrison Keilor. Well, he does have a dry sense of humor and he sings well enough, too. I think he makes his living as an accountant.

I found him by starting with the movie Ostrov. That led me to YouTube clips of Dmitry Dyuzhev, who played Father Job in that movie. Most of the clips are his singing — usually together with Tamara Gverdtsiteli. I happen to like a lot of them, though I don’t know if that’s the kind of music that’s popular among the younger generation.

Some of the clips display the words. Those I find especially useful.

Here’s one of a song titled How Young We Were (Kak molodi mi bili). It led me to want to find a translation, and that’s how I found Huliganov.

Here’s a clip titled “RL 102 – Constructions using Dative”. Following the lesson Huliganov gives a translation of the song and then sings it in a chipmunk voice. I wasn’t sure where he got that, but in other videos I saw that he actually can sing. I hope he keeps producing those lessons. They’re fun to watch, and helpful, too.

Here’s another clip of Dmitry Dyuzhev and Tamara Gverdtsiteli — one that made me want to learn the words of some of their songs. It seems to be a sentimental one that got people all teary.

And is that Barbara Brylska of Irony of Fate who was in the audience, wiping her eyes? Why yes, it is! And after the song I got to hear her voice, too. I was curious about that, because according to Wikipedia her character’s voice was dubbed in the original movie, because she had too much of a Polish accent. She has a deeper voice here than her character in the movie had, but she’s older now, too. (I don’t know if her voice was also dubbed in the sequel that was made 30 years after the original.)

Irony of fate, the sequel

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May 112008
 

Tonight we watched the rest of Irony of Fate, the Sequel. It was better than we had expected — not bad for a sequel. It was fun to see all the actors again, 30 years older than in the original. Andrei Myagkov and Yuri Yaklovev have aged nicely. Barbara Brylska looks great, but surely has had some top-notch help from plastic surgeons to look that good in her mid 60s. It would have been nice to see Liya Akhedzhakova, too. She is the only character, other than the two mothers, who I found missing in the sequel.

The original from 1975, besides being a goofy comedy and a love story, was a satire on the uniformity of the Brezhnev era. This one is in part a satire on the cell phone culture.

If there is any doubt that this is a post-Soviet movie, the militsia (police) are portrayed as sleepy, good-natured drunks (it’s New Year’s Eve, after all) who are easily deceived and bribed. I wonder how long Putin will allow that before movies have to go back to portraying them as in the Soviet days.

The younger generation of actors did fine work, I thought. Sergei Bezrukov as Irakliy was great. I’d like to see what other kinds of characters he can play. I was rooting for a reformed Irakliy who learns to get his priorities straight would to get the girl in the end (and kiss her without interruptions from that cell phone attached to his head) but it was not to be. Konstantin Khabensky, who plays Zhenya’s son, does fine as a drunken Russian, but drunken Russians are a dime a dozen in movies. Liza Boyarskaya as Nadya, Jr. doesn’t have a lot to do besides look pretty — compared to what Barbara Brylska did in the original — but she showed some signs of being a capable actress anyway.

Yuri Yakovlev

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Feb 072008
 

Ha. I wouldn’t have guessed that on my own. Yury Yakovlev, who plays Bi in “Kin-Dza-Dza” is the same person who played Ippolit in Ryazanov’s “The Irony of Fate.” I had immediately recognized Yevgeny Leonov, the actor who plays Uef, as the same guy who had played the old retired military officer who rescues our hero in Mimino. But I hadn’t recognized his sidekick at all. Goes to show he has a bit of range to his talents. Contrast that to someone like Nikita Mikhalkov, who plays the same character no matter what movie he’s in.

I had earlier commented on how I couldn’t tell what had made the movie difficult to get past the Soviet censors. Well, duh, I should have known because I’ve talked about this several times. Usually in Soviet movies, the law enforcement and legal authorities are portrayed as wise, kindly, omniscient characters (e.g. in Brilliantovaya Ruka, Mimino) unless, of course, they are pre-revolutionary characters (e.g. in Siberiade). In Kin-Dza-Dza, nobody on planet Pluk is a nice guy. They are all back-stabbing, manipulative, selfish, ordinary people that are your everyday companions and colleagues. But the ecilops (police) are especially easy to dislike — smarmy characters like some bullies we all knew in school.

Maybe the trick was to get the censors to think of these as pre-revolutionary characters. (It’s just a guess, though.)