Contemporary Russian Cinema

Brother ... very fine bordering-on-brilliant crime comedy from '97. 20-yo soldier returns from Chechen war, finds work thru his brother as a hitman in St. Pete.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118767/

director Balabanov also made the recent, even darker Cargo 200

did anyone see this? i saw and quite liked the return when it was out, and then i think this passed me by somehow.. sight and sound review here.

this is fun (ilya khrjanovsky's 4).

yes, Cargo 200 was the best Russian film I've seen since 4.

Thought Cargo 200 was excellent as well

RIP, only 54

http://www.fandor.com/blog/daily-alexey-balabanov-1959-2013

I saw that. So sad. I actually caught up with his last few (except the most recent), which didn't get any kind of US release--thank god for t*rrent sites and custom subtitles. They were pretty brutal to a one, but brilliant.

Apparently he'd been very sick (with what nobody seems to say) for a long time, and was aware he might not get to make another film. :(

director/writer and star of "brother" (one of the best movies of the 90s IMO) are both dead now, both very young.

That's so sad. Brat is a classic.

Looks like AB's last film? In Brooklyn this weekend.

http://www.bam.org/film/2013/me-too

have only seen brat/brat2, should get ahold of the other stuff. had no idea he had died! that's awful. fuck russian life expectancies.

also see that link if anyone can recommend others in the series (eg Lonitsa)

Took two years for Sokurov's Faust to get US distrib. I'm not crazy about it.

http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/faust-2011

I enjoyed it more than you did, though it's too cold to really love, I suppose. But, it has a sort of manic energy I've not seen from him in a while. And those heavy layers of "busyness" (the babble and allusion and slanted, mirror shots) cast an appropriately disconcerting pall, besides being more or less his trademark. Have you liked previous Sokurovs?

Not many... I suppose Russian Ark and Mother and Son. We never got those Lenin and Hitler films!?

sometimes it was so "manic" i just wanted to yell SHUT UP

I did not like the Lenin and Hitler films, much preferred The Sun. Nor was I particularly fond of Russian Ark and Mother and Son. I like his weirder stuff, like Mournful Unconcern, Days of Eclipse and Father and Son. It's like, I don't think his themes actually add up to much, so I like the more inscrutable stuff. I've been thinking about the idea of Hitler as a 'Moloch', though, there is something interesting in that.

Remember how offended he was that ppl thought Father and Son was gay as all hell? I saw someone online describe it as "his misunderstood paean to homosexuality."

sometimes it was so "manic" i just wanted to yell SHUT UP

Haha! For me, that was Save and Protect.

Frederik B, I like the weirder ones more, too, but Russian Ark and Mother and Son are still pretty neat. Morbs, Moloch is good, and it's available on Netflix.

Remember how offended he was that ppl thought Father and Son was gay as all hell? I saw someone online describe it as "his misunderstood paean to homosexuality."

― eclectic husbandry (Dr Morbius), 12. november 2013 21:10 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, his politics are... iffy at best. The Russian aristocracy mournfully descending the stairs for the final time is... not good, no matter how bad what followed them turned out to be.

he's been talking up Putin's role in the making of Faust

ask a film festival maven and they will have some anecdotes about sokurov

ive not watched vat i syn but when he says that he probably doesnt do so because he is blithely unaware of the erotic valence of his films, see also his infatuation with military life among other things

yeah i can see why he and the new version of Kathryn Bigelow share fans.

sokurov isn't really the kind of director where you are likely to appreciate all of his films equally or even at all. some of his films are among the most overwhelming experiences i've had in cinemas, others left me totally cold (i kind of put faust in that category), still others are equal parts banal/risible and awe-inspiring. it's really hard to predict what his next film might look like, much less be about.

that blu-ray of whispering pages is urgent & key. warning: if you have a big enough screen, it will probably make you seasick. in the most impressive way.

sergei loznitsa is a contemporary russian director i can get behind. i'm watching his documentaries lately, they are quite varied, some are these intimate, small-scale formal exercises that nonetheless breathe with an almost otherwordly compassion, others are these larger-scale found-footage quasi-statements.

The Russian aristocracy mournfully descending the stairs for the final time is... not good, no matter how bad what followed them turned out to be.

