THIS APOCALYPSE YARN, FILMED ON LOCATION IN RUSSIA’S FAR EAST, IMPRESSES WITH ITS BANGS AND WHIZZES – BUT WHERE’S THE SUBSTANCE?
Last December, an ambitious extravaganza, part disaster movie and part science fiction epic, reached Russian screens in time for the winter holidays. (I would have to wait another three months for it to get to Almaty in Kazakhstan).
MIRA after spending a lot of time on the launch pad, came caparisoned with illustrious associations.
Dmitry Kiselyov (not to be confused with the execrable T.V pundit of the same name) was the man with the megaphone. His resume shows that he helped to edit the iconic NIGHTWATCH and DAYWATCH films (2004 and 2006) and directed the quintessential family adventure-romance BLACK LIGHTNING in 2009. He has also taken us into the cosmos before with FIRST TIME (2013), a credible biopic of the first man to walk in space, Alexei Leonov.
One of the key roles is filled by a fifty-year-old Ukrainian Jew Anatoly Bely, a well-regarded stage actor who also has appeared in a great many television serials. He acts alongside a relative newcomer – Veronika Ustinova. Hailing from Ulyanosk, this seventeen-year-old has been compared by some to Margot Robbie. Here she showcases her talents as the cosmonaut’s daughter.
The film needs an epic score to complement its scenario and Yuri Poteenko is just the man for this. He also provided the score for NIGHTWATCH and DAYWATCH and has form with disaster movies in the form of METRO (2013).
Girl interrupted.
In Vladivostok, Lera, a fifteen-year-old malcontent, lives with a divorced mother and her paunchy lummox of a new stepfather and an exasperating younger brother. Only in her races – she runs for events in a local stadium -does she come alive.
However, her father, Arabs, works as a cosmonaut and spends much time in orbit with his Russian colleagues in a space station called Mira A. With the futuristic assistance of an A.I computer – with the titular nickname of Mira -this absent father is able to manipulate technologies down on earth and thus keep watch over his daughter. Unimpressed by this, Lera gives the middle finger to a street C.C.T.V camera that Arabs has commandeered in this fashion.
A hard rain.
Scientists on board Mir A have been attempting to warn those down below of an impending cosmic hazard in the form of a cluster of meteorites en route for our blue planet. (The actor Igor Kriphunov, best known for his work with Svyatelsav Podgaevsky, has a well-cast cameo role here.)
Their warnings meet with deaf ears….When the meteorites arrive, they disable the Mir. A space station and kill most of the staff, leaving only Arabs and Mira functioning.
Meanwhile Vladivostok is laid waste by the onslaught and Lera is rendered homeless and loses her little brother. It is here that the father and Mira’s creepy magic takes centre stage and a new father-daughter bond is forged. Together, using whatever visual and sound portal they can find, they relocate the lost brother and, while they are at it, also prevent an off shore tanker from detonating and taking half of Vladivostok with it.
Defiance of odds.
MIRA seems to lay down a heroic ethos. We learn that Lera exhibits a phobia of fire and that this originated from a time she was trapped in a burning lift, which her father could not rescue her from. This time, though, she will have to face down this terror – by joining forces with her dad.
Even her boyfriend – with something of a `woke` twist – boasts a prosthetic arm and must overcome the feeling of stigma this gives him.
Aside from motivational homilies, what can we take away from this tale? That remote parenting can work? That surveillance technologies might be used for the betterment of humanity?
Convincing mayhem.
I took this film in on the second row in a hall in the Chaplin cinema in Megapolis, Almaty. This featured a sizeable screen with Sensurround and, whilst I have never been one to salivate over FX the collision sequences in this film – all falling masonry, explosions and skidding vehicles – were among the most effective I have experienced.
Carboard cutouts.
If only the human input had been as animated. Ustinova delivers a performance which exudes dignity and seems believable and she represents the discovery of a new female lead in cinema. The rest of the cast, however, function as cyphers of family types: the caring but out of touch mother, the annoying but cute little brother and the cloddish but well-meaning stepfather.
Even Bely feels, in a strange way, insipid as though he had found that the script had not given him enough scope. Instead, he puts on dark glasses whenever he needs to convey a bit of character.
Perhaps this explains why MIRA, despite having some affecting scenes, stopped short of jerking my tears as much as it intended. I can say, however, that it did earn my unflagging attention for all of its long 150 minutes running time.
Magpie approach.
Refreshing though the Vladivostok setting is, the film is otherwise a stitch up of borrowed ideas. The Hollywood offering ARMAGEDDON springs to mind as one of the models (meteor shower, Mir space station and father-daughter issues).
The creators did not only draw on American precedents though. The conceit that forms the science fictional hub of the whole thing – a space station with the capacity to gatecrash earth side technologies – recalls the ATTRACTION sequel INVASION (2020) where a sinister intelligence in orbit could do the same.
Unpleasant resonances.
Above all, the meteorite attack scenes could not help but to put me in mind of the horrific shelling of certain Ukrainian cities by the Russian military. This, together with the very name of the film (which means `peace` in Russian) could even cause some to suspect that this film has a subtext.
One man who might like to think so is Anatoly Bely himself. After denouncing the invasion of Ukraine, he left the Moscow Arts Theatre last summer and now resides in Israel.