`We must change `em all!` The Political Significance of `Evgeny Onegin`

Pushkin’s classic has been claimed by different generations. Is the latest screen ONEGIN anything more than a sterile extravaganza designed to glorify Russia’s Imperial past?

Alexander Pushkin’s verse novel `Evgeny Onegin`is the best-known work of Russia’s national poet and upheld as a pinnacle of Russian literature. Alexander Seergevich, an aristocrat with some African heritage, harboured sympathies with the Decembrists who plotted against Tsar Nicholas’s extended autocracy. Penned between 1825 and 1832 and published in serial form before the standardized version came out in 1837, `Evgeny Onegin` was very much about Pushkin’s time. It also represented a turning away from Romanticism and towards a new Naturalism.

The novel concerns the life and times a young nobleman – a `madcap youth` – blighted with `the British spleen/Transported to our Russian clime`. This takes place over eight Cantos which end on a rather avant-garde cliffhanger. It is known that Pushkin had some further Cantos up his sleeve but destroyed them possibly because they contained rebukes to the Tsar himself. There is even a tantalising suggestion that Onegin’s fate was to have been him joining forces with the Decembrists (whose attempted insurrection ended in 1825 when the novel finished).

What we are left with is not an obvious political protest (although it is difficult to imagine young Onegin being enlisted into any kind of army campaign). It is more a cautionary tale. Moving from the social whirl of St Petersburg to an estate in a village, Onegin meets a German romantic youth who is to become his best friend. He, in turn introduces him to a shy young woman – Tatiana – who becomes besotted with him. The best friend Onegin slays by accident in a pointless duel and he rebuffs the woman. Later, older and wiser and having been travelling he returns to reclaim Tatiana but now she is married and she leaves him in limbo….

Onegin as a metrosexual [source:Pictures pibig.info]

A Hero of Whose Times?

`Evgeny Onegin` proves a challenging work to realise on the screen, being based around the tone of its narration and a solitary anti-hero. The first attempt, from the trailblazer of Russian film Vasily Goncharov came in 1911. It would take another staggering 47 -years for another cinema version to appear – in the form of a filming of Tchiakovsky’s opera.

The new standard.

Coming out on March 8th, Women’s Day, of this year and just before the predetermined re-election of Putin, the newest film version was directed by Satrik Andreasyan. Known for his commercial approach to film making, he hails from Armenia but embraces the pro-war cause with the zeal of the convert.

`You should be ashamed to show such disrespect to your country`, he told fellow artists on Twitter who had come out against the war in February 2022.

Onegin comprises a lengthy and opulent family blockbuster. It gained first place in the box office for March 7th to 10th making 331 million roubles I four days (Dzen.ru, 11/3/24).

Through an Imperial lense….

Most people’s previous encounter with `Evgeny Onegin` will have come via one of the best-known operas by Tchiakovsky. This dates from 1878, a time when Russia was embroiled in the Russo-Turkish war (in which Russia sought to regain territory lost in previous engagements). This masterpiece, by the author of the 1812 Overture, cemented the novel’s reputation as a national mascot. However, it also relegates the anti-hero himself to the role of a supporting character. It is Tatiana and her feelings which take centre stage in this opera.

….and a Soviet one.

Post 1917, Tchiakovsky’s piece had become a part of the operatic repertoire. Nevertheless, the imperial grandeur it displayed was now out of step with the building of a communist future. Refreshing new directions in realism resulted. Now the players had to contend with mosquitoes and some of the scenery, such as the fountains were shown to be in a state of disrepair (to symbolize the moribund nature of the bourgeoise). (Operanews.ru/1610).

Following the Great Patriotic War, however, a measure of pomp and circumstance became allowable again if it could be framed as part of Russian national heritage. In 1958, as the Soviet Union’s third Sputnik whirled around the Earth, Lenfilm laid on a technicolour treatment of Tchiakovsky’s classic directed by Roman Tikhomirov. Still, this does not seem excessive in grandiosity: the focus is all on the character’s emotions as brought out by actors with opera singer’s voices dubbed on top.

Foreign interpretations.

[videosdeballetclassica]

The South African John Cranko adapted `Evgeny Onegin` into a ballet in 1965 (just called `Onegin`). For this he used the music of Tchiakovsky, but not from the opera. Here the emphasis was on a man who, despite all of his wealth and privilege, nevertheless finds himself ineffectual. This toured Leningrad in 1972 and elicited criticisms from a Russian audience who felt their national property was being trod on. Tatiana’s name day celebration in the ballet was in the summer -when every one knows it would have to be in January, and so on. Nevertheless the ballet has since been much staged in Russia. I caught it in Moscow just a few years back.

The British actor Ralph Fiennes played the titular role in Onegin from 1999. Fiennes had already made his name seven years earlier playing a similar Byronic character, Heathcliff, in Wuthering Heights. Here Onegin is portrayed as a tortured soul in the Gothic tradition. This was an overt English interpretation. Yet it is the case that Pushkin name checks Byron’s antihero Childe Harold a few times in his novel.

Picture perfect.

Onegin 2024: accent on the splendour [recommend.ru]

The new Onegin comes with the tagline: ‘The love story that conquered the world`. Like `Doctor Zhivago` then, it is being framed as a romance, which is a half-truth. Throughout its two and a half hours running time it retells the story with efficiency. We get to see some location shots – the Palace of the Grand Duke of Vladimir Alexandrovich and the Pushkin mountains. We see brass knockers, wood burning samovars and white top hats. It all looks new and clean and everything is arranged before the camera for the best view. Unmemorable muzak of a classical kind underpins it all. Some are comparing it to the British film Pride and Prejudice (which came out in 2005, when the U.K was party to an invasion of Iraq), but it is too well-scrubbed for even that comparison.

The main players – Viktor Dobronravov (Onegin) and Elizaveta Moryak (Tatiana) are 41 and 29 respectively. There may be something in Andreasyan’s claim that the middle-aged of today are the teens and twenty-somethings of yesteryear but the sociopolitical concern with disaffected youth is lost. In particular, the tall and stocky Dobronravov looks more like an alpha-chad than any superfluous man.

Also lost is the saucy foot fetishism of the narrator, Tatiana’s involvement in pagan divination, the disheartening journey to Moscow, the mistreatment of the serfs and – above all -the mordant take on the upper-middle-classes (`Rogue and enchanter of yore/now buffoon, glutton and a bore`)

Let’s allow some caveats. Dobronravov does do a good line in ennui. The character of Lenski is well realized and the wonderful Alexander Yatso features as Tatiana’s husband. Also, there is an interesting innovation where Onegin has a parallel dream to that of Tatiana’s.

This constitutes a Z- Patriot film at heart. It looks forward to the past. It is a bland and kitsch waxworks museum and too precious to offer any nourishment for either the mind or the soul.

All quotations from the text (which includes the title) come from Henry Spalding’s translation published by Karo, St Pwetersburg, 2017.

The lead image, showing a scene from the 1958 film, is from:bacilleraticoefilo.com

ALLOWED TODAY….

