THE EXCESS FIVE GO ASTRAY IN RUSSIA.

A Fresh look at the Superfluous Men of Nineteenth Century Fiction – and what they can tell us today.

`Nature clearly did not intend on me putting in an appearance, and as a result has always treated me as an unexpected and uninvited guest` (The Diary of a Superfluous Man, p-10).

Plough through any of the writings of the Golden Age of Russian literature and, within its pages, you will bump into a recurring archetype. This consists of a man in his twenties or thirties, highborn (but often in reduced circumstances), influenced by European cultures, unlucky in love and in general at odds with the social mores around him.
Meet the Superfluous Man. Sometimes translated as the Excess man, this term was propelled into Russian conversation of the mid- to late Nineteenth century by Ivan Turgenev in his The Diary of a Superfluous Man from 1850.
The label, then slapped fictional characters from earlier in that century, might be seen as a Russified cousin of the Byronic hero that existed in European culture at that time. On the other hand, the Russian one is less of a personality type and more of a sociological study – and literary trope.
The Bradford born translator of The Diary of a Superfluous Man, Michael Pursglove, traces the type as far back as 1831 with the play by Alexander Griboyedov called Wit from Woe which features a acerbic idealist called Chatsky.
In any case, it was in 1859 that the influential critic Dobrolyubov nailed the Superfluous Man to the mast by listing them in an article called What is Oblomovism? (This being an allusion to Oblomov – the lethargic landowner in Goncharev’s 1859 novel of the same name).

I set myself the task of re-acquainting myself with five translated paperbacks which feature Superfluous Men. I aimed to cut through the barbed wire of literary criticism which surrounds these works and emerge with their still palpitating hearts…

Tragic lovers.
Exhibit A constitute the doomed romancers. Let us beging at the beginning. A novella, first published in censored form when Turgenev was 32, The Diary of a Superfluous Man takes the form of the memoirs of a young man in the throes of an unspecified sickness. Written in the first person and spiced with autobiographical references, the events occur in and around Oryol, Turgenev;s own birthplace (some 368 kilometeres south-west of Moscow).
Chulkaturin is a respectable but socialy awkward civil servant who finds himself drawn to a young girl residing in the estate of a wealthy family that he visits.
It is not long, however, before the girl’s head is turned by the sudden arrival on the scene of the charismatic and high-ranking Prince N.
The battle for her affections can only be setttled, Chulkaturin comes to believe, by the inevitable duel.
The duel goes ahead and leaves Prince N. with a small wound. It also leaves him with a moral victory and the ability to appear magnanimous in defeat, whereas Chulkaturin gets cast in the role of a petty, spiteful man on the eyes of Oryol high society.
Chulkaturin rages against the hostile and insurmountable obstacle between him and his feelings and thoughts(P-10).
What happens next is that Prince N. lets the object of his affections down, however, upsetting her a great deal. Even so, Chulkaturin seems unable to profit from this turn of events. Another man, a colourless minor character up to this point, offers his sympathy to the young lady and wins her hand in marriage. The protagonist’s role in the whole affair has been that of an uneeded and discarded extra.
Ferocious in its intropection, this deathbed confession offers a very desolate picture. Indeed, the novella could be a caricature of all one might expect Russian literature to be like.

Ralph Fiennes as Onegin in a decent film adaptation of `Eugene Onegin` from 1999 [de.fanpop.com]

Eugene Onegin could not be more different. Penned by Alexander Pushkin a decade earlier, this first saw print in serialised form between 1825 and 1832.
Most Western people’s knowledge of it comes about, I suspect, via Tchiakovsky’s weighty opera adaptation of it from 1879. In Russia, meanwhile, it is a set text in state schools and the kids are expected to learn sections of it by rote.

Having read some bits and pieces of Pushkin’s before and being unmoved by them, I put Pushkin in a box marked Doesn't tranlate so well.
It was during a winter holiday trip to St Petersburg that I chanced on Eugene Onegin, left by a traveller at a hostel. I scanned the opening lines where Onegin makes cheeky remarks about the slowness of the death of his uncle and I was hooked. Meeting up with the actual Eugene Onegin is like expecting to drink a cup of bitter espresso coffee and finding, instead, that is is cocoa – with a marshmallow in it.

The tale, told in sing-song verse, catalogues in episodes, the life and times of a St Petersburg fop. (This might well be a self-projection of Pushkin himself, but the narrator is supposed to be a friend of Onegin’s and one with different views and habits).
Still in his twenties, Onegin inherits his uncle’s country estate and transforms into a country gent but is nagged by ennui throughout:
His passion soon abated/ Hateful the world became and His malady whose cause I mean/It now to investigate is time/Was nothing more than British spleen/Transported to a Russian clime (p-27-28)
In short, is Byron’s Childe Harold in Russified form. Indeed Vissarion Belinsky, the Russian critic, dubbed the poem an encyclopedia of Russian life
Throughout this frothy romp – in which Onegin will alienate his lover Natasha, slay his bosom pal in a hasty duel, have a change of heart about Natasha and fail to win her back – there is something for everyone: romantic transcendence, bawdy archness, jocular japes, Gothic terrors and brooding reflections and all within the commonplace environs of St Petersburg, Moscow and rural Russia, but described with vividness.

The Wandering Prophets.
I call Exhibit B the wandering prophets, not because they too do not have failed love affairs too, but because these excess men are peripatetic and given to soliloquising.

Scene from a Russian TV adaptation of `A Hero Of Our Time` [filmprov,ru]

The provocative phrase A Hero of Our Time forms the title of the poet Mikhail Lermontov’s sole novel. The protagonist, Grigory Aleksandrovich Pechorin, is another Byronic typepar excellence.Cynical, self-interested and consumed by boredom, he has few virtues, except for an ability to philosophise:

Passions are nothing more than ideas at the first stage of their development. They belong to the heart's youth, and he is foolish who thinks they will stir him all his life(p-182)
Other observations have quite a contemporary ring to them:

I saw that fame nor happiness depended on it [learning] in the slightest, for the happiest people were the most ignorant and fame was a matter of luck, to achieve which you only had to be clever (p-61).

The narrative is episodic, with much of it being related via Pechorin’s own journal in racy prose. What is more, unlike the previous two novels the setting is exotic. The events occur in the misty peaks of the Ossetian mountains, and Lermontov squeezes every ounce of romance from this.

We follow Pechorin as he claims a young Ossetian girl as his own, thus coming into conflict with the elders of her community, stumbles across a bizarre smuggling exercixe on the coast, is almost drowned by a femme fatale and witnesses a Russian roulette challenge. What stops all this from being just a tale of derring-do is the character study at the core of it.
The novel attempts to place Pechorin alongside a whole generation who came of age in the 1840s. An older acquaintance of his, when asked about Pechorin, responds: there were many who speak the same way, and that most likely some are speaking the truth (p-163).

