There's far more to Modern Russian Culture than nationalism, conservatism and Putin – and right here 's where you'll find it!
Category: Film
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.
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.
kinopoisk.ru
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.
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.
[sobsednik.ru]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.
Anger is not something we expect from Russian cinema – but it is here at last.
TEKCT enjoyed a Decent run in the Moscow film theatre but I could only get to see it a week after its 24th October release at the Rodin theatre in Semyenovskaya.
With its train station-lie dowdiness and the Hammer and Sickle still there above the cash desk, and the harried staff, this place proved to be a fitting venue to catch this social realist fable. In fact I just nabbed the last available place in the twenty seat capacity projection room which had been set aside for the film.
TEKCT constitutes a drama thriller some two hours in length and with an 18+ certificate (hence featuring a lot of irritating bleeps over the bad language). Set very much in the Moscow of today, this picture represents an adaptation, by the author himself, of the novel By Dmitry Glukhovsky (of the Metro franchise) – which has yet to be translated into English.
General Partnership were the distributors, and the man in the high chair was one Kilma Shipenko who was behind the docudrama Salyut 7 (2017).
The soundtrack, which alternated between electronica and sombre classical owes to the prolific forty something composer Dmitry Noskov whose previous credits include the soundtrack to Attraction (2017).
Star vehicle.
Russia’s man-of-the-moment, the Yaroslavl born thirty-year old Alexander Petrov fills the shoes of the iconic role of the film’s anti-hero. (He seems to be cornering the market in troubled youths: whetther it is his role as the hotheaded insurgent in Attraction or his depiction of one Nikolai Gogol in the Gogol franchise (2017 -2018) ).
His co-stars include 29-year-old Ivan Yankovski, who cropped up in Queen ofSpades: Dark Rite (2016) – as the Golden Boy hate figure – and the 27-year-old Kristina Asmus who has been setting pulses racing in the television medical comedy Intern since 2010.
The new Brat?
TEKCT was competing in the Russian box offices with Joker. It would be egregious of me to draw too many parallels between these two distinct products. I do, however, feel that they partake of the same zetgeist. Both highlight the plight of – and potential danger of – troubled young men on the margins of society.
Another comparison already being made is with the much vaunted earlier Russian movie Brat (Aleksei Balabanov, 1997).
An article by Anastasia Rogova in the (hard copy) newspaper Vechernaya Moskva (24th – 31st October issue) finds TEKCT wanting in relation to the other legendary film. However, the mere fact that the films have been bracketed together at all implies to me that TEKCT is a film that Russians will be discussing still for some time to come.
A Hero of Our Times?
Ilya Gorunov (Petrov), a graphic design student, attempts to blag some money off his mother so that he can hit the town with his girlfriend.When she refuses he takes the money anyway…
Next we see him a standard young man about town with his girlfriend in tow and in a trendy nightclub. His fun is interrupted when the politisia carry out a drugs raid the premises and seem to take interest in his woman. He protests, and then, in a scene which calls to mind Midnight Express, is himself arrested after a stash of cannabis seems to be found on his person. (We know the cops have planted this on him).
Seven years later, after having been imprisoned for drug trafficking, the hapless youth is released from his provincial jail and back into the real world.
Returning to Moscow, now a shambling figure in a parka and ill-fitting trousers, Ilya finds that his mother has passed away and that his friends have moved on.
He then tracks down his persecutor – Pyotr (Yankovski). In a fit of rancour he slaughters him by accident. He hides the corpse down a manhole and takes off with the victims cellphone….
Window on the other half.
Ivan Yankovski as the Golden Boy. [newsmyseldon.com}
Here the Metro author’s gift for simple but ingenious plot ideas comes into play.
Ilya begins to experiment with the shady lawman’s phone. He begins to watch the many videos the man had downloaded showing his life of conspicuous consumption. He indulges in envious voyeurism at the lifestyle that he has been deprived of. He even pleasures himself over proxy sex with the man’s girlfriend (Asmus).
He becomes ever more embroiled in the man’s stolen identity living a sort of substitute existence. He answers text messages – explaining his absence by saying that he is in Columbia – and connects with the girlfriend.