A cinema adaptation of a once banned novel, directed by an opponent of the war and starring some non-Russian players has become a box office winner in Russia.

Russia Beyond have dubbed Mikhail Bulgakov’s most famous work, Master and Margarita `one of the favourite novels of all Russians`. This accolade holds in spite of the novel having featured in the Russian school curriculum for the last twenty-two years.

Bulgakov – Muscovite, physician, playwright and novelist toiled on this epic novel for the best part of two decades. That is, between 1928 and up to his death at 48 in 1940.

The strictures of the Stalin -lead Soviet regime, where `Socialist Realism` was exalted, proved the kiss of death to the visionary wildness and mockery which is central to Bulgakov’s voice. Not until 1968 – and in Paris at that – did a version of Master and Margarita see mass print in its entirety.

Poisoned chalice.

Since then this fantasia has left its fingerprints all over the culture worldwide. It is hard to conceive of Sergey Lukyanenko’s brand of Urban Fantasy or, for that matter, Viktor Pelevin’s `post-modernism` existing without Bulgakov’s prior prompting.

Then, for instance, the actor Daniel Radcliffe is enough of a fan to have travelled to Moscow to pay homage to the House of Bulgakov which is to be found there, as a birthday treat.

 There have been repeated endeavors to enact Master and Margarita for theatres and for celluloid. A few of these have ended in tears. You can even hear a predictable rumour to the effect that – like the …er…`Scottish play` – a sword of Damocles hangs over those that would produce it. Nevertheless 2005 saw a much-repeated television series of it by the controversial Vladimir Bortenko.

Foreign agents.

Film poster for Master and Maragrita (2024)
[Wikipedia]

This latest version has been threatened for some time and has changed hands once or twice. At one point it was to be called Woland (the name of the magician figure in the story). Even with the traditional name the producers seem keen to stress that this is no straight reproduction of the source material.

The director is the 45-year-old Mikhail Lokshin, who studied psychology at Moscow State University, now resides in America and has made his disagreement with the invasion of the Ukraine clear. Roman Kantor, known for Epidemia , the television thriller that made it to Netflix, is the scriptwriter,

Alongside Evgeny Tsyganov, a Muscovite with a very lengthy string of screen appearances to his credit, as the Master, stars his real-life wife, the model Yulia Snigir who hails from Donskoy in the Tula region – as Maragarita.

The German West Berliner August Diehl plays Woland and the Danish actor Claes Bang, best known for playing the lead in a 2022 British production of Dracula, is cast in the very different role of Pontius Pilate.

Crazy Circus.

Evgeny Tsyganov (Master) and his real life wife Yulia Snigir (Maragarita) in a fictionalised Moscow [journal.tinkoff.ru]

In this story, the Master works as a writer in the U.S.S.R of Five-Year Plans and purges. His latest play, which concerns Pontius Pilate, receives a hostile reception from a committee of fellow scribes with the result that his play is taken off. The Master’s despair is lightened somewhat when he encounters the elegant wife of a colonel – Margarita. They click at once and she becomes both his muse and his cheerleader.

In a fine conceit, the more fantastical events for which Master and Margarita are celebrated occur in the Master’s brain, sparked off by a meeting with an eccentric foreigner, and which forms the basis of a new novel.

Some of the antics of Woland and his merry troupe have been left out of the film but there does remain the exciting chase through Moscow and the conjuring show which culminates in money raining down upon the grasping Soviet citizens. The damned talking cat, Azazello is present too, of course – with some no too obtrusive C.G.I.

Then we get the cathartic scene which is Margarita’s story. She makes a Faustian pact with Woland’s set. Able to fly and become invisible she enacts vengeance on the tormentors who have imprisoned her husband in a mental asylum.

Also retained – being crucial to the overall coda – are the sequences involving Pontius Pilate in Roman ruled Jerusalem. We see him lower his own moral instincts and accede to the crucifixion of Yeshua Na Naziri – Jesus Christ to you and me. Interspersed into the main action, these scenes seem to be taken from the Master’s own aborted drama.

Extravaganza.

With a reputed 1.2 billion rubles at his disposal, Lokshin has laid out a feast for the eyes. (the lavishness reminds me of the film Empire V). The cast are all walking works of art (one of the Committee critics resembles Heinrich Himmler).

The Moscow of much of the film represents a parallel one where, for example, the planned Palace of Soviets has been built and zeppelin-like dirigibles are a common form of transport for the elite.

The lighting and colour is crepuscular and this, taken with the ruminating score by Anna Drubich (who worked on the American film Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark two years back), conjures up the right sense of sinister mystery.

Woland’s lines are in German and the Jerusalem scenes seem to be in Latin. This bold directorial decision is then compromised by the recordings being revoiced by the actors in Russian. This begs the question as to why they were not subtitled.

Enigmatic tale.

The author with his baffling masterpiece [kp.ru/afisha/msk]

When I first slogged through Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita some years ago,I reached the last page with a feeling of irritated bafflement. What was Bulgakov trying to tell me? Russian readers told me that it was about Love or about Stalin. Then again it could be an expose of the kind of cowardice that Pilates gave in to. All of these readings could be true at the same time, but the novel still strikes me as one big riddle.

The Russian reviewers of this film have noticed a new relevance in it. Other than all being unanimous that the foreign actor playing Woland has excelled the others, they have picked up on the iconic line, `It’s allowed today, but not tomorrow`. The uncertainty as to what can and cannot be said in today’s Russia has given this sentence a new resonance.

Those who would shut down the film are out there. One Yegor Kholmogorov, columnist for the Russia Today channel, has characterized this release as `propaganda for satanism and terrorism`. Does he speak as a representative of those in power? Today maybe not, but tomorrow…

Small focal point.

I caught the film on a cold day in mid-February on a weekday afternoon showing in a small cinema in Karaganda, Kazakhstan. Even so, I found myself among a flock of about twenty young ethnic Russians. Argument i Fakti (11th February, 2024)informs us that Master and Margarita has taken only second place to the ice skating feelgood drama Ice 3 and has already brought in 208.2 million on the weekend of 17th and 18th February alone.

Perhaps Kholmogorov and his fellow Z-Patriot cohorts can gain succor from the Curse-of-Master and Margarita-adaptations and just wait for it to work its magic.

Main image: sport.express.ru

SATAN CLAWS ARE COMING TO TOWN!

THIS BOLD NEW OCCULT THRILLER IS THE FLAGSHIP FOR A NEW GENERATION OF KAZAKH FILMS – AND THE LOCAL PUNTERS ARE TAKING NOTICE!

With Tatraria Films comes an 18+ certificated `mystical drama thriller` called Dastur, which is Kazakh for Tradition

Throughout its 90 minutes we get a kind of Revenge Tragedy (the film’s tagline is an old Kazakh saying: Let the neck answer for what the hands have done). This is served up with a demonic possession scenario and set in the here-and-now of contemporary Kazakhstan.

The mastermind of this comprises of one Kuanysh Beisekov. He is a 28-year-old director who studied photography after quitting a mathematics course. Before Dastur he has been known only for something quite different. For YouTube he directed a series of popular musical comedy shorts entitled Irina Karatovna.