Turgenev’s Rudin (1857) functions as a more developed revisiting of his earlier novella. Of all these novels, in fact, this is the one with the most sophisticated plot.
We are back in country estate territory. Rudin is introduced to it by dint of being the messenger who has to apologise to the hosts for the non-arrival of a long awaited guest.
Thus he is a stand-in, but however, his smooth intelligence soon charms the wealthy socialite who owns the house and her circle of acquaintances, so he becomes a long term resident there and shares the story with a witty misanthrope and a conventional landowner type, with whom he is compared and contrasted.
In true Superfluous Man style, he embarks on an affair with the young daughter of the Lady of The House. When she discovers this, she expels him.
Rudin is revealed to be a victim of his own eloquence: his love for the girl was all theatrical talk. However, those around him now characterise him as a chancer and a sponger, which is less true.
Rudin tries to explain himself by letter to his disappointed young lover (My fate is a strange one, almost a comic one. I give myself comnpletely, heartily, fully - and yet I am unable to give myself p113). She is unimpressed by this.
When Rudin goes off back to his wandering life, one of his opponents has a change of heart and says this of the man He posseses enthusiasm and...this is the most precious quality in our time (p-125).
Later on, we meet Rudin again. Now he has become an insurrectionist in the 1848 June uprising in France. Here he meets his end – as a hero, of sorts.

The Malcontent.
Chekhov’s short story The Duel, from 1891, is separated from the others by some decades.This fact is reflected in the self-conscious portrayal of the material. The Superfluous Man here calls himself such and makes reference to some of the works mentioned here.
We are back in an exotic locale: this time it is the Black sea off the coast of Southern Russia.
Layevsky, however longs to return to what he sees as the civilised North, feeling that his relationship with a beautiful but flighty young woman is stifling him. He attempts to borrow the money to do so from a good-hearted doctor friend but it opposed by an earnest zoologist influenced by Darwinist notions. This latter, Von Koren, has this to say about Layevsky:
I told him off, asked him why he drank so much...his sole reply to all my questions was to smile bitterly and say I'm a superfluous man...or he'll spin a whole yarn about Onegin, Pechorin, Byron's Cain, Bazarov, calling them our fathers in spirit and flesh (p-268).

This enmity to what he sees as a self-justifying weakling leads to yet another duel. This one, however, turns out to be a seriocomic travesty and there are no victors (and is later followed by a kind of reconciliation).
Chekhov’s character – Exhinbit C-the malcontent -is the least likeable one in this parade but he is well served by the author. There is a reason why Chekhov is revered as a master storyteller and here you do see why.

Echoes down the century.

Danila Kozlovsky as Max in the film`Dyxless` from 2012[timeout.ru]

When you strip away th historical paraphenalia, you feel struck by the freshness of these novels, and their ongoing relevance.
The Superfluous Maan never really left us: he just went global and more downmarket. Ernest Hemingway was known to be a devotee of Turgenev’s. In The Sun Also Rises (1926) we meet a post First World War Superfluous Man in the form of Jake who is impotent as a result of that war.
Nor has contemporary Russia abandoned the Superfluous Man. What about the redundant advertising compywriter turned mass killer in Headcrusher (2002) or the messianic adolescent in Sense (2012)?
In film, Max in Dyxless (2012) owes something to Onegin, albeit one projected onto the Moscow playboy milieu of the early noughties.
In this age of the redundant male perhaps we are all a bit Superfluous these days!
For myself, I just want to shout out a loud spasiba balshoye to these eminent Men of Letters for putting these relatable misfits onto a marble dias for us all to see.
Every dog has his day!

Sources:
Chekhov, Anton The Steppe and other Stories, 1887 -1891 (Penguin Group, London, 2001) Translated by Ronald Wilks
Lermontov, Mikhail A Hero of Our Time (Karo, St Petersburg, 2017) Translated by Martin Parker.
Turgenev, Ivan The Diary of a Superfluous Man and other novellas (Alma Classics, Surrey, UK: 2019) Translator: Michael Pursglove.
Turgenev, Ivan Rudin (Alma Classics, Surrey, UK :2012) Translator: Dora O’Brien.
Pushkin, Aleksander Eugene Onegin (Karo, St Petersburg,2017) Translator: Henry Spalding.

Lukyanenko’s Last Hurrah: The novel THE SIXTH WATCH.

Is this a farewell to the Watch Saga?

Invoke the name of Sergei Lukyanenko and the following picture may well pop into your mind: An uber-Russian-Muscovite who catapulted to fame through a string of hard edged and scary fantasy novels commencing with The Nightwatch.

Think again. The real Lukyanenko hails from Karatau in South Kazakhstan. He only arrived in Moscow, at the age of 28, in 1996. By that time he had already published quite a few novels in the space opera genre and which were influenced by the American writer Robert Heinlen.

As for `hard-edged` and so on, his prose is distinguished by its philosophical humour, occasional sentimentality and its promotion of the need for compromise in a world where there are no absolute truths. Packaging aside, he is not a horror writer as such. The gist is somewhere between the decided grimness of Dmitry Glukhovsky and the light touch of Boris Akunin – in fact more the latter.

I first encountered his books over a decade ago. They were huge in Russia and easy to find in translation and I read them as a duty, despite not being all that keen on mythical magic-based fiction. The main tning that I got from them was an introduction to life on the Moscow of today.

Urban fantasy pioneer.

This time I reached for The Sixth Watch in preparation for the lockdown to come. Also I felt that it would be interesting to find out how the creator brings his iconic series to a close.

Lukyanenko likes to think of hinself as a successor to the Strugatsky brothers and his first novel, Knights of the Forty Islands (1990) was a science fiction one, (and remains untranslated).

The Nightwatch (1998) was the tale that would vanish off the shelves, however. It introduced the world to the Others – supernatural beings such as vampires and magicians, werewolves and prophets who walk amongst us in human guise and are locked into a Cold War style detente between the forces of Light and Darkness. This is mediated by the nether world known as the Twilight (which the film version translates, rather better, into The Gloom).

It was a fellow Kazakh and director Timur Bekmambetov who was the first to recognise the cinematic qualities of this world and so in 2004 a bit of Russian cultural history was made. The film version of Nightwatch entered cinemas and was followed two yeats later with Daywatch. These represent a soft power breakthrough for Russia, with few critics having a bad word to say about them.

Scene from `Nightwatch (2004) [Slashfilm.com]`

Thr films also functioned as starmakers with Anton Khabensky, Anna Slyu, Sergei Trofimov and the band Gorod 312 all making their names here.

Lukyanenko has been credited, via his brand of urban fantasy, with taking fantasy to a wider age group and, indeed, many a `paranormal romance` potboiler, starting with Stephanie Myer’s Twilight series, owes something to him.

The portly dreamweaver has thus become something of an ambassador of Russia, much as Henning Mankell is for Sweden.

Some commentators have taken to badmouthing him for his `chauvinism`, in particular in connection with his stance on the Ukraine issue. This, however, despite being expressed in a theatrical way, is not so different from the mainstream one throughout much of Russia.

