cole’s blog

I’m feel like, at this point, I’m being terribly redundant in my prolific use of this phrase, but here goes. Alive is unlike any war movie I’ve ever seen.

O.K., so, I know that the movie Alive, the American one about the Rugby team that crash lands in the Andes, stars Ethan Hawke and is certainly not the same as this film. For some reason, though, when I read it on the syllabus, basic logic failed me and I found myself somehow expecting that same film. I guess that’s pretty stupid.

But, anyways, I didn’t go into Alive expecting any kind of war movie (I guess I was expecting a plane crash), so I think that’s helped to shape my take on the film. Mostly, I found the film fascinating. It’s a little hard to explain, but the whole idea of the Russian soldier and his fallen comrades ripped out of the war and thrown back into normal life, into modern Russian society–a society I admittedly still know little about–really intrigues me. It’s a nice examination of how war can affect a person, but I saw it as a unique outlook into a culture I don’t myself understand. Maybe not knowing Russian society actually helps me relate to the main character…

Well, maybe, maybe not, but I still found Alive gripping. The concept isn’t exactly new, but I can’t fault a film for expanding on an old trope. Besides, Alive doesn’t once (from what I can recall) fall back on those silly, jokey cliches that usually come when one character can see a ghost or spirit and the rest of the room remains oblivious.

So, I really enjoyed Alive, for a number of reasons. Reading the KinoKultura review, I can’t speak intelligently on certain aspects of the film’s perceived intent, or whether the filmmaker is indeed “uncertain,” but as a stand-alone piece, viewed from non-Russian eyes, Alive is an excellent film.

I suppose the big question here is the ending. Like, that everyone hated it. Hmm.

I quite liked the ending, actually. I think it fits. Melodrama, a silly reuniting scene, none of these would’ve worked. But that’s being unfair to the people in the class who did hate it. If memory serves, didn’t y’all deliberately distance yourself from the melodrama solution? Was it the camera’s unwillingness to even show the mother that bothered you, or did you jut wish that the film addressed the very real implications of an orphan tracking down and finding the parent who abandoned him? These are valid concerns, I’ll concede, but for some reason they didn’t even come up for me. The film was about his journey; a journey so improbable, so extraordinary, that these concerns, well, didn’t really even matter. I suppose I didn’t come looking for realism, though, and it looks like some did.

I guess the main thing that intrigues me about this whole argument is that it occured. I guess, even if you consider the ending a failure (I don’t, though), isn’t it a rather inoffensive one? At least, compared to some of the other things we’ve watched thus far, it’s seems an innocuous thing to raise a concern about. Like Brother. That movie was offensively stupid. BUT! I’m not trying to be critical. Really, I’m not saying anyone’s concerns aren’t totally valid. They are. It just interests me that something like this, something that didn’t even occur to me, would bring about such an interesting argument.

I kind of wish we had had more time to talk about it. Oh well.

Night Watch is a veritable hodgepodge of borrowed stylistic and narrative elements from a number established science fiction and fantasy epics. I don’t suppose this makes it any less of a film, per se, but it did add a skeptical layer to my perception of the film. Mostly I found myself preoccupied with the superficial similarities I saw Night Watch had with some of its American brothers.

The film is essentially The Matrix. Their plots are more or less identical. The opening scene is straight from, like, the second Lord of the Rings, and there’s definitely a little vampire stuff in there, maybe from Interview with a Vampire (I actually don’t know what Twilight even is), but it’s basically a Russian Keanu Reeves, although maybe more expressive (zing! take that, Keanu Reeves), running around in and out of the Matrix, with a small group of “aware” people, engaging in explosive behavior.

This sounds actually kind of good. So, it was pretty good, I suppose. I mean, I won’t pretend that I caught any of the Russian references (actually, no, I will—-

Yeah, I caught, like, most of the Russian references. Pretty funny stuff. Flies over most people’s heads. Not me though.

Anyways, I think, as we’ve discussed in class and in several nice presentations on the films, we’d all maybe enjoy them a bit better if we were Russians. That can’t be helped, so I’m going to give Night Watch the benefit of the doubt. I hope it was more badass for them than Wanted was for us Yanks. That movie dummmb.

On a side note, I just saw The Fall. It’s not Russian, so this plug is dubious at best, but it’s a magnificent, grand directorial indulgence. I’ve never seen anything so ridiculous and wonderful put to film. Everyone go see it now.

Now.

The Return is a daring film. It drags through the mud its likable (enough) characters, two young boys, in a perversion of the typical father-son adventure film. It’s effective, there is no question, but it’s not exactly cheerful. Thematically, however, it makes as powerful a statement on Russian fatherhood as I suspect can be made.

