Class Struggles: Part Four

Welcome back, comrades. My days in higher education are numbered. Let's not mince words. Here's some more reviews from my Russian Cinema class!

Brother (Брат / Brat)

Year: 1997

Director: Aleksey Balabanov

Cast: Sergei Bodrov Jr., Viktor Sukhorukov, Svetlana Pismichenko

Run Time: 1 hour 39 minutes

A young man goes to visit his older brother in Leningrad and becomes embroiled in the mob-run city's crime wave during the decadent post-Soviet Union era.

Russia, for all its faults, is one of the most interesting modern countries. While we all have our spats and geoglobal conflicts and whatnot, our most major historic incidents remain where they are - in the past. Meanwhile, over in Russia, their cornerstone event - the dissolution of the Soviet Union - happened in the same year as Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey.

The country is still finding its footing after that massive shift, and while I can't say that where they currently are is my favorite place, civilian life has calmed down somewhat since the years following the fall. The post-Soviet 90's were a time of rampant crime, incompetent police, and gang rule in which violence and hedonism reigned supreme. 1997's Brother showcases that era through the eyes of Danila Bagrov (Sergei Bodrov, Jr.), an aimless young man who has just returned from his stint in the military.

Danila is sent to live with his brother in Leningrad, where he gets caught up in his crime ring, quickly rising up the ranks and fighting against the mob attempting to capture him. Scored by the biggest rock band of the day, Danila assassinates gangsters, sleeps with married women, and hangs out with his homeless friends in an old cemetery. Although he maintains his personal moral code, always keeping his promises and not killing good people, he can't resist the tempting pull of the criminal underworld.

The film is a contemplative action thriller, filled to the brim with ruminations on the state of 1990's Russia. The homeless living in the cemetery is no coincidence. Nor the lighting that constantly threatens to pull Danila into the darkness. Nor the power shift where Danila - the younger generation - takes the power while his brother - the older - falls crumbling beneath the boots of the mob.

It's quite an interesting film, and it amassed a considerable cult following. With its story of a young country breaking itself in and a young man finding his way through the muck of it all, embracing his desires while remaining inherently good, it's easy to imagine the film's appeal. It's like the Donnie Darko or The Graduate of the Russian youth generation, though it's a damn sight better than the former.

My biggest issue with the film is its thinness. The production design is necessarily limited due to its budget, but its remarkably weak, especially in the scenes of the crime den, which look like they were shot in a local YMCA. And the entire movie is wracked with Fade Out Disease, killing the pacing at the end of each and every individual scene with yet another interminably long fade to black. But beyond that, it's a fun film and worth checking out for any crime drama enthusiast.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: Sergei Bodrov, Jr. is still the cutest.

Rating: 7/10

Mother and Son (Мать и сын / Mat i syn)

Year: 1997

Director: Aleksandr Sokurov

Cast: Aleksei Ananishnov, Gudrun Geyer

Run Time: 1 hour 13 minutes

A man faces mortality twofold as he comforts his ailing mother while she passes from this world to the next, in the process boring the audience to death.

I'm going to be straight up here. Mother and Son is one of the worst films I've ever seen in my entire life. The abundance of ten star reviews on IMDb is baffling to me, though I will admit the film probably has a lot more resonance for people who have watched a loved one slowly fall ill. So if this is the case for you, skip reading this or forgive my flagrant disregard for the emotional content of the movie, because I'm gonna tell you right now, the structure is crap.

Mother and Son is more like a series of screensavers than a film. While a son helps his ailing mother eat, drink, and walk around their secluded forest home, the camera lingers on vast expanses of open nature for minutes at a time while literally nothing happens. At one point, the son pops out to grab a photo album and the camera holds static on the mother lying on a bench for a full two minutes. It is ponderously dull.

Some would argue that the pacing of this film mimics the slowing down of life as it fades away. I would argue that this is the film that you're forced to watch in purgatory to pay penance for your sins. There's next to no music or dialogue, the picture is muddier than the road to DTV Hell, and there are only two scenes with a meaningful rumination on mortality and one generation passing on to the next. All the rest of the script (which could be written on a doilie), is composed of lines like "Do you want a snack?"

All there is over the film's 73 minutes is a series of tedious, monotonous scenes of the pair wandering through the forest, sometimes walking out of the frame 45 seconds before it cuts away. I think there's about twelve shots in the whole movie. It's not like watching paint dry. It's like watching Pangea divide. One to miss.

Rating: 2/10

Word Count: 920
Reviews In This Series
Class Struggles: Part One (March 29, 2015)
Class Struggles: Part Two (April 9, 2015)
Class Struggles: Part Three (April 22, 2015)
Class Struggles: Part Four (April 24, 2015)
Class Struggles: Part Five (May 6, 2015)
Class Struggles: Bonus Round (May 11, 2015)

Class Struggles: Part Three

In exactly a month, I will be an alumnus of California State University, Long Beach. That's a terrifying thought. Let's drown it in some more mini-reviews from my Russian Cinema class!