This film shares the same concern with the loss of identity that social media can encourage in the much more stylish film Selfie (Khomeriki 2018).
Another resonance is with the Garros Evdomikov novel (as I reviewed earlier) Headcrusher (2003). This also evokes a lawman who wins female trophies and an oustider who gets to tangle with the games of the Big Boys. Ilya may be somewhat pathetic but the kind of modern Russian freeloaders that he is up against are far, far worse than he is.
Howl.
The film closes on a defiant note with a denouement that has shades of ButchCassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) about it.
This could not be called a lovable film and I would not hurry to see it again just yet; however it is unflinching in its honesty and of importance in its themes – all qualities which Russian cinema too often lacks.
Petrov has turned in a fine, vigorous and physical performance in a film in which the camera is almost always on him.
Some gratitude is also due to Glukhovsky who, in his fortieth year, has Hollywood knocking on his door but has still retained his oppositional spunk.
New actors get a chance to shine in this formulaic survival thriller.
The usual cinemas that I had expected to screen this sensational new Russian release did not do so so I ended up heading over to the Kosmos Kinoteatr on Prospekt Mira just two days after its premier. Even here though the showing had been relegated to a small upstairs venue – the sort that boasts bean bags for seats. An Art House flick sort of venue.
This was no Art House movie however, as the ten so or so punters and me who had turned up that night were about to discover…
[kinopoisk.ru]New Blood.
Bolevoi Porog constitutes the latest addition to the crime/adventure thriller subgenre of which the impressive Otryv (reviewed earlier) also belongs.
Andrei Simonov has made his debut with this 100 minute long 16+ drama – by Look film in association with R. Media and distributed by SB Film -as both the scribbler of the script and the man holding the megaphone.
The acting talent that he has called on,whilst not quite household names, offer a synergy of old hands and rising stars. For instance, Arina Postkinova (FullTransformation, 2013) has already quite a prolific screen presence despite being just past her mid-twenties, whereas the 50-year-old Villen Babichek, a character actor who plays a villain, will be known to many for his role in Viking (2016).
Trial by fire.
`Everyone has their own pain threshold`runs the tagline for this movie (albeit which does not appear on the promotional poster). The story concerns the fate of three young Russians who are learn this fact.
The central players are two couples, rich daddy and mummies’ boys and girls one and all, including Lena (Postkinova), Tanya (Natalia Skomorokhova), Kirill (Roman Kurstyn) and Sergey (Kirill Komarov). They are just the sort of vacant and narcissistic tearaways destined, in such cautionary tales, to open the jack-in-a-box of fate….
We discover them enjoying an insouciant car chase with the politsia before their vehicle swerves and slams into a nightclub. The unimpressed manager, perhaps sensing them to be untouchable, advises them to clear well out of the city.
Next we find them, as carefree as ever, driving a van through the remote splendour of Gorny Altai (bordering Kazakhstan). They are ready for a spot of camping and Hiking. And white water rafting.
As their designated guide (Eugene Mundum) turns out to be a creepy old drunk, they make their own way to the water’s edge, waiving aside warnings about the hazards that lie ahead.
In one of the most effective and enlivening sequences in the film, they find the rapids to be more ferocious than they had counted on and they become separated and lose their dinghy.
[kinopoisk.ru]Thus far we have a `nightmare holiday` anecdote. It is then, however, that they meet some other Russians…
This group of men present themselves as matey fellow travellers but in fact that they are escaped convicts. And they seem in no mood to be trifled with. Along with Babichek they include Evgeny Atarik (Dark World, 2010), Grigory Chaban (Vasha Neba, 2019), Oleg Fomin and Alexander Golubkov.
When one of the youths knocks out one of this party, in a bid to escape their effective enslavement, a chase between gilded youth and desperadoes ensues which becomes a no holds barred fight for survival.
Here is a film to make you grateful for the regimentation and anonymity of city life.
Lost resonances.
This is a sure-footed first film and one which showcases some emerging talent but it tells an oft told tale. It is the one about innocents discovering their inner strengths and inner demons in extremis. This, and the overall premise, makes Bolevoi Porog similar to the breakthrough movie Deliverance (1972) which has spawned many such imitators.
