Like metaphors for contemporary Russian life, two survival biopics from several years back are a fixture on Russian TV schedules.
LOST IN ICE.
First hitting Moscow’s screens in 2016 to coincide with America’s Deep Water Horizon, a dramatisation of the 2010 oil spill from an off shore drill, Ledokol (Ice-breaker) is a Russian disaster flick brought to us courtesy of the forty-something director Nikolay Khomeriki (who some cinema buffs will already know for the film 977). And this film, in its home country pulled, in a larger audience than Tom Cruise’s then latest (Jack Reacher 2) on its screening.
Filmed with the aid of a real life atomic icebreaker, the motion picture cost ten million U.S dollars and they shot it over a three and a half month period in such Arctic areas as Murmansk and Khibiny.
Giving overdue recognition to some forgotten naval icons, as well as lifting the lid on the obscure way of life of icebreaker crewmen, the movie takes as its inspiration the ill- fated voyage of the ship Mikhail Somov in 1985. On the way to supplying scientific bases in Antarctica, the ship ended up becalmed in packed ice for a perilous 133 days with 53 crewmembers aboard. `Soviet Research Ship in Antarctic Ice` – was the New York Times headline from June of that year.
In the film, the ship is re-christened Mikhail Gomorov. With its strengthened hull, ice-breaking design, and sheer power, this behemoth is one of the stars of story. The other star – fresh from his role in the sumptuous period drama The Duellist –is Pyotr Petrovich Fydorov.
With his wiry and dark good looks, however, he seems out of place (perhaps even miscast) as the captain of twenty or so bearded beefy, chunky sweater wearing crewmembers.
It is not long into the film before the villain of the piece emerges from the icy depths in the form of a monstrous iceberg. They are unable to negotiate their way round this and soon the crew find themselves becalmed in a sea of ice. Then follows a string of calamities. A rescue helicopter arrives with replacement staff and a new captain. This catches fire in the process of landing and leaves the new arrivals stranded on the ship together with those they were intended to take over from. As ice is somewhat static, much of the film’s drama arises from the crew becoming more and more mutinous towards this unpopular new presence.
Some suspenseful moments do appear, however, in this 12 Certificate movie. The first captain, on an on-foot expedition to get their bearings, plummets down an icy labyrinth. His only way to get help is to rely on a flare, but in the process he also upsets an angry walrus.
This is an almost all male story, and one in which (in contrast to most disaster movies) the fateful events occur from the film’s opening. To provide some human interest the makers have added a mischievous ginger dog to the mix. Two unconvincing female subplots have been shoehorned into the plot too. Back in St Petersburg, one crew member’s wife has to un undergo a caesarean to give birth, while the first captain’s wife is a fearless journalist who gets embroiled in their rescue on board another nuclear ice-breaker.
Eighties details abound: we see electric typewriters, puffball skirts, a reel-to-reel film projector (showing The Diamond Arm) and even a Rubrics Cube (which in fact has a role in the plot). Also giving it all a retro feel is the strings based orchestral score. That said, this is more than a jolly Soviet style film about camaraderie and resilience: when the crew indulge in a spot of communal folk singing, the replacement captain responds by smashing their acoustic guitar.
Whereas this year’s other major disaster movie – Ekipazh, an airplane disaster scenario – was glitzy and sensationalist and set its sights on the present day (and on an international market), Ledokol is all -Russian and grittily realistic and looks back, or be it with some ambivalence.
A telling sequence of the film comes right at the end. The rescued survivors are enjoying the sun with a barbecue on the deck of the ship. One of them holds aloft a copy of Pravda. Thumbing through the pages, they pass a picture of the newly inaugurated Gorbachev before they get to the account of their ordeal. Then they cheer for the captains – both of them. For the first time the stern replacement captain allows himself to smile. The music of Kino sounds. The credits roll.
LOST IN SPACE.
First time (Vremya Pervyh) , a well –publicised adventure was granted an extended run at many cinemas when released in 2017. Dmitry Kiselov, best known for lighter fare such as Black Lightning from fifteen years ago (a sort of new take on Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang), directed the film. It was released to coincide with Cosmonaut day – April 12th. That day commemorates Gargarin’s birthday but this biopic takes as its subject a feat of almost equal importance: in 1965 the then 31-year-old Alexander Leonev conducted the first Extra Vehicular Activity (EVA).
Race to be the first.
Better known as a `space-walk`, the EVA involved Leonev taking leave his space capsule so that there was nothing between him and the vacuum of space except his spacesuit. This attempt lasted for 12 minutes and 9 seconds (longer, as we shall see, than was planned for). Leonev’s achievement paved the way for the American Moon landings effected five years later.
At that time, however, the Soviet Union were leaping ahead in the `Space race`. They had sent up the first satellite, put dogs into space, then the first man and woman in to orbit and even reached the Moon in the form of the probes Luna, Luna 2 and Lunakhod. This relentless need to stay ahead of the competition is brought out in this film, which opens with the deadline being set for 1965.
The prologue to this dramatic recreation is a childhood dream of Leonev’s: in a vision worthy of Ray Bradbury, we him see running through tall grass at night and releasing a cloud of fireflies which rise up into the starry summer sky. (The adult Leonev is played by Yevgeny Mironov a long-standing actor who made his name in a coming of age drama called `Love` in 1991. For this role he has to play someone about twenty years his junior).
Mishaps.
Things get harder edged after that. The Voshkod 2 mission has been earmarked for the task and the preparation for this it is all rather hurried along. Health and safety is not anyone’s biggest concern: a technician working on the ships design gets electrocuted to death.
That sets the trend for the flight itself: Leonev’s spacesuit becomes inflated on his space walk and so he cannot re-enter the capsule until he lets out some air; then he and his co-pilot, Pavel Belyayev have difficulties sealing the hatch. Following this, the rockets that will return them to Earth malfunction. All of this makes them late for touch down and they land somewhere in the arctic woods of Upper Kama Uplands – and might as well have crashed onto another planet. A nervous helicopter pilot despatched to find them is told to `keep an eye out for a red and white parachute`.
All of this did happen, and although you wonder how much it has been embellished, you still hold your breath, much as we did for Apollo 13 from 1995.
Realism.
Like the previous year’s similar Ledokol, the film tempers its hero worship with period details: the astronaut’s space food is borsch in toothpaste tubes, Mission Control constitutes a downbeat cottage industry in an air craft hangar, and the head of operations is a stressed and unfit man in danger of a heart seizure. Leonev himself comes across as a bit of a chancer. For example, when his comrade breaks his foot following a sky dive, Leonev’s first response is to turn up at his hospital and fix a weight to the man’s suspended leg so that he may continue to exercise.
Visual feast.
The contemporaneous American movies Gravity (2013) and Life (2017)had shown that directors now possess the means to evoke the feel of being suspended above our aquamarine orb as though it were for real. Vremya Pervyh also does not let us down in this respect. The sky diving scenes and the closing sequences in the forest are also spectacular – as befits a 3-D movie.
The film’s message which is along the lines of the old `hang on in there`, and was emotive enough for some of the audience to clap at the end of the initial cinema showing. I was just glad to have learnt a little about some of the unsung feats of the pre-Moon landing space missions.
These reviews were written at the time of the films release and were posted in Moskvaer (now defunkt) and the BKC IH Newsletter.
Lead image: Still from Ledokol – Kinoteatr.ru
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