The players are not that much more well-known either. The most mature of the actors, Aldabek Shalbaev at 65 plays the unsympathetic role of the scheming father of a rapist has done big screen time before in the gangland thriller Taraz (2016).

The lead actor consists of the Almaty resident Ermek Shynbolatov who has done some television work before now, having appeared in the melodrama serial Togzhan (2022) about the lives of television journalists. The crucial female lead is taken by Nurai Zhetkergen. At only 18-years-old this is her first role in a feature film.

The female writer Kazybek Orazbek, who had scripted the comedy Steal Your Money also last year was the main writer alongside Aldar Zhaparhan, who seems to be more of a newcomer.

Shot in the arm.

Released on December 28th last year, Dastur arrived as a sizzling meteorite that hit the earth just on the eve of the long-awaited winter break in Kazakhstan. With lurid promotional graphics and a provocative title, the new film could not have been more of a challenge to the vanilla family comedy fare which hits the screens in this season.

Not known for its edgy horror films, Kazakh cinema has made some reasonable attempts to emulate Korean or Japanese horror. For example, M-Agent (from2013) featured the spirit of a young woman bent on vengeance and had an interesting middle-aged woman for a heroine and In The Dark from 2018 was your classic `don’t-go-hiking-in-the-mountains` yarn and worked on that level, yet both could not escape a sense of being cottage industry products.

Vzyapherti from last year (and reviewed above) was quite refreshing, being a well-made ghost tale (rather more than full horror) but, the Kazakh director aside, seemed somewhat ethnic Russian in its whole cast and outlook.

 Then there is Tor (Grid), also from last year, This might be called `psychological horror` with a sort of update on Kafka’s The Trial but would be too `mundane` for most horror film devotees.

Dastur is as full on horror as it is full on Kazakh and it may well deserve its reputation for being Kazakhstan’s first `true` horror motion picture. Release the bats!

NOT a family comedy for once….[KZ.Kursiv.media]

Keeping it real.

What ensures the effectiveness of Dastur is its docudrama like approach to the narrative. The first half of the film presents us with a sort of bird’s eye view of life in a present-day Kazakh village in the summer. We see an end of term school celebration, some male-on male bullying, and tensions between generations. The otherworldly elements arrive by stealth, forestalling any resistance. Friedkin’s over celebrated 1973 classic The Exorcist, which pulls the same trick, could well have been the template here. (Indeed, the film contains a cheeky self-referential wink: one of the main characters, the young Bolat, is seen wearing a The Exorcist baseball cap in one sequence).

Dastur neither boasts nor needs a panoply of special effects. Nevertheless, the one unsettling spectacle of a man creeping on the wall is achieved with audacious simplicity,

Villagers.

After the above-mentioned scene setting, the focus falls on the two young protagonists, Bolat and Diana. The former represents the spoilt and wayward son of a wealthy livestock farmer and the latter a desirable and talented daughter from a more modest local background.

One fateful evening, following the school celebration, a dissipated Bolat takes Diana by force. For this he is flung into the jail of the regional police force to await trial. Bolat’s father, however, is a bigshot in the local community and soon he sets the wheels of exculpation in motion.

The loaded daddy proposes a traditional way out. If Bolat makes an honest woman of Diana, by marrying her, this will erase the sexual indiscretion – and free his son.

The elders scheme to get Diana married to her abuser [KZ.Kursiv.media]

Diana’s parents are set against this outrageous imposition and spurn many entreaties to make it happen. Money talks, however, and they, at length, settle for a dowry of ten million tenge (the local currency) in cash. The wedding which follows is a tense farce. On the wedding night Diana vanishes and Bolat finds that she has attempted to hang herself in the forest. With a new found tenderness he takes her to his parent’s home and tends to her behind locked doors, ignoring any attempts his mother or father make to intervene.

What happens next is that a two headed calf is born on the father’s farm and Bolat’s mother is spooked by freak television broadcasts showing Diana as a young girl. This is only the beginning of a spectral rampage….

Plenty here to creep you out [KZ.Kursiv.media]

There are parallels here with Carrie (1976) and, in terms of the melodramatic focus on family differences, Hereditary (2018).

Wider relevance.

The very title of the film signposts one of the main themes here: the iniquitous nature of some of the customs still in place in central Asia outside of the major cities.

A switched-on Kazakh might even notice some arch allusions to the real-life murder case centred around Salthnat Nukenova. (In brief, the wife of the ex-Minister of the National Economy, Kuandyk Bishimbyaev, died of bodily harm which it is alleged was inflicted on her by her husband. It is a hot topic in Kazakhstan and the investigation is ongoing).

Yet despite this apparent critique of Kazakh cultural heritage, the sole hero of the film – like the catholic priest in The Exorcist – is an old school holy man, an imam.

Success story.

My experience of getting to see this film met with unique obstacles. On the first attempt I was informed that all the tickets had sold out and on the second I just managed to get one but shared the cinema with a packed crowd of ethnic Kazakhs. (Contrast this with my more typical experience of finding myself in a near empty hall). Needless to say, Dastur has been granted an extended run in many cinemas.

For me it was the impassioned performances that I found most notable. (Shynbolatov told Elle Magazine in January 2024 that he visited a psychiatric facility to prepare for his role. It was not a wasted expedition.) The unsettling ambience of this film is generic enough to please the horror film demographic yet it bears its own stamp and stays true to Kazakh sensibilities. Also, it blindsided me with an unexpected plot development.

Main image: Kinopoisk.ru

The Old Dark Apartment.

Is the screen Chiller CLAUSTRO (VZYAPERTI) the first neo-Gothic Sovietcore film?

The arrival of this film last September was heralded by elaborate installations about it in select cinemas – a rare promotional effort on behalf of such a low budget affair. Had it not been for that, I would not have been one of the dozen or so punters who turned up for a late showing at a central cinema in Almaty late last September.

The 3-D film promotional installation which was on display at Dostyk Plaza cinema this September.

Filmed in Kazakhstan and by Qara Studios, CLAUSTRO or VZYAPERTI, constitutes one subtle and quite distinctive hour and thirty minutes of supernatural chills.

 Two titles for it are out there – VZYAPERTI being the most common and which translates as `Locked In`. This however is also the name of a recent Hollywood thriller, as you will discover should you attempt a search on this film, even in Russian. So, I am going to go with CLAUSTRO which sounds fresher and more evocative anyway.

Kazakhstan’s brush with cinematic horror has been more bite-sized and recent that that of the Great Bear’s, so CLAUSTRO might be taken as something of a test case. It is significant, therefore, to note that this film shines a flickering lamp into the current relationship between Kazakhstan and its former overlord in the in the North, the Russian Federation.

Almaty inspiration.

Shot two years earlier, but released in September 14th of this year, CLAUSTRO adapts a novel by an Almaty novelist, Alexander Mendybaev who has posted online a number of supernatural suspensers, the one in question being TENANTS from 2017 (since published by Meloman in the summer of this year).