Anton returns.

Anton Gorodetsky, the Higher Light Magician remains our narrator and protagonist in The Sixth Watch. He seems happy in his marriage and has a daughter who is an Enchantress. He continues to work as a Nightwatch agent. It is in this role that he finds himself hunting down an errant vampiress on the loose on the streets of Moscow. This creature, furthermore, seems to be waging some sort of vendetta against Gorodetsky, but turns out, in fact, to be warning him. There is an oncoming apocalypse, he learns.

Cover from the Russian version of `The Sixth Watch or Shyestoi Dozor` [ozon.ru]

The plot, after the manner of the whole series, soon starts to resemble the serpentine digressions of an espionage thriller as an ancient Demon-God called The Two in One returns to reassert its dominion.To forestall the destruction of all life on Earth, even the Others, Gorodetsky has to gather together a convocation of of the heads of all the vampires, witches,prophets, shapeshifters and magicians. This then is the Sixth Watch: a sort of Seven Samurai -like defence league.

I stifled yawns through some of the portentous details about rituals and incantations and so on and so lost the thread at times. The fresh and vivid rendering of being at a witches rally and a vampire conference brought a smile to my face though.

Lukyanenko’s wining trick is to merge his world of paranormal events with quotidian domesticity.

As Gorodetsky prepares an omelette for his spunky fifteen year old daughter, who is also a prime target for the dark forces at play, he reminds her that putting too much salt in it would be bad for her health.

Lukyanenko also offers a nice line in ironic humour as shown in the following exchange with a doctor called Ivan:

`I once met a man who mixed petals into his tea, said Ivan, pouring the strong brew before diluting it with hot water.`It was disgusting muck. And what is more tose petals were slowly poisoning him`

`So how did it all end?` I asked.

`He died`, the healer said shrugging. `Knocked down by a car. `

What gives Lukyanenko’s writng its idiosyncratic flavour are the jaundiced observations on the urban life of today which always make you sit up even if they appear curmudgeonly. There is, too, the refreshing fact that in this novel we get a hero who is not a detached brainbox nor an alcoholic divorcee, but a family man.

The fairytle like climax put me in mind of Nikolai Gogol’s Viy (1835) and made any tedium I had thus far tolerated seem worth it. Also it did seem to make any further resurrection of the series well-nigh impossible.

Andrew Bromfied, that busy and ubuiquitous Yorkshireman who also brought the mini-classic Headcrusher to an Anglophone readership, seems to have engaged with Lukyanenko’s intentions quite well here. One or two moments of wooden dialogue aside, you would be unaware that you are reading a translation most of the time.

Mixed reception.

How are the Western fanboys and girls taking the shutters coming down on their cherished series?

Not so well.

On Youtube Polyanna’s Bookclub opines: `You can’t just end it like that – there’s got to be something next!` Over in Goodreads an Esteban Siravegna is more forthright:

`It feels as if Lukyanenko got fed up with the saga and decided to end it for once and for all, or that he needed the money`.

Man at a crossroads.

But Lukyanenko, as his folksy website makes clear, has other frogs legs and spider’s webs on the boil. He has made a foray into alternate world fantasy with Rough Draft (Chernovik) which was filmed, to muted reviews, in 2018. He is also a fixture on the video games in industry.However, if he were to conjure up a new Watch novel a few moons hence, I would not be so surprised. Seven is a magical number, after all.

The Sixth Watch' is published by Arrow Books, London (2016)

The main image is from twitter.com

THE WICKED WITCH ISN’T DEAD: The film BABA YAGA: TERROR OF THE DARK FOREST.

An age old folk demon is after the kids of a prosperous housing development in Podgaevsky’s latest dark fantasy. My kids are safe. Are YOURS?

How we longed, this year, for that promised big freeze with its white cityscape. But winter never came.

Baba Yaga: Terror of the Dark Forest/Baba Yaga: Koshmar Temnova Lesa felt a bit the same. The internet hype first informed me that it would get its release on October 31st of last year. This then was moved forward to the following January. In the event it was in the theatres on 27th February, a deadzone for new films. (The only opposition came from Kalashnikov – a disgraceful biopic of a man who designed mechanisms to kill people with. Jesus wept!)

The irony was that on the day that I saw it, a mini-snow blizzard appeared in the city, as though winter too had made a desperate late showing!
The wait was worth it if only to see how this fifth supernatural tale from the emerging new voice in Russian film craft, the 37-year-old Muscovite Svyatoslav Podgaevsky would shape up.

Not only did he co-direct it (with Natalia Hencker) and co-write the film (alongside Natalya Dubovaya and Ivan Kapitonov) but he co-produced it for Non-Stop films.

As with The Queen of Spades: The Dark Rite (2016) and The Bride (2017) and, in particular, last year’s Rusalka: Lake of the Dead this project offers an idiosyncratic kind of muscular folk horror using East European folk tales as a backdrop.

The superb promotional poster for this film did much to cement its reputation long before it hit the screens. [Yello.com]

The cast includes the 37-year-old beauty from Severodvinsk, Svetlana Ustinova, who plays the nanny. Lending the film some needed gravitas Igor Khripunov also partakes. His craggy looks have graced four of Podgaevsky’s previous films, making him a sort of Russian Ralph Bates.

New Moscow.
The location constitutes one of the brand new sleeper dorms that are springing up outside Moscow to cater for wealthy young families( with the metro being expanded in order to accommodate them). Far from exuding the spooky ambience of your traditional horror setting, this locale feels aspirational and septic.

Nevertheless, it functions as an outpost. When the new buildings thin out we run into a dense and expansive area of forest. As the action unfolds the New Town and the Encircling Forest start to feel like players in the story.

Boy-saviour.
Egor, a fourteen year old boy (Oleg Chuginov) forms the film’s protagonist (making a change from the young women common to this genre). His life involves walking to his nearby school, dealing with hoodlums, making approaches to his sweetheart (Glafira Golubeva). and helping to care for his newborn kid sister.

His mother, played by Maryana Spivak (Loveless, 2017) and father, Denis Shvedov (The Mayor, 2013) seem distracted by career demands and hire a nanny to attend to their offspring….

So far we have a slice-of-Russian-middle-class-life. Then Egor starts to notice a presence menacing the baby….
Noticing a shadowy form on the baby’s video monitor, the boy creeps into the room only to be confronted with a menacing female apparition from which he flees….

He will later go deep into the dark forest with his sweetheart and former bully (Artyom Zhigulin) and team up with a hut dwelling hobo called Mrachnny (Khripunov) who has been watching children disappear from the locality and confirms this to be the work of Baba Yaga. The story then becomes a mission to save the baby, and thereby the family.

A Yaga for our times.
Yaga, a long-nosed wicked witch from Slavic folklore often gets depicted as living in a hut held aloft by chicken legs. She flies around on a mortar and displays a penchant for young children. She can, however, play a helpful role when so inclined.

