Just another FYSP 113 weblog

Wow, a reel live happy ending.

As a romantic comedy,  Piter FM fulfills all the requirements, warming the hearts of the audience, but still providing that moment of suspense when it is momentarily unclear whether or not Masha and Maxim will ever find each other.  Despite the movie’s somewhat low brow genre and plot, there seem to be innumerable similarities between Piter FM and Land of the Deaf.  Not only do they look stylistically alike, but the characters have parallel relationships.  They both show bright, populated city streets, where chance meetings frequently occur; they both focus on female duos, both of whom have unstoppable goddess-like power; and they both feature a man who doesn’t fully appreciate or understand the woman he is so lucky to have.

On top of all this, the characters in both of these films find themselves primarily concerned with sound in everyday life.  The audience is asked the same question again and again:  How does a voice affect our image of a person?  How do noise and music change people’s characters?

Even though Land of the Deaf was an art-house film and Piter FM was a well publicized box office movie, they end up drawing attention to the same elements of bustling city life.

I think I might want to do my final paper on this comparison.  What do you think, Arlene?

Well, this might be the most depressing movie we’ve seen up to date and that’s saying a lot.  I’m not really sure I understood it, but I loved it.

Alive seems to deal with war in a similar fashion to Prisoners; although the former is more brutal, both films primarily deal with the effects of war on the human psyche.

Can someone explain the role of Chechnya?  Why did this have to take place during the Chechen War?

If there were ever a film to be called beluxa, it would be The Italian.  Although there are many parallels between this movie and The Thief, their abrupt endings put them on opposite ends of the spectrum.  The ending of The Italian almost seems too idyllic to be believable, in the same way that the ending of The Thief seems too cruel.

I’ve been thinking about the significance of the shots taken through windshields and dirty windows.  Both the audience and the characters have clouded visions and impeded views, although the viewer is able to see all the different perspectives represented in the film.  We see the biased perceptions of a jaded adult’s point of view as well as an optimistic child’s.  Nobody can clearly see the reasons for Vanya’s decision to leave, and Vanya can’t fully understand why everyone else thinks his journey to find his mother is hopeless. In a lager sense, we see the mindset of the nineties (or rather, the Soviet mindset) rejected by a new generation in favor of a more optimistic, almost fairy-tale-like positivity.

Neat piece of trivia:  Andrei Kravchuk started out as a documentary film maker.  With his keen ability to manipulate an audience, I am not at all surprised.

I love the opening scene of The Return, and the themes that it establishes.  Right off the bat we see Ivan’s unwillingness to believe and to cooperate simply because “everyone else” does.  It’s the literal image of the saying, “if [your father] told you to jump off a bridge, would you do it?”

So I have no idea what I want to do for my paper, but of all the movies we’ve seen in class, my favorite has been the land of the deaf.  I definitely want to see more of his films at some point.  Maybe I could do something on the Lover?

What is the significance of Anni’s name actually being Cuckoo? What does she have in common with an involuntary sniper?

She does seem to be condemned to her simple life. Even though she wants companionship, she’s unable to follow either of men out of the woods; there are too many cultural and lingual barriers keeping her in her little cottage, alone.

This is a little on the cheesy side, but Anni’s a sniper in the way that Cupid’s a sniper. She spears the heart of the Russian and hooks these two men into her way of life. They end up staying with her much longer than they originally intend to.

I’ve been thinking about who the protagonist of this film is.  Who’s story are we hearing?  Rita’s or Yaya’s?  In “Russia on Reels,” Birgit Beumer says that the heroine is Yaya, but the review we’re reading for Tuesday claims that it’s Rita whom the movie follows.  What an interesting and awkward dynamic to have two lead roles of the same sex.  I can’t help but think of “Waiting for Godot,” where Beckett purposefully tries to make his audience uncomfortable and anxious by having just two men on stage for a significant amount of time.  When another person enters, both the audience and the characters are grateful for the distraction.  This just makes me think of Alyosha, the disruption that in some ways the girls are grateful for, because they’ve been waiting for their exciting new friendship to collapse.

Really neither of these women are the focus of the movie; their relationship to each other is.  In the end, that’s the only thing that is still intact.  The men are gone, as well as the side of Rita that could hear.  All that’s left is whatever was between Rita and Yaya that made the land of the deaf.

Horton’s review of “Brat” was harsh and unfair.  I think he misses the point of the movie when he calls it an “adolescent film with an artificial view of modern Russian life.”  It’s a criminal action film; it wants to be first and foremost entertaining, which it most certainly is.     Balabanov is not trying to make an epic movie; he’s not trying to change St. Petersburg with his work.  He just wants to show the backbone of the city through the eyes of Danila for whom everything is much simpler, arbitraily black or white.

There is, however, more subtlety to this film than Horton gives credit for; many subjects are touched upon and implicitly discussed.    If the movie is from Danila’s point of view, the racism and sexism of St. Petersburg can never be discussed in great depth, because Danila just isn’t that deep a guy.  The audience has to view these topics as he does, floating through the background.