The Diamond Arm (Бриллиантовая рука / Brilliantovaya ruka)

Year: 1969

Director: Leonid Gayday

Cast: Yuriy Nikulin, Nina Grebeshkova, Andrey Mironov

Run Time: 1 hour 40 minutes

An unsuspecting civilian on vacation becomes part of an elaborate criminal scheme when a misunderstanding leaves him with a cast on his arm full of smuggled jewels.

On my syllabus, the film The Diamond Arm was described as a "Soviet eccentric comedy," so you can imagine my excitement trying to picture what that could possibly mean. Evidently, what this spells out to is a barrelful of slapstick with a pinch of musical theater, soaked in flailing, constant attempts to jab laffs from the audience. It might only be intermittently successful, but let's remember that I am perhaps not the prime audience for a slapstick Soviet comedy from the late 60's.

Although The Diamond Arm spreads itself very thin through its attempts to cram as many comic scenarios as possible into its 100 minutes, it still has some historically stimulating underpinnings about the corruptive Western influence and placing one's trust in the police. Soviet Russia was a less unstable place to live following the death of Josef Stalin in 1953, but it was still Soviet Russia and the propagandistic elements of films from this period are evergreen and interesting to mine for cultural film buffs.

Aside from these slight political elements, The Diamond Arm is comfortable in its rhythms as a fish-out-of-water espionage thriller, the likes of Get Smart or The Pink Panther. There are a smattering of decent jokes, the high water mark of which might be when the suave villain flips his hair, hitting his head in the process. It's no sophisticated repartee to will make you chuff over your cigar, but it's amusing in that primitive sort of way that people don't want to admit they enjoy.

Overall, the biggest issue with the film is that it takes frequent pit stops that halt the pacing dead in its tracks. One of the film's most egregious moments is an arbitrarily inserted musical number (one of several) on the deck of a boat that does less than nothing to serve the plot or its characters. In fact, I'm pretty sure I came out of that scene with less understanding of what the film was about. Another long stretch at a seaside fashion show is interminably dull.

Although, it might be hypocritical for me to complain about these interludes, because one such moment introduced me to the Russian tune "A Song About Hares," which I am immensely grateful for. It's catchy! I dare you not to dance after pressing play. Just make sure not to bend your knees!

Rating: 6/10

Prisoner of the Mountains (Кавказский пленник / Kavkazskiy plennik)

Year: 1996

Director: Sergei Bodrov

Cast: Oleg Menshikov, Sergei Bodrov Jr., Susanna Mekhraliyeva

Run Time: 1 hour 39 minutes

Two Russian soldiers are held prisoner by a Chechen villager who wants to trade them for his captured son.

The Russians do love their war films. As a country torn by many battles and revolutions, perhaps it's important to them to revisit and re-evaluate their sacrifices time and time again. And if the post-1950's films I've seen thus far in class are an accurate indicator of the general military climate, they seem to find it wanting.

1996's Prisoner of the Mountains joins Ballad of a Soldier as one of the defining Russian films about the futility and senseless violence of war. The film focuses almost exclusively on the character dynamics on two soldiers with opposite perspectives on their enlistment. The older soldier embraces his duties, but the younger draftee prefers peaceful interactions, and grows to understand the plight of the "enemies" that have captured them. These characters are brought to life by a talented veteran actor and a fresh-faced ingenue, both giving honest, genre-defining performances.

As these two stubborn minds battle it out, the film hammers out its philosophy in the spaces between their words: War causes everybody to suffer, and the delineation between Good Guy and Bad Guy isn't so clear once you get a closer look. As a series of delicate metaphors drift their ways to and fro, the soldiers struggle to balance their need for escape with their fondness for their captors, who for all intents and purposes may soon be their executioners.

It's a film about fighting against traditional worldviews and breaking the cycle of violence, and the inevitable destruction that a wartime mentality will bring upon all who subscribe to it, and everyone they love. Again, nobody ever said Russian Cinema was cheerful. 

But despite a downbeat ending (which I shan't spoil here), Prisoner of the Mountains is an uplifting take on humanity's capacity to love in the face of a massive, crushing threat to its well-being. As often as it emphasizes the wanton destruction of the military, it also embraces our capacity to learn to understand one another. It's a slow burn, but a highly recommended watch.

Also, Sergei Bodrov, Jr. is hella cute. You ain't seen the last of him.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 869

Reviews In This Series
Class Struggles: Part One (March 29, 2015)
Class Struggles: Part Two (April 9, 2015)
Class Struggles: Part Three (April 22, 2015)
Class Struggles: Part Four (April 24, 2015)
Class Struggles: Part Five (May 6, 2015)
Class Struggles: Bonus Round (May 11, 2015)