Not so in this film’s updated version! A shape shifter, she she is a femme-fatale as a nanny but later manifests as a sort of peg-legged female Phantom of the Opera. Later on again she appears as an animated mass of red knitting wool.

The tense and humourless action is enlivened with some hallucinatory episodes and we enter a parallel time stream where the baby has become airbrushed out of existence and the now satanic parents are without memory of her. The plot, having begun as a ghost story accelerates into a rollicking dark fantasy romp.

Genre trappings.
For all the originality of the setting, the film falls back on many witchy hokum standbys. There are the kids against the corrupted elders. A bad nanny. Demonic possessions (complete with people’s eyes rolling up to the whites), baby dolls aplenty and people getting hurled about by occult powers.
The shock jumps are lined up like billiard balls and beging to pall after a while.
A portentous and numinous score by Nick Skachkov (On the Edge, 2019) helps to bind it all together.

Breaking new ground.
It feels a bold move to have used as the monster figure as well known to Russians as Jack and the Beanstalk is to Western Europeans. This was all of apiece with Podgaevsky’s earlier films. The last one reinvigorated Rusalka in the same fashion (a water nymph that gets mistranslated into mermaid in English).
Whether this will beget lasting screen idols to equal the vampires and werewolves of the last century remains to be seen. This represents a quiet innovation, however.

Baba Yaga: Terror of the Dark Forest sets the suburban modernity of the Russia of now on a collision course with a Slavic demon from very old Russia which lives in a forest next door.

There is plenty for a Jungian style psychoanalyst to chew over here. All of Podgaevsky’s recent movies have introduced us to wrathful female demons, for example. Then what is the significance of the red ball of wool that makes its appearance throughout this film?

Circus.
As with The Bride and Rusalka: Lake of the Dead I felt dazzled by the first hour of the film as the situation was being set up. Then when it all turned into a romp I became ever more detached and restless. Some of the supernatural elements stretched my credulity so much that I felt that anything could happen and the scariness of it got a bit lost.

Likewise, as much as young Egor makes for a valiant hero, he and his tweeny chums gave me the impression that I was sitting through something that might have been better aimed at a much younger demographic. (It is interesting to note that Podgaevsky cut his directorial teeth on a long established comedy T.V show called Jumble which features young kids and their daft ways).

That said this constitutes Podgaevsky’s least derivative and most assured work to date. The film is due to reach audiences in the Baltic States, South East Asia, Latin America and The USA.The director, who is working on a new film (Privorot/Dark Spell), is bound to become recognised on the international stage soon.

The featured image is from K.G Portal.

The trailer (dubbed into English):

BOYFRIENDS COME IN BOXES: The film (NOT) IDEAL MAN.

Does this satire on modern man-woman relations dig deep enough?

I was once acquainted with a professional Russian model who asked me one day if I could be her friend (and she did just mean friend). I doubt I need to explain why I was quick to talk my way out of that one…

This must be a common experience for desirable women in Russia, as well as elsewhere. Such female loneliness forms the starting point of the sex comedy-cum-romantic comedy (Not) Perfect Man (Nye Idealni Mushina). But what does it have to say about Russian men?

From a light entertainment troupe.
If you want the truth, I had gone to the cinema with the aim of seeing the science fiction epic Koma , which would have been much closer to my comfort zone. However, in the event I felt drawn to something altogether lighter. This was the evening of January 31st, and I am a British citizen. I just wanted to wrap my frenzied brain in candy floss and to forget the unfolding events at home.
A wrong call….

(Not ) Perfect Man constitutes a 12+certificate 90 minute long comedy - romance directed by Marius Balchunas. In the blurb for the film, this 48 year old wunderkind is described as the enfant terrible of cinema. This makes him sound like some sort of Pedro Almodovar like figure but in fact Balchunas, who studied TV Cinema in Southern California, is the culprit behind such vacuous fare as Naughty Grandmother (2017) and Naughty Grandmother 2 (2019).

The film’s protagonist is provided by the 37 year old Muscovite and stalwart of such comedies, Yulia Aleksandrova and the 25-year-old R&B crooner Egor Creed forms the love interest – by, more or less, playing himself.

Other major players include Artyem Suchkov (Gogol: The Terrible Revenge, 2018) and Roman Kurstyn (Pain Threshold, 2019).
No doubt it is pure coincidence that Zhora Kryzhovnikov – who along with Evgenia Khripkova worked on the script and was behind a TV series called Call Di Caprio last year – is the spouse of the leading lady.

Living ornaments.
Robots seem a hot topic in Russia right now. Andrey Junkovsky’s dystopian science fiction series Better Than Us (Lushi Chem Lyudi, 2018), which features a future containing human-like androids, has made waves on Netflix of late and the mini-series Tolya Robot, written by Aleksey Nuzhny for T.N.T, concerns a disabled man whose life is changed by bionic technology.

Likewise, if you just look at the premise of (Not) Perfect Man one could imagine it to have been adapted from one of Isaac Asimov’s more serio-comic robot short stories. In this near-future scenario human-like androids are on sale to the public and each one operates within the parameters of a given persona.These programmed personas might comprise an ideal Chef, an ideal Secretary, Security Guard…or Friend.

Sveta (Aleksandrova) is employed by a company which deals in these very items. Her job is to activate them and see to it that they are placed on display for shoppers. We learn, meanwhile, that she has caught her bodybuilding jock of a boyfriend (Kurtsyn) cheating on her. She is ready for a new romance….

Among the androids is a handsome and sensitive Friend (Creed) who soon gets snapped up by a middle-aged socialite. Later she returns him, however, in a state of exasperated fury. Tests show that there exists a fault in the robot’s programming and the company is ready to dispose of him. This is when Sveta, beguiled by his charm, comes to the rescue and takes him home with her as his new owner.

At first the robotic Friend seems like a Russian take on the fabled New Man of the 1980s in the West: kind, intimate and domesticated.

Complications ensue, however when this programmed people-pleaser becomes the best buddy of her ex-boyfriend. Then he obliges with some – not so 12 certicate friendly – physical solace to a distraught girfriend of Sveta’s. This results in a skirmish in which his face becomes broken.

With assistance from a nerdish colleague (Suchkov) – who has been falling for her all the while – she fixes his face and the fault in his programming. Or does she?

Sveta and her roboman soon become a poster couple for female -to-machine couplings. They arrange a lavish wedding on Krymsky Most. However, during the wedding vows the bride flirts with the woman who is leading the ceremony….

Salted popcorn.
Those who had entered the cinema to catch a science fiction movie would have left without stars in their eyes: the tomorrow’s world in which the story takes place is lacking in background exposition. The only concession to any technical detail occurs when we see Sveta animating the robots. Otherwise this could all be taking place in the Moscow of today.

(Not ) Perfect Man feels like your standard gossip-over-the-fence chick flick replete with emotive facial close ups, a quasiclassical score and a location which flits between a disinfected office, a swish nightclub and an imaculate apartment interior.