Not really fair. It's not mournful, just a quiet 'party over' feeling; less commentary than fact. The film as a whole is about loss -- not of eras or systems of rule, but of understanding. When the young man stares at the El Greco, it's not Christianity he's missing, but a sense of connectedness to history that could have helped him understand the past.

that blu-ray of whispering pages is urgent & key.

This, yes. Absolutely.

i think your reading is closer to the mark, but i wouldn't discount sokurov's distinctive paradox: he is a great experimenter with film form, but he does so in the name of returning film to the capabilities and sensibilities of 19th-century painting. he has said he doesn't consider film aesthetically evolved enough to be considered an art form (!).

there's a longing for the past in his films that's both aesthetic and political--i don't think the two can be separated so easily. his attitudes sometimes dovetail with a number of odious strains of russian politics. he is also impossibly self-serious in a good old tradition of russian artistic visionaries.

Not really fair. It's not mournful, just a quiet 'party over' feeling; less commentary than fact. The film as a whole is about loss -- not of eras or systems of rule, but of understanding. When the young man stares at the El Greco, it's not Christianity he's missing, but a sense of connectedness to history that could have helped him understand the past.

I just don't think it's okay to show a 'party over' feeling from a corrupt and morally bankrupt class, which enslaved the rest of the population for centuries, and in it's final fifteen years sent young Russians into two disastrous and imcompetently lead wars. It's like being wistful for the antebellum period, you might talk about it being about understanding, but I don't think it matters.

he has said he doesn't consider film aesthetically evolved enough to be considered an art form (!).

He says a lot of crazy things, but he obviously believes he is making art. "Impossibly self-serious" is really otm, though, haha.

I just don't think it's okay to show a 'party over' feeling from a corrupt and morally bankrupt class

That almost rules out any nostalgia ever, though. Have you seen his The Second Circle or Muratova's The Asthenic Syndrome? I think he's reacting to a particular moment in history, a sense of bleakness I have no experience with, so I'm inclined to cut him some slack.

he obviously believes he is making art

it probably depends on which day you ask him, but i'm not even so sure about that. he's a weird dude.

i was just thinking that non-russians still have the same, few reference points for russian culture... the DVD of sergei loznitsa docs I just got refers to _both_ tolstoy and dostoevsky in the process of trying to describe the films. i do wonder why more humorous russian directors don't often appear on the festival circuit... i guess aleksei balabanov used a lot of black humor.

I just don't think it's okay to show a 'party over' feeling from a corrupt and morally bankrupt class

That almost rules out any nostalgia ever, though. Have you seen his The Second Circle or Muratova's The Asthenic Syndrome? I think he's reacting to a particular moment in history, a sense of bleakness I have no experience with, so I'm inclined to cut him some slack.

― Cherish, 13. november 2013 14:40 (54 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I've seen Second Circle, and it's another one of those I don't really care for, though I would say anyone interested in Sokurov should see it. Can't really see what it has to do with this? And I don't really think it rules out nostalgia, it can still be done. Nostalgia for wise landowners like Tolstoy or Levin, sure. Wrongheaded, but I get the impulse. But the aristocracy before the revolution is just nothing to be wistful about. Like, you can make a wistful film about the glory of the english royalty, but don't use Henry VIII... So yeah, my comment about serfitude might be off the mark.

@ amateurist: There's some slapstick in Sokurovs early films, and it's just really weird and unfunny... I have a friend who studied Russian, and she told me Russian comedy was pretty much like that. In general, comedies don't do well across borders, I think.

Can't really see what it has to do with this?

I think it encapsulates his disenchantment (to the point of despair) with the contemporary situation, which helps explain (if not justify) his nostalgia for 19th century art.

Mournful Unconcern is the strangest "comedy" ever made, like Monty Python run through an internet translator. I didn't laugh, but I was certainly entertained.

There's some slapstick in Sokurovs early films

do you mean stuff like anaestesia dolorosa? yeah, the "humor" in that is pretty hard to take. actually the film is pretty hard to take in general.

I just don't think it's okay to show a 'party over' feeling from a corrupt and morally bankrupt class, which enslaved the rest of the population for centuries

compare to The Leopard?