There exists one poignant scene where two of the youths, fleeing for their lives, descend a mountainside on which a village of Mongolic people are settled. The immediate response of the former is one of distrust and fear at the very appearance of these obvious metropolitans.
This uneasiness between the moneyed Russians and other ethnicities could have made for an interesting subtheme but is not really explored much further.
I find it difficult, in fact, to mine many wider themes from this film. Otryv seemed to suggest that Russia’s youth are being stymied by uncaring and incompetent elders. That would apply here too – except for the fact that, in this, the Young are architects of their own fates and there is a karmic sense to that which unfolds.
Sense of wilderness.
There have been recent television drama serials which have trodden similar waters. For instance Flint, broadcast by N.T.V – in effect a Russian reworking of Rambo: First Blood – also depicted a man reduced to an almost primitive state in fighting against greater odds.
The setting saves this film from banality, however. The cinematographer Andrei Losivof brings out the sun drenched Arcadia which provides the backdrop well and this is then enhanced by the incidental music of Dmitry Elemyanov – who this year also provided the score for Poteryanni Ostrov (Lost Island), which also features a stark landscape. The epic magnitude of his music shifts the film into horror territory.
The cast exhibit such vigorous performances that there is no need to show much gore, even when awful acts are committed. Then, for such a predictable scenario, the ending surprised me a little – and there was even some much-needed light relief in the final reel. Nevertheless, Otryv, with its fiendish and fresh premise remains the more memorable movie from this genre.
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.
Abigail Foster: a new heroine for the post-global age? [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.
[Ruskino.ru]
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 HarryPotter 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.
A black drone in the night sky, outside the lit window of a Moscow office block. Shady deals are underway in the interior. A heavy in the company spots the spy craft, pulls out a pistol and fires at it, blowing holes in the window. The drone drops. The credits begin….
Such is the opening to Dyxless 2. `Wake up`, it seemed to say. `And welcome to 2015! `
Many a Russian film is, if not a goofy slapstick type comedy set in a sunny never-never land , then yet another brawny heroic retread of the `Great Patriotic War`. Within all that there exists ample room for pictures concerned with the here-and-now. Half a decade back, the Dyxless films seemed to provide just that.
The title `Dyxless` – sometimes transliterated into `Duhless` – means `Soulless` (the Russian word `Doosha` with the English suffix `less` grafted onto it). The film represents an adaptation of a novel by Sergey Minaev called `Soulless: the Tale of an Unreal Man` which caused a stir in 2006. The wine trader and broadcaster, now in his mid-forties, had exposed the `Botox. Bentley. Sushi` milieu of the new aspirational Russians. Critics even bracketed him with Bret Easton Ellis, of American Psycho fame.
Lifting the lid on a decadent glamour.
Six years later the screen version, billed as `A film about what really matters in life`, opened the Moscow International Film Festival. Kinoslovo films produced it and the now fifty year old Roman Prygunov (son of the actor Lev Prygunov) directed. The rising matinée idol, the 27 year old Danila Kozlovsky, played the story’s anti-hero, Max. (Koslovsky is known to some Western viewers for his role in The Vampire Academy).
[En.Film.ru]
Max Andreev is a 29-year-old orphan who has risen to be a top executive manager of a French/Russian credit company. He is, as he puts it `master of reality` and can get everything money can buy. His life, however, is… `soulless`. That is until he meets Julia (Mariya Andreeva). Julia belongs to an alternative world of anti-capitalist theatrics. For example, her crew set off a paint bomb in a fancy restaurant to protest the meat trade. A love affair results, which causes Max to reconsider his priorities. Can he renounce his old ways?
This consumerist -romp-with-a-conscience provoked enough interest to justify the making of a sequel, released in March of 2015.
Downshifter.
Dyxless 2begins in Bali where we find Max now living as a surfing hipster, having said farewell to the life of high finance. Soon, however, his old associates track him down and use heavy-handed tactics to lure him back to Moscow. `There are new waves there`, they tell him of the Moscow that has moved on in his absence.