Nevertheless, the ending stears clear of the usual hugging-and-learning. In fact, it is cynical enough to suggest that some women will opt for illusory affection even when they know it to be so. Thus there was some unpredicted sadness at the core of the film.

One Dimensional Men.
The young couple sat next to me in the underpopulated cinema chuckled in the right places, but I did wonder if they would still have laughed if the genders had been reversed in the story.

I mean, the real – that is non-mechanical – men in this film offer a parade of messed up dullards and daffy meatheads. Even the alternative love interest, in the form of the colleague who really does care for our heroine, is a botannik (a wonk) and not so glamorous. They all get upstaged by a robot – a robot whose most woman-friendly qualities arise from a malfunction!

It seems that Russian men- growing up in a culture that smothers them with excess mother-love then packs them off to the army, where they may well be bullied by homophobes (even if straight) – are not encouraged to express themselves in a way which their female counterparts would appreciate.

Prove You’re Not a Robot.
Man/woman stuff aside, this film does have one simple premise working behind it (and that is something which both comedy and science fiction needs). It is that people are being commodified and subsumed into their work roles. The robots in this film all have pre- programmed work and social functions and can be distingiushed by the bar codes on their necks.

Had this film been slanted a bit more to the science-fiction end of things it could have been freer to explore the implications of this idea. It might well have even have been funnier in doing so. As it is, we are left with just as much a people-pleaser as Creed’s robot was and the film never rises above its own trivial level.

The trailer:

Main image: Yandex.com

FACE CONTROL: The TV series VIZHU – SNAYU/I SEE – I KNOW.

An upbeat mystery investigation adventure enlivened by an intriguing premise.

Crime seems to be the default genre option in Russian television drama and is as easy to find as a take-away coffee vendor on a Moscow high street.

Most of these constitute belt and braces hokum of the cops-and-robbers variety, replete with much cynical violence in the form of fisticuffs and shootouts.

However, when the Ukrainian (but Russian language) show The Sniffer first wafted onto our screens several years ago even the Western critics were a bit impressed by what could be done with this tired old subgenre.

Pretenders.

The Gazprom owned television company NTV has spawned a plethora of crime yarns and many of them cannot really be differentiated. Some, though, seem to be attempting to riff on The Sniffer.

One of these is Schubert (2017) and the recent Genius (Genniy) from last year.

The former features a protagonist with enhanced hearing abilities which result in him being put to work by the military.

The word `cheesy` seems to have been invented for this drama as the tortured young man, hot lover in tow, battles with moustache twirling Central Asian villains. I could only manage one episode.

Genius – in which a mathematical prodigy uses his algebraic prowess for an insurance company – was, however, easier on my grey cells but bent the wand too far in being somewhat dry.

Vizhu – Snayu or I See – I know, also courtesy of NTV, steers a mid-course between these two extremes. It was first aired in June 2016 and is a 16 + rated series made up of 46 minute long episodes. It was made by Kinostudio Medved from an idea by Viktor Soghomonyan (who was behind Posolstvo/ Embassy from 2018).

Superheroine.

The star is Anna Slyu (Slyusareva) a thrice married 39-year-old who made her name in the Daywatch/ Nightwatch franchise (2004/2006).

As Zhanna Vladimirovna she works as a police lieutenant who has been gifted with face reading abilities since childhood. She is now ` an expert in physiognomy and neuropsychology`. That is to say she can gather from observing a person’s facial features not only their character but their marital status and number of children and so on. (Zhanna’s face gazing activities form a large part of the architecture of the drama. They are realised through close-ups of Zhanna’s grey-eyed stare and of people’s faces complete with echoing voices and swishing sound effects).

Following her foiling of a terrorist attack on a supermarket, the general of a police unit introduces her to Mayor Kataev as a new part of the team. They are told to work together despite his dismissal of her talent a a `pseudo-science`.

Kataev – played by Sergei Gorobchenko (Provodnik, 2018) seems your standard self-assured no-nonsense lawman but he comes to respect his kookier new companion.

Alongside him is the inevitable tough-guy-with-a- heart – Petrov (Nikolai Kovbas (Temporary Difficulties, 2018), and Tvorizhkov, the ambitious rookie cop (Anton Khabarov, a veteran of the small screen) and the uniformed General who is heard in a shout most of the time, but is for once rather thin.

Such a team also requires a keyboard whizz. This vacancy is filled by Valeriy Pankov (Queen of Spades: Through the Looking Glass, 2019). He plays him, not as the usual geek, but more a stylish hipster. Yet we learn that he has a murky past with some mobster involvements.

Puzzling cases.

The team face cases involving mass poisonings, a weird cult that stages ritual murders, a strangler menacing the theatrical community and suchlike. Just as these cases seem to be cut and dried, Zhanna will add some plot thickening extra detail as gleaned from her facial recognition probings.

Throughout this she has a nemesis. Danilov a ruthless business tycoon, given to dining on balconies that have stunning views over the river Moskva, also possesses Zhanna’s face reading powers but uses them for his personal advancement.

Like a Moriarty figure, he appears to be behind various cloak-and-dagger operations aimed at creaming off the spoils of the criminal activities that the police squad are out to quash. (He is evoked to hiss inducing perfection by Sergei Shnyrev from What Men Talk About, 2010).

Not just bang – bang.

Despite being billed as `crime action`, I See – I know is based more on intrigue.The fast- paced script, by Leonid Korvin, creates a plot that resembles the opening up of an endless matrioshka doll. Each story is convoluted and takes up around two episodes. They conclude with Zhanna drawing philosophical conclusions to herself in her room full of her sketches of faces.

The open plan office the cops share allows for plenty of merry banter and there is space for human interest sub plots too.The hacker is besotted with Zhanna but is forever being rejected, in a polite way, by her. Zhanna lives with her sister and shares chocolate cake eating contests with her. Kataev, meanwhile has ongoing issues with his estranged daughter. Petrov tends to become too involved in his work: when a young member of his family is present at a shooting he becomes obsessive in his pursuit of the perpetrator.

Inspired theme.

The humdrum Moscow setting is enlivened a bit through stylish fragmented screen shots between scenes. They also borrow from the ubiquitous Sherlock in showing on-screen the names of mobile callers as they make a mobile call.

However, what adds much to the identity of the series must be the score composed by fifty year old Alexei Lukyanov. He has produced scores for many shows in this genre and here he serves up a manic waltz which foregrounds the twisty and quirky ethos of the entire drama. Likewise, his incidental music – set on `spine-tingle` mode – elevates the series above the realm of the ordinary.

Individual.

Female leads are not uncommon in contemporary Russia’s post-feminist culture. They are, however more of a novelty in the detective genre and Slyu, with her aristocratic looks and cool demeanour, does a lot to stamp some individuality onto what is a fairly standard format.

