CINEMATIC IMPORTS:

The Best Features of New York’s Russian Film Week

By Ester Murdukhayeva

Columbia University

 

As Russian moviegoers become more American in taste, it is increasingly difficult for Russian directors to break through. Though there have been several success stories, notably the truly abominable Night Watch, the top-grossing movie week after week in Russia is an American blockbuster. Even Night Watch, ostensibly homegrown, derived much of its creative and stylistic inspiration from the bewildering Hollywood genre of overhyped movies created by music video directors. “What alarms me is that American films – which are more often than not terrible - are monopolizing the Russian film scene,” stated Alexander Sokurov, one of Russia’s premier directors, at a 2003 Cannes Film Festival press conference.

 

This unfortunate pattern has created a situation where the only available markets for quality Russian films are the European film festivals, which are often more than receptive. Sokurov receives yearly exposure at Cannes, Alexei Zvyagintzev’s The Return, won the 2003 best film award in Venice and Kiril Serebrennikov’s Playing the Victim won the top prize at the inaugural Rome Film Festival this October. And yet, despite respect in Europe, few Russian films have been able to break through in America.

 

“It is sad that Russian movies do not get much attention in America,” Vladimir Vdovichenkov, star of The Seventh Day, one of the movies featured at the 2006 Russian Film Week in New York remarked. “America is the home of modern cinema, and we are making great movies that belong here.” It is the rare contemporary Russian film that is able to be successful in both the domestic and international markets while retaining originality and artistic integrity.

 New York’s Russian Film Week, now in its 6th year, has made a concerted effort to break this cycle. The organizers of this year’s, whose stated goal is to “position this event as a place to find modern Russian films for distribution in the U.S.,” fortunately chose to continue Film Week’s tradition of featuring quality motion pictures which are unmistakably Russian, as opposed to the more manufactured, throwaway Hollywood-style pictures. A notable absence this year is Fyodor Bondarchuk’s Afghan War epic The 9th Company that was selected as Russia’s entry into the competition for Best Foreign Language Oscar. While a solid and wildly popular movie, its collaboration with Britain’s Pinewood Shepperton, the studio responsible for the James Bond films and Black Hawk Down, meant that Bondarchuk predictably borrowed heavily from the great Hollywood war movies, creating a powerful, yet somewhat unnecessary film.

 

Instead of the more popular The 9th Company, New York film week chose to feature two World War II dramas. Both films are superb and highly original, despite using a historical backdrop redundant in Russian film. The week’s opener, Alexander Rogozhkin’s Transit (Peregon) shares a lot with Cuckoo, the 2002 film that many consider to be the director’s masterpiece. Cuckoo was an international sensation, sweeping the festivals in Moscow, Normandy and San Francisco, with many lauding its attention to the human stories that surround every war. Rogozhkin follows this pattern with Transit, creating a work where individual lives are far more important than battle scenes. Transit’s sole flaw is that it takes on too many lives. The knockout performances from almost every member of the cast are almost a detriment to this ensemble film, given that the movie frustratingly cannot focus on any one storyline for an extended period.

 

Nevertheless, Rogozhkin succeeds in other ways. The movie is set in a small airbase at Chukotka in 1943, where American and Russian pilots are transferring Lend-Lease warplanes to the front through Alaska and Siberia. Many of the movie’s excellent comedic moments come from the hesitant interactions between the young Russian pilots, all male, and the American junior lieutenants, all female. Limited by language and dependent on awkward gesticulation, these meetings are by turns funny and uncomfortable. The authenticity of the time period in the actors’ appearances, mannerisms and speech demonstrates the director’s superb attention to detail, and is one of the highlights of the film.

 

Transit, however, is at its heart, a drama. Alexei Serebriakov is gripping as Captain Foma Ilyich Yurchenko, the deranged alcoholic base commander. He does not have a single redeeming characteristic – vulgar, violent, crude and brutal, he simultaneously terrifies and engages the audience. Danil Strakhov, as Yurchenko’s foil Captain Lisnevsky is solid, but incredibly boring. A seasoned actor provided with a much more complex character, Serebriakov overpowers Lisnevsky in many of their shared scenes.