I would say it's more okay in The Leopard, since the count is shown to be fully aware of the instability of his position, and the film takes it's time to portray his successors, as both youthfull and energetic, but also more or less the same as the class they are suplanting, in support of it's theme of 'the more things change, the more they stay the same'. It's a film about natural evolution. There is not this sense of rupture, that I get from Russian Ark (the only glimpse of history after the revolution is the dark chamber with the snapshot of a siege, which clearly feels as if it doesn't belong in the ark).

Can't really see what [Second Circle] has to do with this?

I think it encapsulates his disenchantment (to the point of despair) with the contemporary situation, which helps explain (if not justify) his nostalgia for 19th century art.

I would say there is a pretty major difference between 1990 and 2002. Despairing about the 'contemporary situation' in 1990 (which, honestly, I don't think he did, I think Second Circle is about something else) means something very different. Really, he seems like a hardcore conservative, and as such, he must be more and more happy with developments in Russia...

The weirdest instance of slapstick is some scenes in Days of Eclipse. Especially this weird jump that the main character does. Also, I fully thought that film was about a homosexual relationship when I saw it, but apparantly it's about angels...

Hm, a comparative analysis of Visconti and Sokurov could be really enlightening, now that I think about it. I really like the reading of Visconti that Deleuze gives, as being about degrading crystal-images, you could probably say the same about a lot of Sokurov.

he seems like a hardcore conservative

I don't get this impression, or rather I don't know how one would presume to know...

haha "the crystal image" I always felt that deleuze's film-categories were just rephrasings of conventional wisdom set into an incredibly pretentious philosophical project

He is buddies with Putin, he's wistful about the aristocracy, he gets really angry about homosexuality, his interest in history is about great men... It seems pretty conservative to me?

Really, he seems like a hardcore conservative, and as such, he must be more and more happy with developments in Russia...

Yikes. I really don't think that's fair. His preoccupations are art and humanism and spirituality, to the exclusion of everything else, I'd say. But, I guess I read his films pretty differently than you do.

he gets really angry about homosexuality

...between fathers and sons though!? I think his anger was mostly about being misinterpreted.

And, I do think there are moments of humor in almost all his films. Not laugh-out-loud comedy, but more along the lines of irreverence, and tweaking our expectations.

yeah, alexandra had some pleasant humor i guess.

there is funny stuff in Faust, starting with the innards sliding out of a cadaver.

Yeah, I think S was objecting mostly on grounds of suggestion of incest.

Yeah, Faust is practically slapstick. The devil going for a swim, jumping up on the altar... Sokurov's sense of humor has always been pretty dark, though.

@ cherish: I also think we read the situation in Russia quite differently. Like, so many people are aplauding the reactionary turn the country has taken, including before his death people like Solsjenitsyn. I don't think it's in any way yikes-worthy to claim a guy like Sokurov, who has been quite chummy with Putin lately, is a conservative. I would say it's way more likely than not. Obviously though, I'm not an expert, though I have discussed this with Russian friends, but as they have left the country in disgust, they might be pretty biased. And obviously, Sokurov being a conservative doesn't take away from him being a really interesting filmmaker.

Glad-handing the powers that be to get your movies made doesn't mean much, surely. Lenfilm is private now, of course, but I'd hate to have to negotiate funding for anything in Russia today. I prefer to look for his politics/philosophy in his films, and there's loads of room for interpretation there, obviously.

he certainly doesn't look any worse than nikita fucking mikhalkov...

I guess Michael Atkinson's bite is the one to beat for Faust: "The film has the lingering feel of being dry-hump-assaulted by an unwashed psychotic."

(he likes it)

Haha! I don't disagree.

Glad-handing the powers that be to get your movies made doesn't mean much, surely. Lenfilm is private now, of course, but I'd hate to have to negotiate funding for anything in Russia today. I prefer to look for his politics/philosophy in his films, and there's loads of room for interpretation there, obviously.

― Cherish, 13. november 2013 18:13 (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

But the thing is, he was well above glad-handling in the sovjet days. Back then he was principled and suffered censorship and delays. I don't think it's wrong to ask what has changed, and in concoction with his films I'd say the simple answer is that he is content with the new reactionary regime. As is a lot of people, it's not a dictatorship per se.

I admit I don't know that much about Russia, but somehow I doubt that kissing ass is all it would have taken in the old days. Maybe I'm biased because I love his films; I should probably leave the politics to others.