Offering a refreshing alternative to the `machismo` of many other similar shows and with a Spy-Fi premise that is more `real world` than The Sniffer, I see – I know packs a lot of charm. Alas, it only made one series of 24 episodes. There was so much more to build on here.

Here’s the first series:

Main image: Kino.Mail.ru

See also my reviews of Freud’s Method and Akademia. Also of Rassvet, which featured Anna Slyu.

THE DAY MOSCOW STOOD STILL: the film VTORZHENIYE (INVASION).

Can a Putinist popcorn merchant produce another film with something to say? The launch of INVASION – the long-awaited sequel to the science-fiction classic ATTRACTION – gave us a chance to find out.

I could smell the aftermath of fireworks as I hurried to the Yuzhny cinema in the unseasonal sleet and sludge. I was en route to a different type of pyrotechnic show. Like a dutiful Russian citizen, I was ready to see the very definition of a national blockbuster – VTORZHENIYE – INVASION.

This 12+ certificate extravaganza – a follow-up to ATTRACTION ( 2017) – had been promoted in every way possible. The TVs on in the metro carriages reminded us of it. Every cinema in town had an installation dedicated to it in the lobby. Hell, even the safety instructions at the beginning of this film were led by the actors from it!

For once, therefore, I could pick which cinema to go to. Also.this being the holiday season, I could choose when to go. I went to a showing in the Chertanovo region of Moscow, which is where ATTRACTION had been set and filmed. I chose three days after its December 31st opening as a way to mark the New Year.

Bondarchuk’s shadow.
The fifty-two-year old Muscovite Fyodor Bondarchuk heads Art Picture Studios as the director of INVASION. Something of an establishment lynchpin, this man is known for his grandstanding for the President of Russia and for the ruling United Russia party.

In terms of style, he seems something of a cinematic Christopher Marlowe who aims for the big, the brash and the loud. In accordance with this he has been responsible for such evocations of patriotic heroism as Stalingrad (2013).
Bondarchuk, however, does have form with the rather more cerebral science fiction genre. Before ATTRACTION he surprised critics with a faithful rendition of an Arkady & Boris Strugatsky novel in the form of The Dark Planet (2008).

So whilst Bondarchuk’s name is not one that would draw me to see a film, my interest was piqued by the fact that I had enjoyed ATTRACTION. In that film, the aliens were obvious representations of immigrants and the Other. `Let’s try to hear each other` was Bondarchuk’s summary of his message at the time (quoted in Flickering Myth, January 22nd, 2018). I was intrigued by this apparent cryptoliberalism and concerned to see whether it would continue in what is also known as ATTRACTION 2.

Dejavu.
The cast list from ATTRACTION are back in service. Irina Starshenbaum – who I last saw as a rock and roll widow in Summer – plays Yulia Lebedev once more and the 59-year-old Laurence Olivier Theatre Award winner Oleg Menshikov is still her father and her geek buddy, Google, remains as Evgeni Miksheev.

Alexander Petrov – proving yet again that he’s a big enough actor (and man) to depict rather pathetic characters – returns as Yulia’s would be lover.

The thirty year old Rinal Mukhamentov (The Three Musketeers, 2013) – a sort of Tatar Justin Timberlake – reprises his role as Hakon, the alien.
The other stars – the fun gizmos – also make a welcome return. The now iconic gyroscope like mothership has been replaced and is circling our planet again. The Transformer-like exoskeletal body combat suit also re-appears as does all that aquatic witchcraft which has water coiling in spirals in the air.

Filmed in IMAX by Vladislav Opelyants (Hostages, 2017) and with a score by the much in demand Igor Vdovin (Another Woman, 2019) INVASION attempts to satisfy every cinema going demographic. Half family drama and romance and half military adventure, the scenes lurch between smoochy bits, tense action and disaster movie grandeur and then back again.

Sorcery from the sky.
We find ourselves in the present day, but it is one in which the events of ATTRACTION have taken place. (The back story is suggested in the opening credits by the use of frozen lazer-like stills from key scenes of the earlier film).

Yulia now studies astrophysics in Moscow alongside her loyal mate Google. She is, however, no ordinary woman. Always flanked by bodyguards, she is under investigation by a new military unit concerned with all things E.T, led by her father. She spends her evenings in a flotation tank, being tested for psi-powers.

Russia, meanwhile, is busy aspiring to reverse engineer the technology that the aliens had left in their wake. Meanwhile they have surrounded our planet with defense satellites to prevent further incursions into our atmosphere.

The military unit re-introduces Yulia to Artyom, who is now incapacitated by a stroke. This is a deliberate ploy. The disturbance this creates in Yulia’s mind results in a telekinetic storm.

Later, as she knocks back a few medicinal cocktails in a downtown bar and tries to flirt with her minder, Hakon makes a sudden re-appearance….

The handsome star man is now earthbound and ensconced in a pleasant dacha outside Moscow. However, he continues to be in contact with a mothership’s on board computer. He has gained the information that an alien Artificial Intelligence called Ra has taken an interest in Yulia’s awakened psychic powers.
The couple elope with the military in hot pursuit. The rest of the action consists of a three-way tussle between Hakon and Yulia, the military and the mysterious Ra.

Ra has the ability to control the world’s electronic media and puts out the fake news that Yulia is a terrorist. Later, in a rather Biblical episode, it summons up the waters around and below Moscow to envelop the city in a sort of vertical whirlpool….

…Or something. If this plot sounds freakish and preposterous that is because it is nothing more than a Christmas tree upon which various spectacular action scenes – military helicopters spiralling out of control, geysers destroying Park Kulturi metro station and so on – are hung.

Yulia’s story.
There is much tension between the intimate and the global in all of this. At its core, INVASION concerns the emotional journey of Yulia and her fixing it with her father, making peace with Artyom and deepening her relationship with Hakon. Starshenbaum has enough magnetism to make this focus work.

Otherwise the film is lacking in a central idea of the kind that made ATTRACTION so interesting. Sure, the subplot about fake news in the electronic mass media is very topical, but it is not at the heart of the story.

Whilst a composite of many motion pictures that have gone before it, INVASION is quite distinctive in its overall effect. The recent Avanpost however, covered the same sort of territory with bleaker conviction.

Still, as I shook my head through this two hour and thirteen minute farrago, I thought: what a roaring way to welcome in the Roaring Twenties!

Main image: capelight.de

Trailer to INVASION (English subtitles).

VOT ETA DA!

Seven Significant Signposts of 2019.