The bright young director responsible for the on-screen realization of it is 35-year-old Olzhas Bayalbaev whose directorial debut was with the film GOK, also released this year, which tackles the thorny issue of corruption among civil servants. However, Bayalbaev grew up with R.L Stine stories (as he told an interviewer with Optimism K.Z on 14th September this year) and horror was in his blood.

As for the screenplay, another Almaty resident, 32 -year-old Sabina Tusupova, known for her part in the nineties-based drama ZERE from 2021, teamed up with the author Mendybaev to write this. The retro-modernist musical score, so important in an ambience lead production such as this, was brought to us by a twenty-something musician known to many as Dana Tunes, or Dana Zulpykhar.

Roman Zhukov, 35, from Aktobe (Kazakhstan) who also appeared in the Kazakh portmanteau horror SCARY STORIES TO TELL AROUND THE CAMPFIRE from 2018, plays the main protagonist. His stately side-kick however hails from Rostov-on-Don in Russia -Elizaveta Yurieva- who starred l in the Russian TV series CLINICAL 13, broadcast last year, which fuses medical drama with the occult.

CLAUSTRO will resonate with anyone who spent any time in Soviet period housing. The visual iconography here is all of that and its corresponding period. From this base the proceedings conjure up a sense of spookiness. As well as landline phones and record players, we get to see Soviet era TV shows, toys and confectionery. The brown and grey/pale blue colour scheme is well judged and some of Bardag Arginiov’s photography could be stills from Vogue magazine or the like.

Sovietcore [orda.kz}

Entrapment.

Max (Zhukov) is driving on an errand to hook up with an old friend. We discover him as he motors through the steppes and alongside a glittering reservoir (much of the film was shot in Kapchagai – AKA Konaev, a popular tourist destination on the banks of the Lli river). On arrival he finds himself in a standard Soviet block of flats and interrupting a large family get-together which his friend enjoins him to become a part of.

Max is encouraged to join the party. {orda.kz]

It proves to be a predictable mix of tedium and drunken flirtation until, that is, the elderly paterfamilias at the head of the table begins to intone some odd, witchy imbroglio….

Max leaves the room and there meets Kima (Yurieva), the snooty resident of the flat, who has done the same. When they head back, they are aghast to find that all the guests have vanished and the room appears to have not been inhabited at all in recent times. Next, they discover find that there is no way out – all the exit doors lead them back to where they began. They are entombed in a world of endless receding mirrors reflecting mirrors, like some nightmarish Escher creation. The child phantoms then begin to appear and they are to learn that they will never escape until the issues of these ghosts from their past are laid to rest….

In fact, despite the striking nature of the premise, we have here a traditional trope from many a ghost story, that is the righting of old wrongs. One could even frame this film as making a comment on Kazakhstan ‘s ongoing troubled connection with its own Soviet heritage from which it is unable to escape whilst haunted by specters of past injustices.

Mendybaev and Bayalbaev deserve some credit for noticing, at last, the potential for neo-Gothic ambience that Soviet housing has long had. This is even a bit homely. (We see Kima, for example, painting her toe nails in a languid way whilst listening to Soviet jazz on her record player). The token love interest that arises from the two glamorous inmates does not seem forced, but it does detract a little from the claustrophobia of the central situation.

A style conscious motion picture. [Marie-Claire]

CLAUSTRO took me back to the Russian film KONVERT which I reviewed here a few years back. Both are supernatural dramas produced on a limited budget, oozing the atmosphere of post-Soviet urban environments and with redemption themes at their cores. CLAUSTRO could even pass for a Russian film, with its Slavic cast. It is a bit of a mystery, however, why this film, unlike KONVERT, should be restricted having an 18+ certificate.

CLAUSTRO is not a shocker but a stylish and indeed somewhat `hipsterish` art house movie. It is not all that likely to make many waves in mainstream cinema but it remains to be seen if it can kickstart a new interest in the horror genre among Kazakh film makers.

Lead image: Vlast.KZ

CATCH UP: Stigmata Eight Years On.

Saint Petersburg’s Veteran rockers tour Central Asia with their brand of Russified Metalcore.

I am perched in the darkness in my coat on the metal stairs which lead to an upper level. I sip now and again from a Budweiser which had taken me an age to get. Ahead of me, obscured in part by a throng, four men bathed in white light ooze a racket. I am trying to rewind to eight years ago when I first caught sight of this ensemble….

Established icons.

STIGMATA constitute a heavy rock outfit most often pigeonholed as `Metalcore` (stripped down heavy metal with a punk approach) or sometimes `Emocore` (confessional lyrics conveyed in a highly charged manner). As a part of the Russian subcultural landscape, this foursome has beavered away on the scene since they first picked up their guitars and mikes in Saint Petersburg in 2003.

[ Source :Incontact With UK}

Along with the likes of Jane Air and Distemper they were set in motion by Kap-Kan records, the self-styled `alternative to the mainstream` rock label who but a year after their formation released STIGMATA’S Conveyor of Dreams album. Since then, they can boast five more studio albums and a many single, their latest being `Polusa` (Poles) from this year.

Cover for the new single: Poles.
[Zuk.com]

During that time there have been many comings and goings of personnel, but the ones that I beheld were the were the same as the lot at the Red Club in Moscow eight years ago which included two founder members. The new boy is the clash-and-bang merchant Gregor Karpov who has been with the band for but a year.

They are beginning a tireless schedule of a gig each evening. Having come from Astana (the capital of Kazakhstan) on the 6th October they will play in Tashkent in Uzbekistan after Almaty and then will turn their attention to a series of towns in their home country right until mid-December!

Here they are guests of Zhest Club, a somewhat hole-in-corner alternative rock venue. It has no cloakroom and it is all but impossible to buy a drink after 8pm owing to its packed nature.

Modest entrance.

On coming in from the warm October to hand in my ticket, I was surprised to discover that a band were already in full swing. The warm up was a chunky bespectacled chap and a willowy long-haired companion who churned out a very generic type of nu-metal. The crowd – a few hundred mostly ethnic Russians in baggy hoodies – responded with polite whoops and claps but here we had a reminder that in order to stand out something more is needed than musical competence and enthusiasm.

As nine struck the hour the band we had come to see obliged by getting onto the stage. They did so without the usual niceties of dry ice and light displays. Only the television screens on either side of the stage with their flickering images of the band’s name gave any sense of pomp and circumstance. In fact, going on appearances, STIGMATA could have been another support act. Compared to the Red Club this environment humbled them a little, yet perhaps provided them with a bit of authentic grit. They even seemed a tad unprepared, having to take time out to tune their instruments.

Their name promises Gothic theatricality, after all, but they are nothing much to look at. The lead vocalist Artyom Lotskikh could be the identikit Russian bloke: paunchy, bearded and pale-skinned. The two guitarists, Denis Kichenko and Taras Umansky, in caps and matching grey knee length shorts succeed in spicing up the visual aspect by favouring us with Saint Vitus dances as they play along.

Lotskikh is that rarest of animals: a lead singer who dislikes being the centre of attention to the point where he makes his way to the back of the stage after each song to recover himself. It is Umansky who takes on the task of laying on the much-needed interactive content with merry banter between songs and lobbing water bottles at the eager moshers at the front.