There is undeniable religious imagery and parallel. Symbolic shots echo classic paintings. The “seven day week” is definitely biblical. The father, despite his innumerable failings, is clearly supposed to be a Christlike dude. I find these religious parables to be a little superficial, however, so I don’t think I’ll go into them further.

The film is not a psychological thriller. That is a mischaracterization. Mystery and suspense are the hallmarks of the psychological thriller. Character tends to take a back seat to plot. I’m not denying that the film has its suspenseful moments, or that the father’s motives may be mysterious, but come now. This is no psychological thriller.

Their journey is, in the grand scheme, brief and disastrous. The father-son relationship moves quickly from a wrongfooted beginning to a tragic conclusion, but the boys are not unchanged for the experience. I don’t expect the father wanted to fall off that tower and die, but it would appear that he did manage to impress upon his children the double-edged sword off Russian fatherhood; brief and sporadic, but meaningful and life-altering nonetheless.

The Return features a number of returns: the father’s return home; the sense of “returning to nature” that seems to embody their journey to the island; the return of the boys from their tragic week with their father. The meaning and depth of these “returns” have, I think, far-reaching implications, particularly I’d assume from a Russian standing, and I wouldn’t be so quick to question the personal reaction on visceral response of each individual viewer. The film, I’m sure, will affect people in very different ways.

One thing for sure, however, is that the film’s meaning and significance come from its characters and their muddled and tragic relationship, not from psychological thrills or cinematic flair. The cinematography is unquestionably beautiful, but it does more to complement the viewer’s journey and subsequent return of watching the film than it does manipulate the viewer’s opinions. There is no trickery here, just a sad tale of a failed reunion of father and sons. We may speculate as to their motives, or if they have really “changed” by the film’s conclusion. But that would be mere speculation, and nothing more.

The Cuckoo is an excellent film. It breaks many of the conventions of film (particularly dialogue conventions) while masterfully dodging those pitfalls commonplace in so many a genre-bending experiment. Take a look at the film’s structure, plot, and characters, and you’ll find that:

• The Cuckoo’s first act contains virtually no dialogue whatsoever.
• The Cuckoo has only three major characters.
• The Cuckoo only vaguely defines its characters beyond their military roles (for a reason, I’d wager).
• The Cuckoo’s setting consists of about one shot location.
• The Cuckoo’s characters literally cannot carry on a conversation with one another due to the language barrier.

Yet The Cuckoo is enormously entertaining. The film lightly dances around the classic war-movie themes of violence, prejudice, isolation, abandonment, and confusion in delightful subversion of expectation. The first act does much to highlight this contrast. The first twenty minutes are cold and devoid of dialogue, depicting the only major scene of violence in the film. The viewer is placated: here we have another movie about the horror and injustice of war. It’s easy to find security in convention, even convention so jarring as violence, so it’s all the more effective when the film decides some slapstick comedy of misunderstanding is in order.

I’d wager the filmmakers want you to make assumptions about its characters. A gruff Russian soldier. A young axis soldier. A lone woman who has lost her husband. Their initially vague characterization draws the viewer to posit stereotype, and when the film ignores the stereotype, you’re forced to reevaluate your assumption of them and possibly of the war itself.

None of the characters can talk to each other, but they do anyways. Communication beyond language occurs, and while much of the film’s humor is results from miscommunication, character development, change, and real epiphany (sort of) comes through in the rare but poignant moments of real understanding.

The Cuckoo is a wonderful play on viewer expectations. It’s evaluation of war is no less important or truthful than the traditional war film, but its treatment of its characters is a refreshing break from the norm. Its a wonder a film with so few characters and such little communicative dialogue isn’t a boring failure. It’s even more of wonder that the film rises above mere comedy to real excellence.

“Brother” gave me something to think about. Not a lot, mind you, but something.

The film itself I found to be relatively unremarkable. Bodrov’s inexperience lent itself well to his earlier performance in “Prisoner of the Mountains;” not so with “Brother.” Bodrov isn’t dreadful by any means, but he has trouble maintaining consistence of character. While he makes a convincing youth in a record store, Bodrov’s deadly one-man-unstoppable-gangster-army persona needs some work. That being said, I don’t believe a more experienced actor would’ve elevated the movie far beyond its lot.

Danila is a sometimes likable guy. In between wasting faceless gangsters gunning for his brother Viktor’s life, Danila mostly just listens to a band called Nautilus, goes to Nautilus concerts, watches Nautilus concert tapes and asks the local record store if they have any Nautilus. It is with his oddly conceived relationship with Sveta, who is some sort of tram driver, that Danila becomes rather unsympathetic. Sveta’s husband is abusive, to be sure, but Danila’s reckless banishment of the man from her house is irresponsible and ill conceived. Danila, it transpires, is almost consistently the indirect source of the continuing insult and harm that befalls Sveta, and she rightly forsakes him at the film’s close.

