Keep ‘Hold of Your Hat:

Alive really wasn’t what I was expecting.  When it was mentioned in class that the next (couple?) films on the Chechen wars would be different from the others we’d seen, I was expecting something like Balabonov’s War.  Okay, well, certainly not so extreme, and I haven’t seen War but it came up in a lot of my research and I don’t think I ever want to see it… but I was still expecting something a little more pro-war or pro-Russia or something…

Not that Alive was entirely anti-war, either.  It was actually interesting to see a movie that didn’t really have a stance on things.  There were parts where the Chechens were slandered, but there were also times where they were complimented, and the directors sort of distinguished between terrorists and Muslims by having a Muslim as one of Kir’s deceased buddies… There were parts where the war was seen as necessary, and some parts that showed the less savory parts of war.  Igor, Nikich, and Kir didn’t always agree on any particular thing, and the dialogue exchanges between the three concerning the war and why they were fighting really blurred the film’s stance on war.

Also, when any of the really difficult questions concerning Chechnya and life came up, Igor would respond with “Ask me something else…”  That response added greatly to the ambiguity of the film, but also to the fact that, for any particularly difficult question, there really isn’t one answer or even a right answer.

So, like, as much as I really enjoy anti-war films by principle (and especially if they feature attractive actors, mmmhm), I thought that the discourse on the war throughout Alive was more real than any film with strict conservative or liberal interpretations of the war…

Oh, and just as a little side-note:  I really liked the soundtrack.

…for my paper, I read an article by Hayden White about whether or not history presented on film (what he calls “historiophoty”) could be considered on par with written history (historiography) as far as discourse goes.  I’m not sure it’s a valid argument to make, but, some book I read was talking about how films were more difficult to censor than the written word, so Soviet directors actually had more wiggle room with history than actual historians, and I think the whole director as historian trend has continued into recent Russian cinema… I mean, I found an interview with Aleksandr Rogozhkin (through an article I read on Kukushka and House of Fools) where he pretty much says that he considers himself a historian of sorts.  I mean, based on the two movies I’m looking into, it would seem that directors are still very much illustrating history for their viewers, especially the history of war…

I guess the question is whether or not it can still be a valid source of history, rather than just entertainment, and I’m not sure I have an answer or that I’ll ever find one…. just something I was thinking about while we were watching the trailer for Admiral Kolchak…

In other news, I still don’t have a thesis and I’m not sure if I’ll be finished by Friday, but I suppose I’m just going to have to grit my teeth and hope I make it out alive…

(PS: If you’re interested in White’s article, you can find it on JSTOR.  It’s called Historiography and Historiophoty and it’s a response to Rosenstone’s article on the same topic in the same volume of the same journal… it’s not exactly riveting, but it’s still pretty cool.)

ETA:  Not that Soviet war films weren’t for entertainment, just that they had more historical value given the extreme censorship and manipulation of history during that period…?

ETAII:  Then again… since there’s the whole liberal interpretation of war (that it’s bad stuff) and the more conservative interpretation (that it’s necessary for the betterment of the nation) splitting the genre of Russian war films in two, you kind of get a more varied discourse–more what historical discourse is supposed to be…?  Maybe?

Obviously, I know exactly what I’m doing. :p

Thought I’d probably chose to abstain from a second viewing of Night Watch, it did bring me blissfully back to the days when, for lack of anything else to do on Friday nights, mom and I would cuddle on the couch and watch Moonlight on CBS, an activity we rarely admitted to in public.  A lot of the vampire effects were pretty similar, like the pulsing veins and the sped up actions and stuff like that.  There were a lot of LOTR/Matrix-esque elements to the movie, also… except, for some reason, I found it kinda hard to willingly suspend my disbelief during this movie, which made a lot of the flashlight of doom, writhing on the floor, screaming for no reason scenes seem a little ridiculous…

Another thing I noticed, comparing this to Interview with a Vampire (obviously much older, but equally ridiculous, in my opinion) and Moonlight (and even–dare I say it?–Twilight), the conflict wasn’t really, “Oh, I’m a vampire, but I don’t really want to be a vampire, so I’m going to drink the blood of rats or donated blood from the blood bank or what have you, but I’m not going to kill anyone because killing is bad,” versus some other character (be it friend or foe or both) trying to get the protagonist to accept vampirism.  So… when I hear “vampire movie,” that’s really what I expect.  I thought it was interesting that Night Watch didn’t really have any of this (for better or for worse; sometimes the dynamic between the reluctant vampire and the enthusiastic blood-sucker makes for more developed characters), but I’m not sure if that’s what makes it more a Russian film than a film from Russia trying to look American?

I also noticed that Night Watch didn’t really bother trying to give every character an ending (or even a story), while Mars really tried hard to touch base with every character before closing.  I don’t know if that means anything, but Happy Election Day, everyone!