 

The conflict between the two men is ostensibly over who controls the base, given that Yurchenko is mentally unbalanced due to a war trauma. However, it becomes clear that Lisnevsky is engaged in a love affair with Yurchenko’s wife, Irina (Anastasia Nemolyayeva), and that Yurchenko has impregnated kitchen worker Valentina (Svetlana Stroganova), hopelessly confusing the lives of those on the airbase. As this situation develops into a detective story in the last half hour of the movie, it becomes somewhat ridiculous. Despite the faultless performances by Serebriakov, Nemolyayeva, Stroganova, this feels like a cheap way to wrap up a movie that at 2 hours is too short to sufficiently conclude the storylines it began. Moving from character to character, the audience also moves from romantic comedy to war movie to drama to detective story, without a very satisfying conclusion to any of them.

 

Despite Rogozhkin’s ambitiousness, Transit is a fine movie, with spectacular acting and beautiful cinematography. The main disappointment is that one leaves the theater caring too much about the characters to let them go, and as far as disappointments go, it is a respectable one.

 

Artyom Antonov’s Polumgla, the Week’s other World War II drama, is more typical of that genre. Nevertheless, first-time director Antonov, with a crew of mostly first-time cinematographers, editors and technicians, approaches the genre with new eyes. He uses many themes from the great Soviet war epics, including Russian-German animosities, women deprived of their men, and ruthless militarism with a force that reawakens them, and makes them modern, as opposed to relics of the time period. “When I read the script, it struck me as a modern drama, a modern conflict,” Antonov said, when asked why a young director would approach such used material.

 

 The movie depicts a young, injured lieutenant, Grigory Anokhin (a youthful Yury Tarasov) who is ordered to oversee a group of Nazi POWs who are being sent to a village in the North, the titular Polumgla, to build a radio tower. The literal meaning of “polumgla” of haze manifests visually in the cinematography of the film, and symbolically, in the interactions between the characters. The villagers and Soviet commanders, Anokhin included, initially loathe the Germans, however, as time passes, survival instincts bring the individuals closer, despite their nations being at war. Nevertheless, though the language barriers and patriotic loyalties fade, they never go away, and there is a permanently foggy separation between the Russians and the Germans.

 

Polumgla is the type of movie that manages to succeed without any stellar actors or a particularly engaging plot. There are no superhuman Serebriakov-type performances, making the movie more effective in portraying how individuals react in times of danger. The Soviet myths of the war created heroes out of every individual, something that this movie debunks. The Penelope-like stereotype of the woman who patiently waits for her husband to return from war is entirely debunked with a village full of wives who succumb to sexual desires. Men return from the war destroyed, rather than proud to have served the nation. Polumgla presents Germans who are not the faceless enemy and Soviets who are not the glorious patriots.

 

Antonov bravely challenges the common conception of a World War II drama, and though his ending is far from uplifting, it is perfectly appropriate in its heavy tragedy. On the heels of a joyous celebration marking the end of the year, Anokhin and his crew learn that the army no longer needs a radio tower, and thus, no longer needs the services of the German prisoners. Producer Igor Kolyonov introduced the movie by warning the audience that it would not be happy. “I hope you gain something from it anyway,” he finished. What we do gain is insight into the way a young generation understands one of the greatest moments in the development of modern Russian identity. This World War II epic is a true 21st century interpretation of the seminal event, and it would be wise for the next American director who chooses to tackle World War II to approach it with the same freshness that Antonov does.

 

Other features at Russian Film Week range from truly magnificent to solid, with no missteps in selection. Given that the selection of American quality films is by and large pitiful, it is absurd that Russian movies, and foreign movies in general, are not shown more often. A wider American audience would give producers incentive to invest in young, promising directors such as Antonov, as well as established, revolutionary directors like Rogozhkin, which would in turn lead to more money for advertising in the domestic market. One of the reasons for the popularity of Night Watch and The 9th Company in Russia is the huge marketing budget both films had. While it is disappointing enough that these movies are not shown abroad, it is abhorrent that Russians themselves would choose dross Hollywood blockbusters and weak derivative movies over the outstanding films featured at Russian Film Week. More attention and bigger budgets for quality movies would translate to a wider domestic audience, reclaiming a rich tradition of brilliant filmmaking.