Another idiosyncrasy is their practice of playing at low volume recordings of their better-known songs just a second before going on to play the live one. As they grind their way through `Krilya` and `Lyod` and `Ostan Nadeshov` a svelte female photographer distracts us by crouching in the wings trying to get shots of with a long lens camera.

Quiet pioneers?

As much as STIGMATA get bracketed alongside their Metalcore counterparts in the States such as Killswitch Engage and Trivium, Lotskikh’s songwriting seems distinct in its Russianess, with a strain of folk about it. It could almost be as if they were forging, without hue-and-cry, their own subgenre of `Slavic power ballads` or something of the sort.

The set, at an hour and a half, was shorter than most. This gave me time to mull things over. Taken as a whole this had been a lackluster set by a nevertheless likeable group.  Also, you can say this of their sound: it stays with you. The ringing guitars and soaring voice remained my companion during the long walk home.

Main image: UK: In Contact With.

LATE APPOINTMENT WITH THE VAMPIRES.

A SCREENING OF EMPIRE V IN KAZAKHSTAN DEMONSTRATED THAT THE CONTROVERSIAL MOVIE LACKS THE IMPACT OF GINZBURG’S PREVIOUS ATTEMPT TO ADAPT A PELEVIN CLASSIC.

I caught my first sight of the marketing for Ampire V – EMPIRE V – at the beginning of last year in a cinema in Moscow in the form of a poster. The promised screening soon vanished and, a few months later, so did I.

Later I would discover the supposed rationale for the cancellation. There had been a dispute over the certification. EMPIRE V was submitted to the Ministry of Culture with an age rating of 16+. The men from the Ministry felt it should be higher.

To date this film has not been shown in any mainstream cinema in Russia, suffering the same fate as the lamented picture WE. The key presence in the film of one Miron Federov  – AKA OXXYMIRON , the rapper who has protested the invasion of the Ukraine and has staged benefit concert on behalf of those affected – seems to give the lie to the official version of events.

Miron Federov, foreign agent: wooooh! He bites! [Youtube]

Neutral Kazakhstan, though, deemed this film fit to be projected onto the screens in Kazakh cinemas this September.

There seems an appropriate symbolism to the fact that the late screening in Kazakhstan came at around the same time as Russia released Svidetel (The Witness) which represents one of the first cinematic attempts to advocate for the Russian government’s side in the war.

Master’s return.

EMPIRE V constitutes a 114-minute-long (now) 18+ certificate urban fantasy which, as the Russian title hints at (if you reshuffle it), draws on the vampire trope. The film functions as a rendering of the eighth novel by the post-modernist Muscovite novelist Victor Pelevin.

Victor Ginzburg, 64, who could be called a `Russian David Lynch` directs. This Russian born American citizen already has form with the tortuous task of transforming Pelevin’s fevered mythologizing into something screen worthy. Ginzburg was behind the film Generation P the paranoiac Nineties based romp from eleven years back (which made enough of an impression on one dolt for him to name his blog after it).

Pavel Tabakov, a Moscow born 28-year-old (with just a hint of the young Malcolm McDowell about him) plays the lead role of the down-at-heal Everyman Ramon and Federov plays his mentor who ushers him into the ways of the vampire and a relative newcomer Taya Radenchko, 24, is Ramon’s fellow inductee who allures him so.

Ramon turned Rama [cybersport.metaratings.ru]

Other players include Vladimir Epifantsev, best known for his Rambo-like portrayal of an outlaw in the television series Flint (as well as for holding views critical of the Putin leadership) while the establishment insider Fyodor Bondarchuk puts in an odd, but not untypical, cameo also.

Fractals.

The texture of it all is a rich psychedelic odyssey. Many computer-generated visions of neural activity flash up before the viewer, as do fractal patterns. Meanwhile, the earthbound part of the events is staged in a series of opulent olde worlde interiors. It is all a bit Stephanie Meyers-meets- Thomas Pynchon and much of it would seem ridiculous were it not delivered with such deadpan earnestness.

Plucked from obscurity.

Roman (Tabakov), a one-time student of journalism, is living the life of dead-end cash in hand jobs before he sets his eyes on a promotional alert painted on the pavement promising special work.

Turning up to the address, he soon finds himself being spoken to by a masked menace (Epifantsev) and being informed that he is to be elevated into the realm of the creatures who really run the show. The man before him is about to die and must needs pass on his legacy. What ensues consists of the instruction of Ramon – now to be renamed Rama – into the dense protocols of the life of the vampires and how they hold sway over us muggles, who are but a dairy species.

Myths busted.

In the process, vampire mythology is lobbed sky high. For example, what small fangs they have play second place to a parasite in their mouths which they call `the tongue`. This can extract a small droplet of `red liquid` from the victim without them noticing and thus give the vampire access to their memories and knowledge.

They also imbibe the distilled essences of historical figures from Alexander Pushkin to Steve McQueen, the better to augment their capabilities.

Love is viewed as a form of combat and ownership of human society is achieved via a promotion of Glamour (consumerism) and Discourse (Empty chatter masquerading as discussion). They even fund vampire movies in order to install a false image of what they really are.

They do, however, transform into bats and this gives rise to the most memorable episodes in the film as Rama streaks over Moscow in scenes that could be a homage to Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita.

However, throughout his initiation Rama struggles with his existing sense of humanity and loyalty to it. Also, he becomes entranced by an insouciant, Hermione Grainger like graduate vampire (Radenchko).

Taya Radchenko [Kras.mk.ru]


Unbitten.

That is the framework to EMPIRE V but it is all served up with Pelevin’s trademark idiosyncrasies: modern Moscow merged with ancient Babylon, narcotic trips, philosophical chit-chat, mirthless grotesqueness and a strutting amoral elite and an atmosphere of disassociation.

Here is my problem: the entire vampire trope in itself has never been one which worked for me. For one thing I have never found vampires to be credible life-forms and hence not frightening and the sexual symbolism with which they are associated strikes me as tiresome. As much as EMPIRE V is iconoclastic about vampires, including the sexual angle, and as much as one could call this `a vampire film for people who don’t like vampire films`, the shtick still seems dated and facetious (Pelevin’s novel is 1`7 years old, after all).

Ginzburg does at least steer clear of the antisemitism which can be tallied with this kind of allegory (not having read the source material I cannot say the same of Pelevin).

Russia’s loss.

The refusal to screen this film by the Russian authorities has resulted in the inevitable `Streisand effect`. The Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal premiered the film in the West at the end of last July, making it the most talked about Russian film right now.

Too many of the resulting reviews regurgitate the assumption that this film has been banished from the big screen in its homeland because it is a clear satire of the oligarchic elite.

In fact, there have been Russian films before which have tilted at the same moneyed strata and made it to the cinemas. Rather it is the name of Federov, a `foreign agent` with anti-war views that has led to this stringent push back. (Indeed, there exist not a few oligarchs who would pull Russia out of the conflict, given half the chance).

