Russian Language Hall of Fame II

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The Thief, 1997

Sanya (Mikhail Filipchuk) is a 6 year old boy living a transient life with his single mother Katya (Yekaterina Rednikova). One day, the two encounter a charismatic soldier named Tolyan (Vladimir Mashkov) on a train ride and, on a whim, Katya agrees to disembark with him. The three soon find a rental apartment and tensions quickly rise as Katya gives more of her attention to Tolyan. But there is more happening than Sanya can understand, and soon he and his mother are enmeshed in a series of challenging decisions.

This was an interesting entry in the "child POV" drama in the sense that it deftly maintains Sanya's innocence and ignorance while developing the complicated dynamic between Katya and Tolyan. As Katya, and eventually Sanya, come to understand just who Tolyan is, it is clear that the relationship between Katya and Sanya is permanently fractured.

The real surprise of the film is the way that it splits its attention between Katya and Sanya. It is undeniable that Sanya is the main character of the film, but the film does the critical work of helping us to understand the complicated nature of the entire situation. At first it feels easy to be angry at Katya, who seems to be choosing great sex over her own child. But at the same time, Katya has no home. She has no way to support herself and her son. We do not know if Katya is a widow, or if she was simply left by Sanya's father. We do not even know if her story to him about the father being a soldier is even true. But because the film takes the time to help us understand where Katya comes from, we can be frustrated with her choices even as we realize why she might choose the type of stability that Tolyan represents, even if it is wrong.

The film is also very strong in how it presents Sanya's complicated understanding of masculinity. Sanya is haunted by visions of his father, the figure of a soldier who appears to Sanya in moments of stress. But in the here and now, it is Tolyan who most takes the place of a father figure. And the lessons Tolyan teaches to Sanya are the lessons of a violent and manipulative man. Tolyan survives through deception and brutality. He teaches Sanya that respect comes from fear. He directly tells him that violence is part of being a "real man". For Sanya, whose life is already unstable, this is a confusing dynamic.

My only issue with the film had to do with the end. The movie suddenly makes a jump in time. This on its own wasn't the biggest problem, but there was a way that the film winds toward an overly-neat (and coincidental) conclusion that didn't sit quite right with me. There is a focus in the final act on bringing closure to the narrative arc as opposed to the emotional/character arc.

This was a really interesting, well-acted, and compelling film. I really enjoyed it!




Let the night air cool you off
I watched two of the nominated films yesterday and I'm going to try to get through a couple more this weekend. The current plan is to do a bulk write-up on everything I've seen this week on Monday.




The Dream of a Ridiculous Man
(1992, Aleksandr Petrov)

So many wonderful frames in this movie...and each one looks like paintings worthy of an art museum. I loved the look of this with it's warm earth tones and coppery browns. I liked the way the animation moved, kinda slowly and deliberately, which made it feel like I was watching a dream. A man with bleakness in his heart who's contemplating suicide, dreams of hope and of despair...The story paired well with the style of animation. I haven't read anything about the film and I won't claim to know exactly what the writer was saying, but I believe the suicidal man dreamed of heaven, then dreamed of hell...and chose to make his life heaven by caring for others here on Earth. I probably got that wrong, but oh well that was the truth I seen. A very cool nom.




Stalker (1979) -


Always happy to rewatch my number 1 favorite film (I'm sure you all can tell which film will top my ballot for this HoF). When I first watched Stalker, this was before I was fully accustomed to slow pacing, so I struggled somewhat with it, but I still appreciated it quite a lot. I couldn't explain why, but something about the film felt so alluring and kept inviting me back for more, whether it was the ethereal beauty found in the deserted environments or some various sequences which seemed to have otherworldly qualities. Everything about the pacing should've made me grow bored back then, but while this somewhat happened, I also felt strangely drawn to it for a reason I couldn't put my finger on. I didn't love the film after my first viewing, but what I knew was that Tarkovsky was a director who I should keep an eye out for in the future. Though I struggled with a few of his other films after that, like The Mirror and Solaris, both of which I need to revisit soon, I eventually got around to rewatching this film, which was when I fell in love with Tarkovsky.

