Andrew Worsdale Movies of the week
Soviet cinema has an incredible legacy. After all, Sergei Eisenstein’s 1925 Battleship Potemkin, which chronicled the Kronstadt naval mutiny that sparked off the Russian Revolution, is probably the most studied film in cinema history.
Eisenstein invented the notion of montage creating dialectics within a sequence, like the famous Odessa steps scene in Potemkin, with the result that the viewer is left with a “reflection” of the event as opposed to a “static” reflection of the narrative.
He remained silent for the first seven years of the Stalinist era, probably because he knew that the price of having his name on the screen would be for him to recant his critical nature. In 1938 he made Alexander Nevsky, and during World War II Ivan the Terrible, a veiled study of Stalinism and authoritarian paranoia.
More recently the Stalinist period has been examined by contemporary film-makers, notably Nikita Mikhalkov, who won the Best Foreign Film Oscar for Burnt by the Sun, the brilliant study of a retired general who is betrayed by a relative and executed by Stalinist operatives.
Possibly the most gruelling examination of the period was Elem Klimov’s Come and See. Made in 1985, it followed a young partisan in 1943 who returns to his village to find it razed to the ground and his family slaughtered. It is an indictment of Stalinism and one of the most brutal and moving war films ever made.
The next in line to examine the era when “Uncle Josef” ruled the country with an iron fist is Pavel Chukrai’s extraordinarily moving drama The Thief, which was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Film last year. I rarely cry in movies, but this film managed to wring a sincere tear out of my eye.
It features a mesmerising performance by young Sanya (Misha Philipchuk, astounding in his first film role) who is journeying with his mother, Katia (a Cinderella-like Ekaterina Rednikova) in 1952. The boy’s father died before he was born; the kid misses him and has visions of the man although he has no memory of him. A man, Tolyan (a dashing Vladimir Mashkov), dressed in the suit of an army officer, arrives on the train and charms the boy by allowing him to hold his gun before seducing the mother.
The three travel the country together, but it soon becomes clear that Tolyan is no soldier; he is a conman and philanderer. He tells the boy that Josef Stalin is his father; the boy believes him and agrees to keep the fact secret. We learn more about Tolyan’s criminal activities – at one point he treats the residents of the apartment building to a visit to the circus, leaves midway through the show and robs the tenants before fleeing with the boy and his mother.
The contradictions inherent in the fact that she abhors his criminal life but loves him passionately, and that the boy worships Tolyan because of his aura of knowledge and power while also being wary of him swindling everyone they come into contact with, gives the film real power.
The monochromatic landscapes and decaying architecture are brilliantly captured by Vladimir Klimov, veteran director Elem Klimov’s son, presently the head of cinematography at Mosfilm studios. The misty exteriors and drab interiors are contrasted by the open air and “aristocratic” feel when the trio go for a holiday to a drab but glamorous resort at the Black Sea.
But the moment that got my tear ducts flowing is where Sanya and Katia journey to a snow- bound prison where Tolyan has been held captive for not showing his identity document to the police. He is about to be transferred to Siberia and Sanya and Katia are part of a group of families who gather outside the jail to catch a glimpse of their loved ones. In a shattering moment, the boy runs after the prison van shouting, “Come back, father!” >From that moment on, he never has a vision of his natural father again.
Years later the boy, now orphaned, becomes a hardened youngster fully aware of the iniquities of Stalin’s system. He meets Tolyan, who has forgotten Sanya and his mother. Sanya decides to exact revenge, his faith in humanity broken by the turn of events.
Says director Chukrai: “Tolyan is the first man who comes into the life of Sanya’s family, because Sanya, like many other post- war children, has never seen his father. The boy is both afraid of and attracted to Tolyan’s aura of power and authority. This inner conflict becomes Sanya’s central drama which will haunt him all his life. I confess to you, every time I watch the film’s rushes, I worry about my heroes, and I really hope the viewer will not be indifferent to them and their fates, either.”
There’s no way one can be indifferent. The film is a constantly involving, emotional ride that is never contrived. What’s more, the obvious symbolic parallels with Stalin himself as swindler, but still “father and protector” of the nation, is never laid on with a trowel.
Although at times sombre, The Thief is not depressing, but if you want something entirely different, catch Strike!, a hilarious independent Canadian film set in the 1960s. Gaby Hoffmann plays Odie, a young girl who is sent to Miss Godard’s Prep School for Girls. She misses her boyfriend and hates the place, but when she joins a clique of fellow pupils called DAR (Daughters of the American Ravioli), she begins to have fun.
When it is discovered that the school trustees want to merge with an all-boys school, the DAR decide on radical steps. When the boys come to visit the school for a dance, the group sabotages the event with riotously hair-raising results.
It’s a well-handled directorial debut by Sarah Kernochan, who wrote the semi- autobiographical script. The movie possesses sweetness, well-drawn characters, loads of laughs and none of the teenage offensiveness which proliferates in American comedies these days.
Originally called The Hairy Bird (evidently a reference to male genitalia – never heard of it), this is entertainment that prepubescent kids, their adolescent siblings, mum and dad, and even the grandparents can lap up. To give an indication of its charm, the opening credits read, “A film by everyone who made it.”
Ironically, Eisenstein made a film called Strike! in 1924.