EMPIRE V recalls Bekmambetov’s Night Watch and Day Watch (2004 and 2007) more than it does Generation P. By comparison it seems like a paler descendant of that classic.

Lead image: Se7enews.

A LEGEND FOR THE LOST.

On a street in Almaty there is a brass statue of Viktor Tsoi. Here’s why.

You stroll along the wide street called Abay Avenue which leads towards the Abay monument (dedicated to the poet, composer and reformer Abai Qunanbaiuly). You have a different poet and composer in mind, however, and just before you reach the gaping mouth of the Abay metro, you hang left and find yourself facing a large statue of a seated man and behind that an impressive fountain.

This is the entrance to the street which you take. The statue was of the composer Mukan Tulabaevich – the first Kazakh classical composer and author of the Kazakh national anthem. You, though, have another monument to another musician in mind and continue down the street You find yourself on a downward incline with trees on either side of you.

All of a sudden you are in the midst of some familiar verses as you are flanked by plaques all along the leafy pathway and these feature quotations from certain songs. You recognize some words from the legendary song Change.

Then you encounter the dark bronze statue. It has its back to you so you pass it and turn and find yourself facing an iconic tableau of a man in the centre of the path in the act of lighting a cigarette. Beneath him are the engraved word `Igla` – `The Needle`.

Soviet Cinema’s turning point.

From Kazakhfilm in 1988, The Needle was a film which kickstarted an all too brief trend of Kazakh New Wave cinema. Taking its cue from French New Wave films, this trend was willing to grapple with less than ideal social conditions (The Last Stop from 1989 about a soldier returning to his home town is another key example from this era).

For all its Avant-garde gestures The Needle brought in the punters, becoming the most watched film over the coming year. Furthermore, it made a superstar out of the leading man, who plays a character just known as Moreau. He is played by Viktor Tsoi, the lead singer and songwriter of the band Kino. Soviet Screen hailed this relative newcomer to the silver screen `the cinema actor of the year`.

Film poster [Pinterest]

Directed by the then 34-year-old Rashid Nugmanov, The Needle was shot in Alma Ata (then the capital of Kazakhstan, now known as Almaty and relegated to being `the capital of the South`) and took the St Petersburgian Tsoi to the land where his Korean father grew up. (There are many Koreans in the Central Asian states having resided in the Far East at the end of the Nineteenth Century).

One one level the film is a topical thriller.  In it, an enigmatic stranger returns to his hometown to meet up with a past girlfriend and becomes embroiled in a feud with drug dealing gangs (this theme being something of a hot potato of the late Soviet period). Then again, the narrative uses the stylistics that are more common to modernist theatre than popular cinema. For example, Moreau’s girlfriend spends one sequence wearing a mask without explanation. In another scene, Moreau and some allies arrive to make a revenge attack on one of the drug dealers who is in a bath house. The men simple stand stock still on the edge of the pool and in this way some kind of violence is implied rather than depicted. Moreover, extended shots the parched wasteland of what was once the Aral Sea anchor the whole production in a dreamlike landscape.

DVD slevve for The Needle [yahha.com]

Nor is The Needle just a showcase of Kino’s music. Sure enough, there is the presence of Kino’s mid-tempo interwoven guitar melodies here, but the songs do not dominate the tale. (Review of a Kino Album here)

The most famous song (written for the film) is `Blood type` which plays  at the film’s denouement when Moreau stops to light a cigarette just before being knifed by one of his drug baron enemies.(This is the very scene recreated by the statue – which has been erected on the precise locale where it had been filmed some three decades earlier).

Eurasian superstar.

Viktor Robertovich Tsoi came into the world in June 21st 1962 into a respectable family composed of an engineer father and P.E teacher mother. One crucial fact is that he spent his formative years in Leningrad (now St Petersburg). The proximity of this city to Finland made for a lot cultural interpenetration between it and Western Europe. Tsoi, somewhat set apart from his peers by his Asiatic appearance, came to idolize Bruce Lee. He was also enamored of the pop-rock scene of the Eighties in Britain and was familiar with such bands as Joy Division, The Smiths and Duran-Duran. He would flog his own hand-drawn reproductions of album covers to people in his circle.

Later under the moniker Garin and the Hyperboloids – a reference to a Spy-fi thriller by Alexei Tolstoy which was both filmed and serialized on Soviet television -became a part of the officially sanctioned Leningrad Rock Scene (a period of history examined in the film Summer – my review here).

We should be grateful for the Soviet policy which insisted that bands could not do covers of Western songs but had to write their own material – without this edict one feels that Tsoi and others of his ilk might well have remained cover bands.

Instead, throughout a twelve-year period, from 1978 to 1990 Tsoi, with a lean black-clad rock-hipster-cum-Kung fu fighter persona, put Russian rock on the map through his guitar, bass and piano playing and, of course, his portentous low register voice – but above all his zeitgeist laden lyrics. Kino would release some four hundred songs, many of them still sung by young buskers throughout Eastern Europe and Central Asia. They played to a huge crowd as Luzhniki stadium in Moscow before Tsoi met his end in a car accident in Latvia in 1990.

In the meantime, a great deal of `Kinomania` had been generated. It is said that some fans took their own lives on hearing of the loss of their hero. In the longer term, conspiracy theories abound as to the exact nature of Tsoi’s death. There is also much lively debate about just what Tsoi would have made of the end of the Soviet Union, which he had got so close to but never got to see.

There is also a deep irony in the fact that some of Tsoi’s songs have been requisitioned by the Putin regime and turned into pro-war anthems sung by military choirs!  (Needless to say, Tsoi was a draft dodger).

Metal Ghost.

 In the presence of Nugmanov, the lead guitarist of Kino band Yuri Kaspyarin and (a real sign of the times) the Mayor of Almaty, the statue was unveiled on the thirtieth anniversary of The Needle’s release – June 21st 2018. The sculptor – one Matvey Matushkin was born on the year that Tsoi embarked on his musical career.

Tsoi’s metal ghost continues to haunt this former country of the Soviet Union, forever lighting a cigarette in grim reflection….

Almaty’s Abbey Road?

A CHILD WITH SECRETS.

The film DETECTOR is a state of the art psychothriller that offers some cold comfort in its cloistered outlook.

The 47-year-old Kostas Marsaan, hailing from a village in the far North East of Russia, Yakutia, made a name for himself with his folk horror film Ichchi from two years back and has since become identified with a `Yakutian horror` scene in film.

His latest motion picture, a wintry puzzler called Detector is neither a horror nor set in Yakutia but yet bears many of the hallmarks of his more niche debut. Released in Russia early this March, the film consists of a psychological thriller with some modern Gothic trappings. Like Sisters it might also be said to partake a little of the much talked about trend of `Elevated horror`. In short, meandering between mystery, thriller and chiller, this is not a film that aims to have you jump back into your seat.

[N.N.M Club – Telegram]

The main writer – Ivan Stanislavsky – is known more for comedies. He was responsible for Predators from three years ago and this is a wacky comedy crime caper.

The cast, on the other hand, is an ensemble one composed of performers notable for their involvement in this film genre.