Installed in the Carlton-Ritz on Tverskaya Street, he is introduced to a fellow Bright Young Thing (played by the Serbian actor Milos Bikovic) who insists on Max having a make-over and introduces him to venture capitalism. Max ix back in the soulless world, but he meets Julia again, who is now married and has sold out. He also uncovers a network of corruption and in so doing discovers a new sense of purpose as a champion of ethical business. Can he keep his integrity?
Whilst the first film is an outrageous drama with a love interest, the second one is more of an espionage thriller with a veiled sociopolitical message. Both contain the same hints of dry humour about them, however.
[Kinokassir.ru]In visual terms they both showcase well photographed scenes of the Russian capital, such as the River Moskva, or the Moscow State University seen from above. This is as befits a director with a background in advertising and rock videos. As for Koslovsky, the critics appreciated his performance enough to award him the Golden Eagle for the best film actor of 2012 for the first one. Dyxless imprinted his image on the national psyche and he has been a much sought after screen lead ever since. (Neither film, by the way, has been made available dubbed into English, but the first one can be found online with English subtitles).
Some have compared the pictures to Wall Street. They share some of the ambivalence about runaway consumerism which that film had, but lack the political punch that the film also delivered in 1987. Dyxless also calls to mind Room at the Top (1958), the classic British morality tale about the pursuit of success. However, the director owes the most to French cinema (to see just how much so, read Russian Film Symposium notes of 2013).Writing in 2013 Elena Murkhortova uncovers the way in which Dyxless `samples` some sequences from the 2007 French film 99 Francs. Of equal interest is her revelation that the character of Max owes much to Eugene Onegin, Pushkin’s immortal anti-hero.
On the domestic end, the film Generation P(2011) explores not so different themes, but in a much more edgy, oppositional manner. Likewise, the notorious Leviathan (2014) takes far more risks by zooming in on the opposite end of the social spectrum.
The Metro newspaper said at the time that there might be a further sequel on the way (after all Dyxless 2has been the most popular Russian film of this year). Perhaps it would even become a franchise, a bit like the Bond series?
No more from Max.
This was not to be. What we got instead, three years later, was Selfie. Nikolai Khomeriki was the kingpin this time. This 44-year-old talent’s previous motion picture had been Ledokol (Icebreaker) from 2016, a fact-based gritty adventure concerning the fate of a nuclear icebreaker. Selfie too was a more Russian affair: a Moscow film noir set in icy back streets. The protagonist too, whilst affluent, was middle-aged and washed out (depicted well by Konstantin Khabensky). This film was not, nor intended to be, a continuation of the Dyxless cycle, despite the involvement of Minaev, (who wrote the screenplay this time).
You see the Dyxless films now look like period pieces. In a nation beset by sanctions and a stalling economy, where the urban young are becoming indignant about corruption and rigged elections, the glossy magazine world that those films both indulged and satirised already appears less and less relevant. Even so, before we leave the twenty Teens behind, it is worth recalling that these films seemed almost alone in their brief day for at least trying to say something about their own times.
There is something not quite right about the small group of Russians living like pagans in an island in the Sakhalin province, in this intriguing thriller.
Every so often a fresh new film arrives out of nowhere that seems unique and thought-provoking. Such a film for this year comes courtesy of C.B film/Silyakoffilm and is called Poteryanniy Ostrov – Lost Island.
First screened at Stalker – the International Human Rights film festival last December, this motion picture received scant pre-publicity. I came across it whilst browsing what was on offer at the Moscow cinemas. This one, at least, was not a vacuous comedy nor about the Second World War and then the romantic poster and the promise of a `mystical thriller` enticed me further. I caught the last showing at the enormous October cinema in Novy Arbat just a few days after its first release on April 4th.
A 90 minute 16+ age limit drama/thriller, Lost Island defies categorisation. This owes to the fact that the film’s origins lie in the theatre: Natalya Moshina reworked her own stage play, then called Rikotu Island and staged twelve years back, for this screen adaptation.
Denis Silyakov whose previous credit was Dom Oknami v Pole – House Facing theField (2017) directed the film on location on the island of Kunashir, the rugged southernmost island of the Sakhalin archipelago.
