ABIGAIL: It’s a fairytale. No, wait. It’s steampunk…It’s a steampunk fairytale.
This August a blockbuster fantasy film, the creation of talent both inside and outside of Russia, came to town and gave birth to a new franchise. I hot-footed it to Cinemastar in Yugo Zapadnaya to be present at the birth. Such fantasy is a genre that I am not all that drawn to, but I could not miss out on such a major production.
This was released on August 22nd by Twentieth Century Fox C.I.S, but the progenitors are Kinodanz. After seven years in business this production company has already established itself as one able to call on big names. One Antonio Banderas appeared in their Beyond Reality (2016). In Abigail, likewise, the 51-year-old British actor Eddie Marson (Sherlock Holmes, 2009) plays a key part.
Beleaguered city.
Abigail constitutes a family oriented 6+ certificate science fantasy adventure served up with a steampunk aesthetic.
The film whisks us off to a world long ago and far away: Fensington. In this stylish and retro dominion, iron masked servants of a despotic state patrol the cobbled streets checking the identities of its citizens by scanning their eyes. These citizens have long been told that a terrible disease encircles the city and hence they need must remain isolated. The Special Department is charged with deporting those it deems as carriers of this disease.
This same world, however, is one in which magical powers can be called upon and where sprites flutter through the air outside the city. (The opening shots of the film introduce these, in a scene that reminded me of a certain Spice Girls video, gamboling through the forest glades).
Abigail’s quest.
[kg-portal.ru]
The eponymous heroine, Abigail, (Tinatin Dalakishvilli) has lost her wise and vivacious father to the clutches of the Special Department. Her quest becomes one to find him and to discover who is behind the iron masks of the Special Department and what lies beyond the gates of Fensington.
This quest will cause her to doubt the official story and will introduce her to an alternate community of like-minded dissidents. This extraordinary league of gentlemen and lady magicians encourage Abigail to develope her own latent magical powers. Together they will all fly beyond the city boundaries aboard a magnificent airship….
International talents.
The brains behind this are not new to fantasy. The director and co-writer Aleksandr Boguslavsky has a background in Russian science fiction TV thrillers and his co-writer Dmitry Zhigalov has worked on the forthcoming science fiction film Project Gemini.
The 28-year-old Georgian model Dalakishivilli who first made her name five years back in an intriguing Georgian black comedy fantasy called Seazone, gets to play Abigail. She brings elegance and innocence to the role. Her father, seen in a series of flashbacks, is Marsan. Another luminary comes in the form of 30-year-old Tajik star Rinal Mukhamentov, who I recall as a pacific starman in Attraction (2016). Here he has a mute role.
Many of the outdoor shots were filmed on location in the old town part of Tallin, Estonia’s picture postcard capital.
Enchantment.
Visual sumptuousness forms a large part of the charm of Abigail. The location scenes of a spire-crossed winterscape and the cosy brownish interiors, the Edwardian-cum-twenties technology, the glittering CGI effects and the glamorous cast, all are designed to enchant.
The ambience is notched up by a quasi-classical soundtrack courtesy of the Muscovite Ryan Otter who composed for the Gogol triptych (2017, 2018). Here he employs much in the way of bass horns to convey both menace and majesty.
Subtext.
The underlying message seems to be that age-old one about how you have to ignore the crusty old powers-that-be and find your individual inner strength and so on. Nothing new here then.
The positive depiction of a father -daughter relationship is refreshing however. Marsan’s father oozes twinkly parental love. (In fact, I now realise that he must have been saying his lines in English and that these were then dubbed into Russian. This was not apparent when I watched the film!)
Otherwise this could be taken to be a veiled allegory about the current political situation in Russia where peaceful protestors can be hauled away by masked policemen and the population is forever being warned of contamination by outside sources.
Dystopia in fairyland.
The film feels like a mechanism constructed out of previous films: a bit of Harry Potter here, a bit of Equilibrium there and then a bit of The Golden Compass. However, its organising principle is its steampunk ethos which it wears heavily on its sleeve. We see plenty of mechanical contraptions and the airships have been lifted straight from the novels of Michael Moorcock. This plausible alternate world scenario is then stretched further by us being asked to believe in sprites and conjuring, which may challenge older viewers as much as it thrills younger ones.
On the one hand the shimmering magic rays and so on , realised by CGI effects, grate a bit being such a hackneyed trope but on the other, some of the fighting scenes seem a little too strong for a younger audience (Note to producers: replacing guns with swords does not make a scene any less violent!)
Then, as pretty as the locations shots are, they do make us feel a little enclosed until you feel almost as glad as the protagonists do when they commandeer the airship to take them out of there!
Big designs.
Abigail should play well to its target audience: tweenies in need of an ersatz Harry Potter and older geeks who appreciate a dash of steampunk. (Indeed, much of the film’s material was pre-released at the Moscow Comic convention long before the actual first showing).
Whether this ambitious commercial franchise can break into the coveted Western market remains to be seen though. Its very existence, nevertheless, does show the emerging strength of the Russian film industry.
Trailer for `Abigail` – dubbed into English.
Featured image from Youtube.com