Oh, I love his films as well! As a whole, I mean, different films and parts of films I don't much care for. His politics as I see them don't disqualify him for me, at all. I just think it's worth pointing out. Also, I can't help but feel he would probably be able to work more with international funding. Apparantly, his producer Andrey Sigle is also the composer on his latest films, and I would guess a lot of blame for the compromises Sokurov makes could go his way. Sokurov himself probably doesn't decide what money to take anymore... If people are interested, a review that delves into the political questions can be found here: tativille.blogspot.com/2011/11/special-to-tativille-sokurov-waltz.html Not that I agree with it all, or even most of it, especially I can't see what Ribbentrop/Molotov has to do with it...

So, by making a movie about Faust's pact with the devil, Sokurov is admitting to his own pact with Putin? Haha. That's an interesting article -- the author has a great appreciation for Sokurov's visual sense, but not for his sound, apparently. I question the "blame" he lays on Sigle, though. I watched an interview on the Moloch DVD where Sokurov says, "The picture is my legs. The soundtrack is my heart and soul," so it's reasonable to assume he retains control no matter who he works with. I see that Sigle also works with Lopushansky, another big favorite of mine. (And hardly evidence of major political connections?)

I thought almost all of sokurov's films since early-mid 90s were international co-productions. didn't faust get a lot of japanese money?

that tativille blog is the worst.

Let me guess: It's commonsensical points in a pretentious framework? It's really bad at politics though.

Yeah, he has made international co-productions. The Sun got money from a lot of different places. The point is that I can't see why he has to kiss up to Putin if he felt uncomftable doing so.

By the way, I've been reading more and I think the accusation that he's been "chummy with Putin" is unfounded. I found an awkward official interview where Putin congratulated him for his Golden Lion and Sokurov lobbied for the preservation of Lenfilm. And this article talks about the financing angle:

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/nov/14/aleksandr-sokurov-faust

Look, this story isn't good:

He was preparing Faust, his most expensive film, just when the economic downturn struck, and couldn't find funding. But a surprise saviour stepped in: Vladimir Putin. Sokurov met Putin at the Russian PM's country residence. "I told him, if I don't have this opportunity to make this film, it will never happen. A few days later, I was told that the amount I needed was going to be allocated. How and why it happened I don't know. Maybe because he has a very clear idea of German culture and history. I don't think it was because of me. I've never demonstrated my loyalty to his party."

He goes to Putin's country residence and asks for money, and gets it a few days later, apparantly circumventing the entire film-fund structure. Maybe 'chummy' isn't as good a word as 'corrupt'. Compare with this talk about totalitarian regimes:

"The totalitarian state doesn't have the objective of destroying artists but of making them submit to its influence," he says. "Dozens of artists gave up and did what was expected of them. There were not many who resisted. But I kept on fighting. It's happy to play cat and mouse with artists, up to a point."

So how is he fighting this time? Or is Putin's Russia not a totalitarian regime? New stories from it's film financing does paint a worrisome picture:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/russian-film-body-denies-funds-594877
http://variety.com/2012/film/news/russia-culture-ministry-abruptly-takes-over-film-funding-1118062603/

These stories are from after Faust, and he is apparantly making a new film at the moment. But if he keeps on being silent about the developments, and accepts state-money from outside the financing system, then I would not think twice about describing him as 'chummy'.

I never meant to suggest that it's not a thoroughly corrupt system. I think even your phrase "film-fund structure" might be overly optimistic. I don't envy anyone trying to negotiate that sea of politics and mob money. The difference between the two quotes you pulled out, though, is that no one (as far as I can tell) tried to change the content of Faust in exchange for the money. And, yes, those articles you link to sound like that still happens (or, is starting to happen again). But a quick search does turn up mentions of Sokurov protesting the system in the recent past, and I would hope he will continue to do so.

US Faust roundup:

http://www.fandor.com/blog/daily-alexander-sokurovs-faust

Only got to one in the Balabanov retro that ends in NY tonight, The Stoker, which is pretty spare and unforgiving even for him. Anyone seen The War (Chechnya, apparently quite nationalist)?

sort of contemporary (still living and working), tho a Georgian native... anyone know Marlen Khutsiev?

http://www.moma.org/calendar/film/3603?locale=en