House of Fools (2003) advertises on its cover a quote from some guy at the Chicago Tribune, claiming that it is One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest “reimagined”.  I don’t really think that’s fair to either story.  I knew that House of Fools was an anti-war movie through things I’d read online, so I knew that it wasn’t going to be exactly the same as Kesey’s novel, but I still began the experience with certain expectations.  (Don’t as me to enumerate them now; I’ve forgotten them entirely; I just remember that they were there.)  Really, the only similarities I saw between the two stories were the mental patients.  Both were trying to further an entirely different message, and that led to some pretty major differences.  Kesey’s novel was really not a story about war (unless you count the war between the patients and the staff).  In the same vein, you see very little patient-staff interaction (only towards the beginning at at the end) in House of Fools, because it’s about the Chechen war, and not-so-much about treatment of mental patients.  So, Mr. Michael Wilmingtom of the Chicago Tribune:  I don’t think it’s a fair comparrison.  Not because one movie was better than another, but because they’re completely different animals.

I don’t know.  And one could also say that One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a western reference, but it’s actually relevant in this context, because (apparently) the director of House of Fools lived/lives in America a lot.

Just a little bit of thought over fall break…

I watched both of Rogozhkin’s Peculiarities films yesterday, and once I got over the fact that they’re dubbed (which was hard during the German and English parts because I wanted to hear what they were actually saying), it was a wonderful experience.  I don’t quite know what I could write about yet, especially if I’m to put them in a paper with Kukushka.  The Peculiarities seemed to use stereotypes along with linguistic misunderstandings to envoke roaring laughter, and I felt that Kukushka, while keeping the hilarious misunderstandings pretty as they were, took some comedic focus from stereotypes and turned it into a deeper, anti-war sentiment from the characters.  Maybe that’s just because I haven’t seen it in a week or so, something I plan on remedying soon.

As far as a potential research topic goes… er… I don’t know?

“The language of friendship is not words, but meanings.”  I came across this quote, strangely enough, scribbled in the margins of my economics textbook, and, since I (naturally) enjoyed Cuckoo (2002) much more than I enjoyed studying for my exam, that is instantly where my mind strayed.  I’m pretty sure it’s a quote from either Emerson or Thoreau, so it’s probably only relevant to my personal experience with the film, as a Western viewer, but I really think it relates, even if indirectly.  No matter how many words Ivan and Veikko and Anni exchanged, they never really understood each other… and they were eventually linked, not by a common language, but by a common distaste for fighting and war…

I don’t know…  Language seems to have played a pretty major role in a lot of what we’ve seen… in Prisoner of the Mountains and Land of the Deaf, at least… so I just thought this quote (as Western as it is) kind of ties in…

Back to Cuckoo… I’ve really been meaning to get to the library so I can watch it again.  I really enjoyed it, and I think I want to do something with another of Rogozhkin’s comedies for my research project, but I’d have no idea where to start.  I suppose this is where Google comes in handy, but I honestly wouldn’t even know what to look for…

Confusion reigns, but it shall be conquered, and I think it’s time for a snack.

Chowder, all.

Today in class, we discussed Land of the Deaf (1998), and I didn’t really have much to say.  I have this problem where, when I watch movies, I watch them like I eat cookies.  One second they’re on a plate to cool, and the next you’re all wondering where the all the delicious morsels have gone.  That’s really it.  Very little thought goes into the process outside of, “These are magnificent!”  Or, in the case of some cookies I tasted recently, “These taste like shampoo.”

But!  Just as there is some thought to cookie-devouring, I have a few, possibly insignificant things to say about the film that stood out for me.  One being the journey (for lack of a better word?) of the deaf in the story.  The Western films I have seen regarding the deaf (and these are very few, mind you) are usually chronicling some sort of “growing up with adversity, but overcoming all odds to do something great,” feel-good, love-conquers-all types of stories (particularly Sweet Nothing in my Ear, which aired on CBS this summer).  However, in Land of the Deaf, Yaya (and the other deaf people) are already grown and have already learned to deal with their inability to hear, and so deafness isn’t always portrayed as a disability.  Currently, there are some politics between hearing people and the deaf over cohicular (sp?) ear implants, and, even though this isn’t a recent film, I thought it was neat that there were times when being deaf wasn’t–oh, my gosh!–the end of the world, and that it was sometimes even better than hearing.  Especially being a product of Russia and the nineties, where (as we saw in Brat [1997]) people with different whatevers were treated pretty poorly…

Granted, there were also times when it was definitely portrayed as being a disadvantage and people definitely discriminated against the deaf…

Finally, and before I quit trying to nail jelly to a tree, just one more thing…  I think there are two sorts of deafness in this film: Yaya’s deafness in the literal sense, and also Rita’s deafness to Alyosha’s flaws.  I was going to talk about the ending, because I don’t think Rita really lost her hearing, or all of it (maily becuase you can still hear birds and they were by the ocean anyway), but I can’t really decide how to say that and sound stunningly intellectual.

Maybe I’ll sleep on it.

Until next time.

Au revoir.