Daniil Maslennikov (Kosatka, 2014) plays Igor Voevodin, an economics analyst who produces copy for a magazine in downtown Moscow. His boss – Dmitry Astrakhan (Milliard, 2019) responds to a spot of workplace tension by proposing that the young man take the trip of a lifetime , all paid for by the company. The provisos are that it is to be a journalistic fact-finding mission and also that the destination must be chosen at random from an electronic map.
It is the fictional island of Rikotu, a far Eastern Kuril island in the province of Sakhalin in the Pacific ocean, that Igor’s finger alights.
Following a turbulent crossing on a private vessel, he arrives at his new abode to find that it is home to just twelve inhabitants who form an alternative community. Their leader is an algae specialist and an alluring young woman called Anya. ((Natalia Frey who also starred in The House Facing theField). Dwelling in basic wooden huts and subsisting on seafood from the surrounding waters, the people live a spartan life. They also seem to worship a shrimp as their godhead.
`You’re not from these parts are you?` [Teleproramma.po]Igor, in his capacity as a journalist begins to question the elders of the community such as aunt Sasha Stepanova (played by Tatiana Dogileva, who has some 108 screen and TV appearances on her C.V). He soon hits a wall, however.
The islanders seem not to believe in the existence of Igor’s home city and know little about Russia too. As to how they ended up on Rikotu island, they are just as hazy.
Then when Igor stumbles on the drowned corpse of an islander who had tried to escape the question becomes: will he himself be able to leave and tell the rest of Russia what he has learnt?
The premise – where a metropolitan new world meets a recalcitrant old world – calls to mind the cult British horror movie The Wicker Man (1973). Silyakov, however, handles this material with more finesse. There are no clear villains here and the stress is more on the enigma rather than any Grand Guignol moments that the situation could throw up.
This is a twisty fable worthy of Ludmilla Petrushevskaya and it is executed with style and good character acting that avoids teetering into comedy.
Maslennikov is well cast as the innocent all-Moscow boy whereas Frey oozes femme fatale sexuality. Georgy Nazarenko (Monax ii Bes, 2016) is convincing as a grizzled old timer and real natives of Kunashir make up the cast too. Marina Cherkunova, lead singer with the band Total, as Lyusha the malcontent, adds a dash of New Age spice to it all.
Ekaterina Kobsor’s cinematography, bringing out he crystalline rocks and spruce of this desolate environment, and Dmitri Emelyanov’s quasi-classical score help to build up the ambience.
What crowns the whole drama though is the involvement of Total, an underrated Russian alternative rock/trip hop band. Their closing song `Skontachimsiya` (or A.K.A `Let’s Get Fucked in the Sky`) seals the sense of erotic entrapment of the film.
So is this just a strange thriller? One could view Lost Island as a state-of-the-nation statement. A comparison might be made with J.B.Priestley’snovel Benighted (1927) which was later made into a film called The Old Dark House (1932). In this a group of motorists trapped in an old mansion with its crotchety residents serves as a comment on Britain between the wars.
A scene from the play `Rikotu Island`. [chekhov-teatr.ru]
One person who seems to agree with this assessment is Pavel Ruminov writing in the Theatre Times (25th January 2018). Speaking of the original stage play, he characterises it as showing us a Russia`swept into a whirlpool of mysticism and irrationality`.
That said, what remains with you long after the credits have rolled and the cinema lights turned on, is the baleful atmosphere of this distinctive film.
[chaccone.ru]What enlivened a grey February afternoon in a bookshop was chancing on a new English version of The Amphibian (1928) by Alexander Belyaev.
The film adaptation of this had already introduced me to the premise of a young man who can live underwater, as it seems to be a permanent fixture on Russian television and is regarded with affection by many East Europeans of a certain age.
Until now though, I had not enjoyed the opportunity to snuggle up with the novel that had inspired the film. Karo Publishers based in St Petersburg – best known for their translated versions of Golden and Silver age greats by Pushkin and Tolstoy et al – have changed all that by bringing out The Amphibian last year.
Blockbuster.
Lenfilm’s Chelovek Amphibia (1962) constitutes a glitzy and exotic boy-meets-girl fantasy romance. The film provides a testimony to the swagger of the Khrushchev era when the Soviet Union was winning the Space Race.