In terms of publishing, it was cheering to see that Karo Publishers in St Petersburg have made ALEXANDER BELYAEV’S THE AMPHIBIAN available to the Anglophone world – a work of speculative fiction that speaks anew to our own age of biological engineering. Let us hope that this marks a new trend of reprinting works in English that are not just the routine Golden and Silver Age standard
In music, the band to watch out for next year must be SUNWALTER. They have spent much of 2019 working hard on tours of Eastern Europe making their distinctive brand of melodic science fiction themed pomp rock known to the world. I wish them the break they deserve. Meanwhile, IC3PEAK have become figureheads of youthful opposition with their innovative Witch House sound. Long may they keep this up! That the Russian Rock scene proper is not altogether extinct is evidenced by PILOT who still stage raucous but thoughtful alt rock commentaries on the 21st century to crowds of loyal follwers.
Cinema. Out of nowhere came the gem LOST ISLAND (Potteryanni Ostrov) – a dreamlike curio that, behind its apparent whimsy, had a point to make about Russian isolationism. In more mainstream releases, the thriller BREAKAWAY (OTRYV) demonstrated that Russia can produce a tense and effective edge-of-the seat affair to rival anything that comes from Hollywood. Then this was also the year in which the big screen shook its fist: the film adaptation of Dmitri Glukhovsky’s TEXT held up a mirror to present day Russian society and created an emblem for these times – and not just for Russia.

WISHING ALL MY READERS A PEACEFUL AND PROGRESSIVE NEW YEAR! From GENERATION P: The one-stop shop for all things of promise to come out of Modern Russia.

Remembrance of the past kills all present energy and deadens all hope for the future – Maxim Gorky.

IT’S NOT A BOY! The film `Tvar` (`Stray`).

Another demon-child yarn with added sophistication, a pleasing autumnal ambience and a great role for Elena Lyadova.

All too many of the Russian made scary movies that I have promoted on here have had certain features in common. As much as they have prompted me to nod my head with a smile, they have sought to mimic Hollywood and to court those of college age.

Among the exceptions to this is TVAR (STRAY) a chiller delivered with some style. In fact, this enterprise is assured enough to risk being subtle as well as – not always a quality found in modern Russian cinema – original in parts.

From the `Queen of horror`.

TVAR opened in the cinemas on 28th November this year with a 16+ certificate. The picture houses sold it as a `detective mystery story`, which may be significant terms of marketing,, but this is really a supernatural thriller par excellence and one tailor made for the season in which it appeared.

The creator of the story is none other than Anna Starobinets who, on account of her short stories, has been dubbed Russia’s `Queen of horror`. Behind the cameras was Olga Gorodetska, who here is directing her first full length film (an hour and a half long). Ilya Ovsenev, who has worked on the forthcoming `Project Gemini`, was the cinematographer. Several production companies seem to have had some involvement in TVAR. The notable ones include Star Media – the purveyors of numerous effective television melodramas – and TV3, who seem to have their hand in every pie these days.

The main star on consists of Elena Lyadova, the 39-year-old Morshansk born actress,who many will be familiar with from the grim social-realist fable Leviathan (2014). She is joined by Vladimir Vdovichenkov who is 48 and also appeared in Leviathan. An other talent is Yevgeny Tsyganov who featured in Provodnik last year.

Family drama.

TVAR revolves around hearth and home and in the relations between man and wife and their children. In accordance with this, the areas touched on include grief, self-deception and indomitable mother love.

A couple in early middle -age, in recovery from the unspeakable loss of their first son, form the main protagonists. They find themselves visiting an orphange outside Moscow with the aim of finding a surrogate son to adopt.

Overseen by nuns, the forbidding institution is filled with cots, but none of their inhabitants inspire Polina, the bereaved mother (Lyadova), a former teacher. However, she then claps eyes on a wayward and neglected child who has secreted himself away in the basement of the building following the suicide of his father.

Enigma.

She is at once drawn to this odd-looking and angular child. When she asks to be granted the role of his new mother, she is met with some resistance from the nuns and also some scepticism from her more conventional but supportive husband (Vdovichenkov).

Polina persists and at length the couple take the boy to their home. The boy seems to respond to the loving attentions of his new mother but remains somewhat feral. He is given to scurrying beneath his bed when people appear,stuffing raw meat into his mouth, and crouching on top of furniture ready to pounce.( A bold performance from one Sevastyan Bugaev). On top of all that, there is mounting evidence that this boy is no ordinary maladjusted kid. He commits a serious assault on another child, for example. Nevertheless, the smitten mother comes to believe that he could even be a reincarnation of her lost son….

The Polina finds herself to be pregnant with a new child of her own….

New handling.

The drama skirts close to two cinema classics concerning demonic children: The Exorcist (1973) and The Omen (1976) and even seems to reference them in one or two scenes.

That said, as much as the blood-and-thunder elements are central to the tale, the film downplays them a bit. It does so through the use of anti-climax and avoidance of clichés, putting only enough pepper into the soup to give it the necessary tang. So the supernatural situation may be old hat, but the handling of it blows the cobwebs away.

A film for its season.
[kinoafisha.info]

The adventurous photography of Ovsenev (we are treated to some unusual camera angles) and the overall direction (we are confounded with a false ending) make for memorable stylish stuff.

Then an overaching ambient score (from Alexander Slyootskiy and Karim Nasser) ramps up the Halloween atmosphere as the action moves between the creepy nun’s mansion, the couple’s swish Moscow apartment and then their dacha in the forest.

It is Lyadova’s sustained performance as a woman haunted in every sense of the word that adds gravitas to the whole tale.

TVAR has something of Don’t Look Now (1973) about it and also, from the same period, makes a nod towards Solaris (1972) at one key juncture. TVAR, though, with its small innovations and misty twilight setting, is all its own. It offers horror for grown ups.

TRAILER FOR `TVAR`

Featured image: youtube.com.

TRAFFIC JAMS? WE KNOW A SONG ABOUT THAT, DON’T WE? GOROD 312 live at the Mumy Troll music bar, December 7th.

Kyrgyztan’s local heroes excite loyal fans in a routine concert.

Silhouetted against the red and purple floodlights Masha Illeeva, the modelesque lead guitarist of GOROD 312 sways and sings along to the robust pop-rock classics of her band, a picture of joyful absorption,infecting the audience with the same fleeting delirium….

Despite being more of a rocker than popper, I have followed GOROD 312 for over a decade in whilst in Russia. This merry band of talented Kyrgyz, with their distinctive act, represent something vital that has come out of the noughties.
GOROD 312 hail from Bishek, the picturesque capital of Kyrgyzstan – their very name references the dialling code of that city. Now based in Moscow they have, over the last 18 years conjured up five well received albums, featured on many films and TV soundtracks and become a household name throughout the C.I.S countries.

The band comprises of the 49-year-old songstress Sveltlana Nazarenko (Aya), Dmitir Pritula (Dima) the keyboardist and backing vocalist with the bassist Leonid Pritula. The main string merchant is Maria Illeeva (who, if you want the gossip, is married to Dima). Of late some newcomers have joined the retinue – such as Aleksander Il’Chuck (Alex).