We were talking in class about what makes a Russian film, and it was mentioned that there was always an idea behind those of the nineties, and that usually meant politics.  I saw a lot of the Post-Soviet maldistribution of wealth (even though that is an awfully amgibuous and opinionated term — and it can be argued that there was a maldistribution of the nation’s wealth under Soviet rule, too…) and all of those things that bask in the perfume of capitalism (i.e.: McDonald’s, hip-hop music, even the Hollywood gangster genre of the movie) coming to Russia.  I can point out all of the things that make Brat (1997) a product of the nineties, but I just can’t figure out what it all means.

Though, if I did have to come up with a thesis about this film, I might compare Sergei Bodrov’s look to his look in Prisoner of the Mountains (1996).  I’d say he looked best in the latter, and that perhaps it was the change in hairstyle which prompted this lack of handsome-ness in the more recent film.  Indeed, I think having less hair on his head complements his facial structure, and… Well, you get the picture…

Two-or-so days have passed since I last updated, and I can tell you (with confidence) that I have made some rather marginal steps (but steps they are, indeed!) towards forming a conclusion for our first paper.

1) I know I will (almost without a doubt) be writing about Prisoner of the Mountains

2) I have narrowed it down to two potential topics (and my fingers are crossed that they be approved)

+ I could potentially focus on the decision to cast Bodrov (Jr.) in such a significant role on his first go-around.  As I saw it, his lack of experience (compared to and coupled with the abundance of Menshikov’s) enhanced the junior-senior relationship between Vanya and Sasha.  Could I get three pages out of it?  Probably.  I’m surprisingly good at expanding seemingly minute arguments.

+ I could also (potentially) discuss the changes and additions Bodrov (Sr.) & Co. made to Tolstoy’s story when writing the screenplay, and how they (in my opinion) added immensely to the viewing experience.  This could lead to discussions of some of the rich and wonderful character development that took place in the film and which, in my opinion, was a little static in the original.  I could also talk about the anti-war message of the film in contrast to Tolstoy’s lackthereof.  Could I get three pages out of this?  Most definitely.

It’s not that I didn’t enjoy The Thief, because I really, honestly did.  (I feel like my Christmas list will be dominated by foreign films this year.)  I’m just still trying to unravel a few of its mysteries, whereas I feel like (since we have the Tolstoy story as comparrison) I can more easily form analytical conclusions on Prisoner of the Mountains.

I have to go help with dinner now.  I almost feel like I should apologize for over-using this blog.  Ha ha.

And I don’t mean The Thief (1997).  After a wholesome night of prospie-hosting, Irish dancing, viola playing, a round of Taboo, and the A&E version of Pride & Prejudice, I’ve just awoken with a sore throat and a case of the sniffles.  I still have my fingers crossed for “allergies”, though I should probably just admit that I’m catching a cold and start taking my vitamins.

But I digress.  The purpose of this post, as I understand it,  is for me to post my initial reactions to The Thief, which we watched yesterday afternoon (why does that seem so long ago?).  Honestly, I don’t even know where to begin.  While I can’t say I enjoy being depressed, any flim that evokes enough emotion for misty eyes and side-comments to friends about the gloominess factor of the “Nothing… nothing… nothing…” ending, in my highly untrained opinion, has done its job.

(Note:  Much of the following is a blatant use of the discussion questions.  My apologies.)

Fatherhood is a significant motif throughout the entire film.  Sanya, having no father and being born (quite literally) to the land, becomes the son of his country.  Tolyan, pointing confidently to an oddly-placed tatoo of Stalin (how did they get it under that thick, manly chesthair?), claims he is Stalin’s son.  Obviously, this is a lie, but it does shed some light on Tolyan’s past–a sight we really don’t get to see, as the story is Sanya’s.  I came out of that scene with the impression that Tolyan was raised in a similar situation as Sanya, with the country and its leader as a “father” in the place of an actual, huggable man…

From fatherhood to motherhood: I’m really not sure about Katja.  I don’t think there can ever be a model for the perfect mother (we all make mistakes.), and I don’t think she’s even close to being as outrageous as the media spun Brittney Spears.  It just seemed like, during the film, there were so many times when she had to choose between her infatuation with Tolyan and what would be best for her son… and that she chose Tolyan more often than not, even when she knew (and expressed) that it would hurt Sanya.  I’m not blaming her or anything, and there were times when Tolyan was good for Sanya, but I just don’t understand how she could put him first… especially when her son ranks an easy ten on the scale of all things adorable [see picture].

I probably won’t write about this one, even though I loved it as much as Prisoner of the Mountains (1996).  It would be much easier to just do an analysis on the differences between Tolstoy’s short story and Bodrov & Co.’s screenplay, or maybe the relationship between Vanya and Sasha… There was too much symbolism in The Thief that I’m sure I’m missing.  I just like watching movies.  I don’t like digging for gold in Virginia.  Mainly because I’m terrible at it, and partly because, half the time, I can’t convince myself it really even exists.

I think it’s best I quit now while I’m ahead.  Many thanks to Professor Forman for the Newman-Os.  They were delicious.

[Edited to Add:  The picture was taken from IMDB.  Just to give credit where credit is due.]