Scene from ““Chelovek Amphibia`. [polzam.ru]With its impressive photography and sun-drenched location shots on Baku this film can hold its head up alongside America’s The West Side Story which came out in the same period.
The doomed lovers aspect of the film seems similar too: here an outcast boy with shark gill implants loves a local maiden. In contrast with American Science Fiction films, however, this situation is not a product of nuclear radiation nor science-gone-wrong, but of benign medical intervention.
The original constumes used in `Chelovek Amphibia` on display at Lenfilm studios in St Petersburg.
Soviet Michael Crichton.
The author, Alexander Romanovich Belyaev, had grown up in a religious household in the cathedral town of Smolensk. He became a lawyer before being struck down with tuberculosis which made him dependent on care for about six years.
During this trial Belyaev encountered the writings of Verne and Wells and this fired him up to embark on a career as one of Russia’s first career science fiction authors. He was to churn out seventeen – 17!- tales in this genre.
Belyaev’s life ended in 1941 or 1942 in the town of Pushkin outside St Petersburg from lack of nutrition. He was 58.
Nevertheless he had reached a wide readership in his lifetime. Professor Dowell’s Head (1937) and The Amphibian are the ones most known to the Anglophone world but if you go onto book discussion sites you will find that Belyaev still commands a reading public outside of that, and his other books remain popular too.
An installation commemorating the film `Professor Dowell’s Testament` (Lenfilm Studio, 1984) based on Belyaev’s` “Professor Dowell’s Head`. Also on display at Lenfilm studios in St Petersburg.
Unexpected.
Belyaev had The Amphibian published in a notorious era later seen as being the onset of Stalinism. The Soviet government ended the relaxed New Economic Policy amidst a fall in grain production and a new financial slump. The buzzword of the day was `sabotage` and the first Five Year Plan was being hatched and the show trials began. Hard times.
The Amphibian, in contrast, catapults us to the fishing community of Rio de Plata near Buenos Aires. The focus, furthermore is not on new mechanics but on fantastic medical science.
Water boy.
The pearl divers are thrown into superstitious dread by the appearance of a `sea devil` in their waters. This has created a journalistic splash too.
Icthyander (the amphibian) – for it is he – a young man of about twenty, is able to spend long periods swimming underwater on account of the shark gills implanted into his body. This superpower sets him apart from normal society.
His adoptive father, Doctor Salvatore – who had saved Icthyander’s life with this surgical innovation represents the maverick medical genius ( of the kind that Boris Karloff would later portray). Nevertheless he seems saner than the conniving rabble around him and gifts the poor Mexicans with free medical help. Otherwise he is a recluse, living in a walled laboratory which he shares with his servants and sundry modified animals.
Icthyander, meanwhile is smitten with a local beauty and entangled in a hopeless love tryst. The hard-bitten pearl diving mercenaries are plotting to kidnap him and put him to their own use. It will all end in a sensational court case in which Doctor Salvatore is in the dock – and against the world…
Fable.
The detached narrative is told with spare and simple prose, reminiscent of Paul Gallico, perhaps.It could work as junior fiction, although maybe it is L. Koslenikov’s 1959 translation that makes much of the dialogue seem clunky.
The beating heart of it all is the prolonged underwater sequences where we get Icthyander’s eye on the world. Here Jacques Cousteau is anticipated in fiction.
The theme of human-animal hybrids had been dealt with earlier by Mikhail Bulgakov in Heart of a Dog (1925) but this tends to be viewed as an allegory rather than science fiction.
There also exist indelible rumours claiming that the Stalin regime was attempting to breed human-monkey hybrids for military purposes. So perhaps Belyaev was closer to the truth than he thought!
Belyaev (via Salvatore) seems to mount a defence of medical progress against the prohibitions of religion in this novel. It is not clear, however, that the author had anything more in mind than writing a ripping yarn which could whisk the reader away from the daily grind of Soviet society of that time.
Contemporary echoes.
The novel stands up better than the film which is too Old School for most people’s tastes today.
However,the science fiction geek of our time expects more involved narratives which involves multiple technological twists and turns as opposed to a one premise fable like this. The Amphibian is out of fashion.
Or is it?