They sing of traffic jams, the changing of the seasons, urban life and heartache and, brimming with exuberant chutzpah, offer a live act in which they seem to take genuine relish. With sheer musical aplomb they fuse rock, blues and dance music and deal very much is songs, which are led by Aya. I tend to view the gropu as an Eastern Blondie.
Conventional but rousing.
Despite the 3,000 rouble tickets – the most I have paid for a gig in Moscow -Mumy troll Music Bar soon filled up with unpretentious punters, most in their thirties.
The first sign of the band’s imminent arrival was the flashing up of a chic logo on the screen behind the stage. (The rest of the visual accompaniment turned out to be a disappointment, consisting of a rehash of their old music videos).

With an extra lead guitar they functioned as a six piece with a fuller and more detailed sound. Otherwise they look unaltered by time (they might have been the same people I saw live five or so years back) and deliver compositions which match the quality of their live recordings.

Festooned in silver necklaces, Aya is an engaging frontwoman. Sometimes she would appear to be singing to individual members of the audience. She also encouraged us to sing along – now the women, now the men. In fact, in this respect the band were poles apart from Delfin, who I saw this time last year and found to be somewhat remote. (The other musicians in the band did seem to be a little less involved though).

Later there would be a drum solo, another cosy routine and one which I quite enjoyed this time. Meanwhile, they strutted their stuff though a lot of cherished standards – Fonari, Pomaginye, Gipnos (a rare duet),the anthemic Devochka, Katorya Hotelya Schastya and of course that karaoke standard Ostanus. They showcased a few new numbers including a lachrymose one about friendship which had the people around me hugging each other. What was lacking was the ever catchy Nevidimka (Invisible Woman) as well as some of their edgier alt rock pieces.

It proved an average set but one which after an hour and a half of it had us wanting more. Their main trick – which constitutes the very stuff of effective pop – is to make cheeriness seem cool. They acknowledge some reality in their upbeat ditties, but as they play you want to step into their world.

Nevidimka (Invisible Woman)by Gorod 312.

BORDERLAND TROOPERS: the long awaited film AVANPOST.

Is there anything more to this 1812 Overture of a movie than pomp and glitz?

Fingers on triggers, a detachment of troops lie in wait at the edge of the forest. They sense something is about to happen. Then there is a rumbling sound growing ever louder. Then, from out of the trees, comes a mass of marauding bears. The soldiers open fire at the possessed animals, but still they come….

Every so often the Russian Federation knocks out an ambitious and lavish screen production like Daywatch (2006) or Dark Planet (2008) to impress the world with.

The science fiction action thriller AVANPOST – its Western title is The Blackout – is fresh from that same assembly line. Trumpeted by electronic billboards all over Moscow, this grandiose epic arrives after having been in gestation for several years and is being shipped out to cinemas in the Baltic and also Austria and Germany.

AVANPOST , a product of 123 Productions, TNT Premier and TV3 – represents another collaboration between television and cinema in the manner of the recent Gogol franchise (2017 – 2018). Indeed the cinematographer behind this also worked on those Gogol movies. As we shall see, however, AVANPOST is far removed from the whimsical nature of that franchise.

The thirty-eight year old Muscovite Ilya Kulikov, who scripted The Envelope (2017) wielded the pen here and the 31 year old Ekaterinburg born Yegor Baranov directed this . He has form on such ambitious projects: he was responsible for `Russia’s first erotic thriller` – Sanchara (Locust) (2103). He too was involved in the Gogol series.

There are some established names in the cast list as well. The 37-year-old Pyotr Federov (Ledokol, 2016) forms one of the main leads as does Alexei Chadov (Dark Planet).

Mood music plays a conspicuous role in this motion picture. Ryan Otter’s majestic and doomy style of composition, evident in Abigail (2019) fits the bill here. Also though, none other than Linkin Park‘s Mike Shinoda has recorded a song – `Fine` – just for the film.

`Who will save you when the world falls into darkness?`
[youtube.com]

Entrapment.

The action occurs about fifteen years hence and in the capital of Russia. Drone like vehicles light up the city sky, people consult transparent cell phones and holographic displays are all over the place. Otherwise life goes on much as before.

We are introduced to the men and women who are to be the protagonists, including a businessman and a taxi driver – before the cataclysm turns everyone’s life upside down.

Without warning, planes drop from the skies as the lights go out plunging much of the world into darkness and vast swathes of humanity perish without any known cause.

One of the areas left unaffected consists of a large part of Moscow. Here life seems to continue unabated (who needs imports?) although the Muslim community has become strident.

Everyday life has become brutalised too. In one gratuitous sequence, one of our heroes stabs a man in the hand with a small ice breaker from the bar of a nightclub for getting a bit persistent with a woman at a nightclub. Later, after this man has followed the couple outside, their taxi driver obliges by shooting him in the leg twice.

The crucial change, however, is that a military detachment has been set up to monitor the outskirts of the – as they call it – `circle of life`. Both men and women of a certain age are conscripted into this.

The rest of the story concerns the predicament and exploits of these soldiers. Much of the action henceforth consists of them togged up and carrying guns with lazer sights, en masse beneath a leaden sky or at night, battling with an invisible foe in the manner of Predator(1987) – which is name checked in the dialogue.

Adversaries.

It is when the villains – they are interstellar interlopers – show themselves that the credibility that the film had so far tried so hard to build up begins to crack.

The aliens- Lord Voldermort lookalikes – prove both unoriginal and a little silly. They communicate via mind transference and also have the ability to mess with our perceptions. They can make us imagine that our long-lost fathers are paying us a visit when what is really there is a nonplussed cop. This way they set hordes of zombified people up against the valiant men and women in uniform, who then have to gun down the former in cold blood. It is all a bit like a cross between Skyline (2016) and World War Z (2013).

Of course there are added subtleties to the plot. The aliens seem to contain factions within their population and the Outpost leaders make an alliance with one of them. (A situation reminiscent of the Gene Roddenberry inspired Canadian T V show Earth Final Conflict from the Nineties).

The entry of the alien’s mothership – a rickety almost steampunkish affair – into Moscow airspace reminds us that there could be the makings of good science fiction somewhere in this – but it comes as the show closes.

Slick.

AVANPOST offers a glossy experience with action and plot in thrall to appearances.Even for a two and a half hour show it felt as though the canvas was too small for the ideas in it (for there were some) to be developed in full. We may have to wait for the threatened sequel or a proposed TV series for that.

I was put in mind of several cinematic forerunners, some of which I have already mentioned. The worst comparison I made, though was with Starship Troopers (1997), because it had the same militarism but lacked the irony which made that picture worthwhile.

The film may be an example of Russian `soft power`. A commentator called Daryanoff, writing a user review in the IMDB, seems to think so: `as a Russian this is a point to pride`, he says. Yet the things that mark this out as a Russian product – the paranoid sense of being encircled, for example – are the very things which will do nothing to dispel any negative stereotypes of Russians that are out there.

AVANPOST failed to charm me. I was as repelled by its cynical violence just as I came to be suspicious of its humorless machismo. The film, however, did stay with me for far longer than many a better film has done.

Featured image from: Kinopoisk.ru.

AVANPOST:International trailer (English).