The 38-year-old Nizhny-Novgorod born Ekaterina Vilkova resurrects her tough-but-endangered police investigator from the TV series Cold Shores. Likewise, the 48-year-old from Tallinn – Kirill Kyaro -appeared in Teach Me to Live (2016) and the TV series The Consultant (2017) as a psychiatrist and finds himself once again typecast in that role.

Detector is not set in Yakutia but in the more relatable (to many) edges of Moscow and, whilst not as exotic, the bare trees and snowy expanse of this do enhance the foreboding mood that the story builds up. Also, the setting in a four storey luxury dacha (which – Fun Fact –was the one built and lived in by the cosmonaut Alexey Leonev, no less!)

Juvenile messenger.

Viktoria, a police operative (Vilkova) is on the chase for a cold-blooded murderer. Ignoring advice from her colleagues, she enters a derelict building where he may be present.  It is when she discovers a headless corpse that she is lunged at from behind and then slashed in the belly a few times. Her assailant leaves her for dead.

Viktoria recovers but is traumatized and has to accept the fact that she can never bear children. In the meantime, however, she has fallen in love with her psychotherapist. Novel is a wealthy man and she shacks up with him in his plush dacha beyond the capital.

Kyaro and Vilkova as the Ideal Couple in an aspirational abode [KG-Portal.ru]

On deciding to adopt a child they pay a visit to an orphanage. While they are looking, a head nurse shows a drawing made by one of the children. It depicts a brutal attack on a woman. Viktoria is struck by how much it reminds her of her own ordeal She decides there and then that the orphan who produced this is the one that they will take.

Dasha seems an odd and withdrawn child and this may owe to the fact that her own mum and dad perished in a domestic conflagration. She continues to produce sinister sketches – even putting them on the walls of her room. Viktoria is convinced that they depict scenes involving the murderer that she had been hunting.

Is the girl clairvoyant or does she have some kind of inside knowledge?

Viktoria returns to her police colleagues full of stories. She is met with unenthused doubts but, perhaps out of loyalty, they do assign a young investigator – Kostya (Gela Meskhi) to the case.

Together they find themselves running up against a series of blind alleys while Viktoria’s obsessive quest puts a strain on her relationship. Indeed, Novel has long since decided that Dasha should be sent back to her orphanage. When the girl stabs him in the hand matters come to the boil….

Distraction by numbers.

The bare bones of the premise do call to mind Olga Gorodetska’s supernatural thriller from 2019 Stray. However, Detector then takes an almost opposite direction. In fact, the plot could almost be a truncated season of Cold Shores. As is the way with this subgenre there is a final reveal that intends to induce gasps of shock but which can be seen coming.

Light on message, heavy on atmosphere.

The tagline for this film is `Take a Closer Look at Who You Live With`. That might, in fact, be the sole insight that one can take away from what is a rather domestic and insular thriller. Wider resonances about Russia or of the world Out There are hard to find here. That in fact may be part of the film’s appeal. I myself savored all one hour forty minutes of this creepy detective yarn, with parts that might have been written by Chat GPT but which oozed a well sustained macabre ambience throughout.

Indeed, the online user reviews, which more often than not are given over to sneering and cynicism have been positive and almost gushing for once.

For example, a Dmitry, writing on Megacritic.ru had this to say:

`The film `Detector` makes the viewer sit on the edge of the chair….The plot is unusual and unexpected…and the actors played their roles perfectly…Her [Vika’s] experiences and emotions are conveyed to the viewer so vividly that it is difficult not to be interested in what is happening on the screen…

And so on. This review was not an exception.

Nevertheless, in the cinema in Almaty (in a district calling itself `Moscow`) I found myself, for the umpteenth time, to be the only person in the hall.

Main image: Kladez Zolota. Livejournal.com

ALL SOUND AND FURY: THE FILM MIRA

THIS APOCALYPSE YARN, FILMED ON LOCATION IN RUSSIA’S FAR EAST, IMPRESSES WITH ITS BANGS AND WHIZZES – BUT WHERE’S THE SUBSTANCE?

Last December, an ambitious extravaganza, part disaster movie and part science fiction epic, reached Russian screens in time for the winter holidays. (I would have to wait another three months for it to get to Almaty in Kazakhstan).

MIRA after spending a lot of time on the launch pad, came caparisoned with illustrious associations.

Dmitry Kiselyov (not to be confused with the execrable T.V pundit of the same name) was the man with the megaphone. His resume shows that he helped to edit the iconic NIGHTWATCH and DAYWATCH films (2004 and 2006) and directed the quintessential family adventure-romance BLACK LIGHTNING in 2009. He has also taken us into the cosmos before with FIRST TIME (2013), a credible biopic of the first man to walk in space, Alexei Leonov.

One of the key roles is filled by a fifty-year-old Ukrainian Jew Anatoly Bely, a well-regarded stage actor who also has appeared in a great many television serials. He acts alongside a relative newcomer – Veronika Ustinova. Hailing from Ulyanosk, this seventeen-year-old has been compared by some to Margot Robbie. Here she showcases her talents as the cosmonaut’s daughter.

The film needs an epic score to complement its scenario and Yuri Poteenko is just the man for this. He also provided the score for NIGHTWATCH and DAYWATCH and has form with disaster movies in the form of METRO (2013).

Girl interrupted.

In Vladivostok, Lera, a fifteen-year-old malcontent, lives with a divorced mother and her paunchy lummox of a new stepfather and an exasperating younger brother. Only in her races – she runs for events in a local stadium -does she come alive.

However, her father, Arabs, works as a cosmonaut and spends much time in orbit with his Russian colleagues in a space station called Mira A. With the futuristic assistance of an A.I computer – with the titular nickname of Mira -this absent father is able to manipulate technologies down on earth and thus keep watch over his daughter. Unimpressed by this, Lera gives the middle finger to a street C.C.T.V camera that Arabs has commandeered in this fashion.

Arab’s home [Recommend.ru]

A hard rain.

Scientists on board Mir A have been attempting to warn those down below of an impending cosmic hazard in the form of a cluster of meteorites en route for our blue planet. (The actor Igor Kriphunov, best known for his work with Svyatelsav Podgaevsky, has a well-cast cameo role here.)

Their warnings meet with deaf ears….When the meteorites arrive, they disable the Mir. A space station and kill most of the staff, leaving only Arabs and Mira functioning.

Mir.A comes to grief. [Recommend.ru]

Meanwhile Vladivostok is laid waste by the onslaught and Lera is rendered homeless and loses her little brother. It is here that the father and Mira’s creepy magic takes centre stage and a new father-daughter bond is forged. Together, using whatever visual and sound portal they can find, they relocate the lost brother and, while they are at it, also prevent an off shore tanker from detonating and taking half of Vladivostok with it.

Remote parenting [Fim.ru]

Defiance of odds.

MIRA seems to lay down a heroic ethos. We learn that Lera exhibits a phobia of fire and that this originated from a time she was trapped in a burning lift, which her father could not rescue her from. This time, though, she will have to face down this terror – by joining forces with her dad.