Enough about all that. When it comes down to it, I rather think “Brother” fancies itself a cleverly executed mix of action and social commentary. Without being too broad and keeping in mind that I know precisely nothing about ’90s Russian society (beyond what we’ve learned in class and what the film provides), I’d venture the film fails on both counts. Low budget doesn’t have to equal amateurish action scenes, recycled gangster movie tropes and poor characterization. Danila’s relationship with Nemets, the German, is interesting, but relatively undeveloped. Their short, philosophical back-and-forths about “what’s good for a Russian being bad for a German” seem hint at certain facets of the post-Soviet atmosphere, and the apathy of the youth is well portrayed. Danila is more convincing as one of them, constantly listening to music and looking for “a good time,” than he is as the out-of-town gangster killer. I don’t really buy that his carefully dispensed bursts of violence on a few gangsters under the employ of a disreputable crook by the name of Krugly count as significant or even remotely important in the fight against corruption in the big cities. I gather there’s a sequel, though, so maybe Danila’s exploits in Moscow, as the ending implies, are more noteworthy.

This review has been far more unfocused than I intended. All this, sort of, brings me to my long belayed point, however. Why am I being so harsh on this film? That was my first thought, leaving the screening, and I can’t really shake it. Given a few days to consider the matter, however, and I think I’ve postulated a theory: (ahem) I submit that I expect too much from foreign films, simply because they are foreign. I think I’ve subconscously trained myself to do so, and I think I had better stop. It is certainly the folly of a reviewer who thinks everything made oustide of Hollywood is implicitly better for it. I still feel “Brother” is a pretty tired genre exercise, but I don’t think that should have stopped me from enjoying it on its level, as I might have if it were an American film.

I guess it gave me more to think about than I’d realized.

Tolyan is not, of course, Joseph Stalin’s son. Not, at least, in the sense conveyed to the young and awestruck Sanya by his new found “father.” The forlorn and hopeless state of post-war Russia, so expertly portrayed in Pavel Chukhrai’s “The Thief,” is instead the visible fruit of Stalin’s paternity. Yet Tolyan’s claim is still significant; the budding complexity of Sanya’s relationship with the gruff and disreputable crook, so rooted in meaning, begins here. For while it is certainly true that Sanya resents the thieving nature of his new, for lack of a term, father, his clear admiration and even love for the dispassionate usurper of his mother’s affection is just as profound. Indeed the visions of Sanya’s deceased father that so often plagued the young boy at the beginning of the film seem to lessen and, in the end, vanish, as Tolyan’s influence takes hold and Sanya, in his own words, finally “betrays his father.”

There is no shortage of despair, it seems, in post-war Russia. The dilapidated boarding houses that have the misfortune of housing Tolyan and his “family” are, along with their meager inhabitants, to this sad fact a true testament. These poor souls spend their hard-earned wages, scanter even than they that earn them, drinking away their troubles, toasting Stalin whilst suffering in the world he has created. Tolyan, Stalin’s tattoo displayed proudly on his chest, drinks with them, bolstering their spirits with generous gifts while robbing them blind.

Sanya is not entirely blind to this fact. Young as he is, the boy perceives that his nomadic existence is due solely to his thieving pseudo-dad. There is a boyish romanticism, however, that injects a kind of stalwart heroism into Sanya’s perception of Tolyan. The young actor portraying Sanya lends a remarkable layer of depth to his character in this respect. We, as viewers, can see the young boy’s struggle; he so very much wants to believe that Tolyan is indeed a soldier on a secret mission, that his petty thieving is naught but a guise for some grand mission for the great father of Russia. With this in mind, the movie’s conclusion is that much more telling and sad. Tolyan, reduced finally in the eyes of Sanya to the drunken con-artist he really is, seems a pathetic, destructive monster. As Tolyan is but a man, Sanya can kill him, of course, and he does. But what does he have to show for it? The boy is left alone, without a mother or a father, despairing in the truth that he has betrayed his biological father, whose appearance he can no longer recall, while idolizing this wretch of a human being, from whom his suffering is a direct result.

As the narrative comes to a close, the significance of the film’s parallels become clear. The not entirely unexpected nature of the conclusion makes it, I feel, all the more poignant. We know Tolyan, like Stalin, is in many ways despicable. Sanya and the people of Russia seem to live in denial of these facts, but their inevitable realization and consequence is heartbreaking. Sanya sees Tolyan for what he really is, and his boyish romanticism dies with Tolyan. The people of Russia in turn must either toast Stalin and continue harboring their romantic notions of the great father of Russia, or, like Sanya, cast off his influence and, like Sanya, embrace the truly incomprehensible hopelessness and despair that follows the death of such notions.

It’s a little depressing.