Fellow baby boomers may recall an American TV show (1977-1978) called The Man From Atlantis This featured Patrick Duffy as an amphibian man. (It would be churlish to point out that one of Belyaev’s novels from 1926 is titled Posledniy Chelovek iz Atlantidi – The Last Man from Atlantis!)
Then there is Guillermo del Toro’s film The Shape of Water from two years back. The similarities between this and what has been discussed does not need to be spelt out (it even features a Soviet scientist!)
So The Amphibian remains an extraordinary novel – as extraordinary as the sad life of the man who dreamt it all up.
No cliché is left unused in this fun haunted house hokum.
[Pro-imbd.com]Mid-March proved still a time of snow and chill winds so when the web had informed me that a new Queen of Spades installment was out I thought: what better time for some eerie relaxation to head off the winter blues?
From being all but unheard of in the Soviet and early post-Soviet eras, Russian cinematic horror has become the new trend to watch and one that is drawing fresh blood into the business. On top of that, the chills and spills of this genre give the Russian learner an easier ride than more involved stories.
This scary dark old house potboiler forms part of a franchise. Three years ago Queen of Spades: The Dark Rite set the scene. Produced by Russian horror doyen Svyatoslav Podgaevsky this, despite name checking a famous 1834 story by Pushkin, introduced a murderous spectral woman, tall, black clad, with a veil and a penchant for hair cutting. Rather like Clive Barker’s 1992 Candyman, this ghoul can be summoned should you call her three times into a mirror with a door and stairs drawn on it.Following a lead taken by The Conjuring, Queen of Spades: The Looking Glass recycles this adversary but with a different story, different cast – and a new director.
Horror veterans.
Thirty year old Aleksandr Domogarov was on clapboard duties. Two years earlier he had produced a short film –Poostitye Deti – based on a Stephen King tale.
Likewise the producers Konstantin Buslov and Dmitry Litvinov have dipped their toes in horror before with Konvert/ The Envelope (2017) and Rassvet/Dawn (2019) respectively (both reviewed below).
Even the main star, one Angelina Stretchina – the ballsy malcontent at the centre of it all – has previous horror form. She also stars in Gosti/Guests from this year, another ghost yarn (although one hard to come across in the cinemas).
Angelina Stretchina. [Instagram]Playing with fire.
A young boy and his older sister lose their mother in a car accident (an unnerving event which opens the film). This results in the bereaved pair being sent away to a boarding school located in a former orphanage and deep in the woods. (In fact the filming took place in the Nahabino district of Moscow, known for its golfing links and country club).
The girl, Olya (Stretchina) is busy trying to find a way to make her escape while her brother, Artyom, (Danil Isotov) keeps having visions of his mother.
[Simemaler.com]Meanwhile they are introduced to a teenage rabble drawn from every teen movie from The Breakfast Club onwards. There is the anguished boy with parent issues, the vampish girl with designs on one of her teachers, and the overweight girl and so on.
Before long this pranksome crew break into a forbidden part of the school, an attic, in which they find a mirror with a door and staircase drawn on it….
Having been released the Queen of Spades grants the kids some of their wishes. The boy with awkward parents finds that they commit suicide, the fat girl cannot eat without finding maggots in her food and Artyom gets his mother back, sort of….
Boo!
As with the somewhat derided The Nun from last year there is much reliance on startling appearances often in the form of a silhouette seen in the distance or through tarpaulin left around by building renovators. These jump scares have this in their defence: they at least represent the work of actors and directors and not computer image manipulations.
The intricate, musty olde-worlde set had been well thought out and contrasts with the modern block of flats locale of the first movie. The dark romance of it all is then augmented by a quasi-classical score courtesy of the now L.A based Sergei Stein.
Bubblegum.
The film seems preoccupied with death and loss (as was Rassvet and Provodnik, as well as any number of horror flicks) and there exists a possible metaphor around mirrors and how they can reflect our darker selves. Furthermore, some of the characterisation is less predictable than might be expected – a male teacher turns out to be a decent sort, for example.
This is a romp, however, a high jinx Halloween party and does not elicit tears or laughter but just burrows itself down into the haunted house subgenre.
This pantomime will not haunt me, but the posse of teens who turned up to the showing got what they had come for.