Even her boyfriend – with something of a `woke` twist – boasts a prosthetic arm and must overcome the feeling of stigma this gives him.

Aside from motivational homilies, what can we take away from this tale? That remote parenting can work? That surveillance technologies might be used for the betterment of humanity?

Convincing mayhem.

I took this film in on the second row in a hall in the Chaplin cinema in Megapolis, Almaty. This featured a sizeable screen with Sensurround and, whilst I have never been one to salivate over FX the collision sequences in this film – all falling masonry, explosions and skidding vehicles – were among the most effective I have experienced.

Carboard cutouts.

If only the human input had been as animated. Ustinova delivers a performance which exudes dignity and seems believable and she represents the discovery of a new female lead in cinema. The rest of the cast, however, function as cyphers of family types: the caring but out of touch mother, the annoying but cute little brother and the cloddish but well-meaning stepfather.

Even Bely feels, in a strange way, insipid as though he had found that the script had not given him enough scope. Instead, he puts on dark glasses whenever he needs to convey a bit of character.

Perhaps this explains why MIRA, despite having some affecting scenes, stopped short of jerking my tears as much as it intended. I can say, however, that it did earn my unflagging attention for all of its long 150 minutes running time.

Magpie approach.

Refreshing though the Vladivostok setting is, the film is otherwise a stitch up of borrowed ideas. The Hollywood offering ARMAGEDDON springs to mind as one of the models (meteor shower, Mir space station and father-daughter issues).

The creators did not only draw on American precedents though. The conceit that forms the science fictional hub of the whole thing – a space station with the capacity to gatecrash earth side technologies – recalls the ATTRACTION sequel INVASION (2020)  where a sinister intelligence in orbit could do the same.

Unpleasant resonances.

Above all, the meteorite attack scenes could not help but to put me in mind of the horrific shelling of certain Ukrainian cities by the Russian military. This, together with the very name of the film (which means `peace` in Russian) could even cause some to suspect that this film has a subtext.

One man who might like to think so is Anatoly Bely himself. After denouncing the invasion of Ukraine, he left the Moscow Arts Theatre last summer and now resides in Israel.

POLICE AND THIEVES ON THE STREET.

A raw Kyrgyz gangster-movie-with-a-heart makes waves in Kazakstahn thanks to a Russian translation.

Police and thieves on the street

Oh, yeah

Scaring the nation with their

Guns and ammunition. Junior Murvin (song)

To date the only modern cultural association that I could make with Kyrgyzstan was the charming pop band Gorod 312. I doubt that I am alone in knowing very little of Kyrgyz cinema. That which comes to the attention of the world’s stage tends to be the kind that pleases the niche viewership of cineastes who like films from this part of the world to be contemplations on village life and so on.

Against this background, the emergence of RAZBOI (Robbery) this year represents a refreshing green shoot – not so much in Kyrgyz cinema but in its acceptance outside of its own country.

(TRAILER HERE).

This film is urban and concerns the here-and-now and can speak to anyone from any culture.

 A movie with a 50,000-dollar budget, RAZBOI however, has not penetrated the art house cinemas of New York, London or Paris yet, but, thanks to the ongoing lingua franca which is Russian it has begun wowing a new audience in Kazakhstan.

The film has been gracing Kazakh cinemas since 19th January of this year and the director of Kinopoisk and Kinoplex cinemas (who are responsible for the screenings) Yurlan Bukhurbaev told Mail KZ (February), after noting that the showings drew good crowds, that ` a certain excitement has developed around the film. `

Made in Bishkek.

After being shot in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, RAZBOI then got professionally dubbed into Russian in a studio in Moscow. Running for 84 minutes and released with no age certificate, it is very much not a `family movie`.

The stark title says it all: this is a `criminal drama` just as advertised, having something in common with both the gangster and heist subgenres, as well as the `police procedural`. The creators claim a genuine news story from Bishkek as their starting point.

The directors are the 48-year-old Maksat Zhumaev, who hails from Naryn in Kyrgyzstan and Azamat Ismailov, both quite new to the game. Likewise, many of the players seem to be new faces – at least outside of their home country. Atai Omurbekov starred in Empty House (2012) a bleak social realist fable (which I have seen) about a young woman’s attempt to escape from the poverty of her milieu. I have drawn a blank on the other names, but they include:  Adyl Bolorbekuulu, Zhyldyzbek Kaseyinov, Bek Bostonbaev and Uchkun Absalamov.

Azamat Izmailov (Picnob.com)

Armed greed.

One late winter in Bishkek an assortment of five ruthless outlaws are busy committing a string of robberies throughout the city. Their modus operandi is as simple as it is bold. They intercept vehicles transporting hard cash from bank to bank and take off with the loot. These mercenaries are also cold-blooded killers who show no scruples about gunning down whoever should stand in their way. Life is cheap for them.

Meanwhile, a police task force is not quite hot on their heals and indeed, seems to be outwitted by their quarry. The relationship between the cops and robbers is one of a kind of Cold War. Espionage even plays a part in the proceedings with an attractive young police officer in plainclothes used to elicit the phone number of one member of the gang so that he may be tracked and a street cleaner who is an undercover cop.

In this `man’s world` of phone calls and car trips, both sides have to contend with issues. With the robbers there is the question of trust: who of their posse can really be relied upon? The police have girlfriend and wife problems, with their lovers feeling abandoned as the twenty-four-seven demands of the hunt take its toll.

The stakes are high and the contemptuous killing of one of the law enforcement brethren during a stake out forms the centerpiece of this film. We get to see a dignified police funeral juxtaposed with the man’s would-be fiancé in the process of marrying a rival suitor.

Of course, the men in uniform will vanquish the baddies, but will pay a heavy price in so doing….

Tragic realism.

Despite some tense, indeed harrowing, sequences RAZBOI is no action movie. The narrative is more of an unheroic slice-of-life one. Enough screen time is devoted to the criminals to get across the fact that they are all too human. We even get a hint as to their motivation: we see one of their number, on the pretext of going out to buy groceries, call on his ailing mother in a rundown country bungalow.

In fact, it is only the violence instigated by the gangsters – shown in an unvarnished but not gratuitous way -that identifies them as obvious wrongdoers.

The film showcases some explosive acting and this is supported by a classical-electronic score that plays throughout all of the film (the exception being the police funeral which makes use of Kyrgyz rap to good effect).

RAZBOI climaxes in a way reminiscent of a Jacobean revenge-tragedy with needless slaughter all round. The consequences of violent crime are brought home and the trigger-happy bling-centered lifestyle of the gangsters is far from glamourised.  The film is not cynical though: the end credits name check an actual policeman – Marat  – who lost his life in the real life crime case which inspired this film.

Flagship success.

In the same interview quoted in Mail KZ Mr. Bukharbaev went onto to say:

`This is an example of the fact that huge budgets and state support are not always needed to realise a hit production. `

Indeed, the 75% full cinema that I attended on February 3rd was quite new to me. I also noted that the audience was not quite what I might have expected. I had envisioned this as being a film for youngish men – yet behind me sat a row of chic unaccompanied Kazakh ladies.

Lead image: Instagram.