In many ways, this is more of a feel than a film. Initially, the transition from sepia to color when they enter the Zone makes the area seem like a haven as opposed to the drab outside world they're stuck in. However, the more we learn about the Zone and the various people who had ventured there prior to the film (like a previous guide named Porcupine who killed himself after becoming rich in the Zone), the more dangers the area is revealed to have, and the more omens they witness as they make their way through it (a group of abandoned army tanks, a black dog which recurs throughout their time in the Zone, or a human skeleton they pass by), the more apparent it is that the room isn't as fulfilling as it appears, thus making the initial jump from sepia to color a façade which conceals many darker undertones. This film has its fair share of ambiguity and every time I watch it, it always leaves me with some unanswered questions, but I never feel unsatisfied by what I don't know about the Zone or the characters. Contrariwise, part of me feels changed every time I finish watching it as the mysterious beauty the film gives off throughout their time in the Zone and, specifically, the tragically beautiful final shot (which would make a short list of my favorite film endings), is more than enough to move and devastate me. I also find many sequences in the film quite moving, like the initial railway car ride into the Zone which has some great, minimalist sound design, the dream sequence which doesn't actually show their dreams, but still feels surreal, and the inexplicably excellent tunnel sequence. Topped with an undercurrent of nuclear disasters and fallouts bubbling underneath the surface of various scenes (this undercurrent is heightened by how the toxic chemicals in the area this film was shot in arguably lead to the deaths of Tarkovsky and two of the three main actors in the film), this film makes for a profound experience every time I rewatch it.

Last up: The Thief
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Let the night air cool you off
Letter Never Sent (1960; Mikhail Kalatozov)



The camerawork in this film is fluid and dynamic and it feels like every cool technique they could come up with was thrown in. The problem is, even if it hadn't been nominated, I will compare this to Kalatozov's true masterpiece: The Cranes Are Flying. As amazing as the cinematograpny and direction is in Letter Never Sent, it's all even better in The Cranes. I hate that I even think like that, because rationally, it's just awesome that we get both of these films. I am still a little torn on that weird flame effect that was used as foreshadowing, but at least after it was revealed to be foreshadowing it made more sense. Cranes is the absolute top tier of black-and-white cinematography, so Letter would have to be the elite tier just below that. Tatyana Samoylova is *chef kiss*.

The Return (2003; Andrey Zvyagintsev)



At first I was a little put off by all the blues and grays, it looked drab and ugly and like a lot of other films of the early 2000s. There were times, early in the film, where I thought "this is beautiful, but God, it's ugly". After some reflection on this, it kinda makes sense for a Russian film. It would be really easy for a film like this to immediately turn into a typical thriller about this opressive, abusive figure popping up out of the blue and banging out a bunch of tropes and sending us home with the boys killing him with no remorse or regret. Instead, we get the way more interesting story without the motivations of the father being clear. We don't even know what he was up to, other than maybe he was involved in crime in someway, and we don't even know what was in the lockbox that presumably brought the father to the island. We can assume the mother called the father to provide a masculine figure to toughen the boys up after she witness her youngest boy being a little p*ssy. Then we have to grapple with how far the father took it to either toughen up his boys that he thought he probably wasn't going to spend much time with as quickly as possible or whether he was just an abusive prick who enjoyed torturing the people around him or he was honoring the mother's request out of duty but had no patience with the boys. The complexity of the relationships between the three male characters carry the film for me. I'd be down for watching this again in the near future.

The Thief (1997; Pavel Chukhray)



This film doesn't look bad in anyway, but it looks almost average when it has to be held up against the likes of Tarkovsky, Kalatozov, Zvyagintsev, and Petrov. It has one of the more straight-up stories that feel like they could have come from any country. I guess that's sort of damning with faint praise, but it's a welcome change to some of the heavier films nominated. Not to say there isn't a lot of heaviness in this film, but not every aspect of the film is drenched in it the way Cranes or Stalker are. Toljan is an interesting character at face-value, but when you get down to it, he is just your typical smooth-talking, scumbag. I think the examination of that and how some vulnerable can be taken advantage of by this type of person. The whole time the person being taken advantage of is just a disposable tool to someone like Toljan. I was fascinated by Toljan throughout the film, so the final scenes are perfect because you come to the same realization as Sanja at the end. There are bits of this that are a little clunky, like some of the relationship stuff between Sanja and his real father and Katja and Toljan's relationship was a mixed-bag for me. The one thing about it that was great, was the depiction of Katja as desperate and vulnerable.





The Return, 2003

Two brothers, Ivan (Ivan Dobronravov) and Andrei (Vladimir Garin) are shocked then their absentee father (Konstantin Lavronenko) returns after a 12 year absence. The two boys and their father embark on a weekend road trip, but tensions rise as Ivan takes an increasingly defiant attitude toward his father. The question of why the father has returned and where he has been hangs over them.

This was my nomination, but it's something I haven't seen since it came out in 2003. Generally speaking, movies I liked in my late teens or early 20s often go down in my esteem when I rewatch them. I am pleased to say that I really enjoyed this film a second time around.

I'll start by saying that I had remembered some stuff that is not in the film. I think I was conflating it with another film. I thought I remembered some ominous men who appeared in the movie, but that's not at all what this film is after.

This is a sub-genre I really enjoy: character-based thrillers. The tension derives almost entirely from the dynamics between the characters. There are hints of something amiss, such as when the father strikes out on his own in a remote, rural spot.

The best part of the film is the dynamic between the brothers and their father. Andrei, who is older, clearly craves the approval and love of his long-absent father. But Ivan, who is too young to have romantic notions of the man, is a mix of resentment and suspicion. It doesn't help that so many of their father's interactions with them---the kind of "character building"/be a REAL MAN stuff--border on abusive or violent. Lacking the grounding of a real relationship, his attempts come of more creepy than caring, such as when he insists on serving them alcohol at a meal, or makes them row a boat in a heavy rain. The question of why he has returned seems tangled up in the question of whether he intends to stay. Both questions linger and linger, and the lack of clarity begins to wear on both boys, especially Ivan.

I think that this is a solid thriller, and I am really pleased that my positive opinion from so many years ago has mostly been upheld. I'm glad to see that a few others in this thread have also enjoyed it.




The Thief (1997) -


This film shared some similarities with The Return as both films come from the perspective of a child who had lived with their mother for a while until a suspicious father figure whose intentions were mysterious entered their lives. While I think The Return is the better of the two films, I also enjoyed this film quite a bit. What stood out the most about this film was its focus on the three main characters. Tolyan was definitely the most interesting of the three of them. Little about his intentions were known and it was also unclear whether he genuinely cared for Katya and Sanya, or if he was just using them to help with his thievery both directly and indirectly. Though I wished the ending would've left his intentions more ambiguous than it did, I still really liked his character. Regardless of what he wanted out of Katya and Sanya though, both of them reacted to his behavior differently. For instance, Katya initially acted welcoming towards him in the first act. Though she treated her son as an outcast and rejected him in place of Tolyan during this part of the film, I also understood why she was grateful at Tolyan's arrival given she lost her husband several years prior to the start of this film. The impression I got was that she was in desperate need of the kind of love and attention he provided for her. But of course, Katya began to distrust him once she learned he was a thief. Sanya's reaction, on the other hand, was in direct opposition to his mother's. He initially distrusted Tolyan since he was often pushed around by both him and Katya, but warmed up to him as the film went on, even after he was made aware of his criminal behavior. Sanya acted rather naïve around Tolyan and was unable to fully understand or make sense of what he was doing. As mentioned earlier, the final act didn't sit right with me given the overly-neat way it wrapped up the characters, but in spite of this, I found all three characters to be memorable for different reasons and I think the dynamics amongst them carried the film really well.



And, I'm finished. I trust the rest of you will be able to finish in time (let me know if you need me to extend the deadline of July 10th).



'Letter Never Sent'

So this is my own nomination, which I only watched fairly recently, my review went something like this~:

My third Mikhail Kalatozov film, and while not having the poignancy as Soy Cuba or Cranes are flying, it has more of an adventure feel to it. Four geologists search for a diamond mine in Siberia, and things go wrong.

Kalatozov's right hand man Sergey Urusevskiy simply has to be spoken about as one of the greatest ever cinematographers. The images are breathtaking and remind the viewer of scenes from The Revenant, Children of Men, Arctic, The Ascent, etc etc. Four geologists go diamond hunting in the Siberian wilderness but a forest fire traps them and they struggle to get out. The ensuing chaos, desperation and isolation also reminds the viewer of the film 'Alive' when as the struggle to survive is so real. But it's the cinematography that really sets this film apart. The silhouette shot that is on the cover of the Criterion print is one of the most iconic shots in Russian cinema. The film is brilliant.

If you're a film lover, seek as many Kalatozov's out as you can.




'Dream of a ridiculous Man'

Wow. This was so beautiful I watched it twice. Dreamlike animation, beautiful image composition. Seems to be about our collective human existentialism and how we treat others. Hard to really put into words, as I expect most of Dostokevsky's work is. But what a treat, really great nomination. Thanks.



Also, in terms of Soviet/Russian animation, you should all check out Yuri Norstein's work (Tale of Tales and Hedgehog in the Fog, mainly). His stuff is great.




(Takoma's already mentioned this one, but I'm doing it again to highlight how great it is).




The Thief (1997)

I enjoyed the movie as it was easy to follow with just three main characters and I always had a handle on just what they were about. With foreign language films sometimes multiple characters with inner-cut stories and dialog heavy...ends up loosing me as I can never get a real feel for who these people are. But in The Thief everyone's motives were cut and dry. The other plus for me was the period piece story set in the late 1950s, Soviet union. I don't know what was sets and what was authentic from the mid 20th century...But I do know the prison building looked real as it looked quite dilapidated. I wonder if it was used for political prisoners during the reign of Stalin?

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