Wanderers Before God: Alexander Sokurov's Faust

Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, Casper David Friedrich, Oil on Canvas, 1818

Somewhere between a Rabelaisian paean to Earthly pleasures, complete with the drunken waltz of the camera, and a serious investigation to the failure of human desire for knowledge, Alexander Sokurov’s Faust is quite unlike any other cinematic event I’ve encountered this year. The film’s loose adaptation of Goethe’s masterwork sees no difference between its highly aspirations and its low humor—an opening CGI shot that sets up an epic mythology ends with a blurry shot of a flaccid (and dead) penis of a cadaver being examined for the progress of human knowledge. That failure of knowledge is key for Herr Doktor, a man who has learned all he knows about the stars, only to be disappointed that he finds no pleasure in this life—that perhaps the science he defines his life brings him no pleasure (he has much to learn by the woman visiting his gynecologist father, her checkup an excuse for the orgasm the examination will produce). Even a monkey on a moon, a bizarre and lovely image, adds no interest to him. This man is destined to his meeting his Mephistopholies (Anton Adasinsky, the performance of the year), a drunken and ghastly creature who will take him through the maze of life’s lowly pleasures (a bath of virgins, a drunken pub, a mockery of a funeral), all in the hopes to make him reveal some desire worth trading his soul. Like Tarkovsky’s Stalker, Faust meanders without implicit meaning or classical rhythms, forcing the viewer to accept his venture of the physical into something metaphysical, the camera spinning around like a waltz (two steps forward, one step back) in an attempt to make Faust find something within the moral schema he still submits to. Sokurov's demented view of humanity is so decidedly strange (the Devil is not just evil; he's also a bad speller) that it’s easy to dismiss his portrayal of this “important” work as the sign of a filmmaker who can’t tell good from bad, but even his obsession with bowel humor is sublimated into the great philosophical search, all implemented through the garish colors of Bruno Donbonnel's boldly inventive visual palette (at once seductive and repulsive). The film’s most beautiful moments—a golden vision of his beauty, and the two’s romantic drift into a river—are also the most tragic.

Aleksei German (1938-2012)

            In March of last year, I took a chance by watching a film I knew nothing about, based on a passionate post written by cinephile par excellence and friend Glenn Kenny. The film had the bizarre title of Khrustalyov, My Car! And I knew more or less nothing going in besides some plot revolving the night in which Josef Stalin died. Emerging two hours later, I still had no idea what I watched, but I knew the cinematic voice I had just seen was an authorial presence that didn’t just hold my hand, but shoved me in front of him while wearing a blindfold. I was barely able to process the images I had watched, but felt rapturously connected to them.

            In film history, German has always played a second fiddle to Andrei Tarkovsky in the way Mizoguchi has played fiddle to Ozu, though even Mizoguchi is a better known quantity in comparison. His films are impossibly notorious to track down. Not on DVD in either the States or Europe. Torrents and YouTube streams are sparse.

            But they are works of visceral cinema, exploring Soviet history from a Soviet perspective. This makes them feel inaccessible in a way to the Western viewer, but it is in that inaccessibility that I found myself in a trance by his absurdist dark humor, expressionist cinematography, and intensely swerving tracking shots. There are cultural clues throughout, one that I missed when I watched his films, and will continue to miss throughout my life. Tarkovsky’s films are universal—I dare a viewer to feel nothing as the bell rings out at the end of Andrei Rublev. German’s films are specific, built on a nation’s history of contradictions. But one doesn’t need to have lived Soviet history to feel the pains of those who did. I think of the pain in the protagonist’s face in Trial on the Road as he realizes the suicide mission he must commit. I see the pain in the young boy of My Frined Ivan Lapshin seeing what is happening in his society. And I see it in the utter confusion of the Doctor General of Khrustalyov, realizing how little power he has. The pain is not one for myself but of another, an entire country that is both distant and alien, yet all too human. In Tarkovsky, you see your own struggles. In German, you see that of another.

            I’m no expert on German, but when I learned he passed away in Russia yesterday, I felt a real loss in a way no director had made me feel. Perhaps because German’s films remain an unknown quantity-a sect of cinephilia still only left to those lucky enough to have taken a chance. My hope is that this feeling won’t remain.

Elena: Class Warfare In A Post-Soviet Home

Elena

Directed By: Andrei Zvyagintsev

Written By: Oleg Negin

Starring: Nadezdha Markina, Andrey Smirnov, Aleksey Rozin, and Yelena Lyadova

Director of Photography: Mikhail Krichman, Editor: Anna Mass, Art Direction: Andrey Ponckratov, Original Music: Philip Glass

            The two worlds that Elena, the elderly and titular protagonist of this austere and intelligent Russian drama, inhabits couldn’t be starker. On one side is the sterile, almost silent world that her and her husband dwell. The only noises are the sounds of coffee grinding or doors sliding open, as well for the constant cawing of black crows (a foreboding sign of things to come). Everything feels sterile and in complete order, designed for minimal chaos to produce maximal efficiency. And then there is the home of Elena’s son Sergey, which is littered, constantly bombarded by video games and television noises, and cramped. This is how the other half lives, and it is not to be trusted.

            In what would seem rare today in Hollywood filmmaking, Elena is a rare film that is not only surprisingly conservative in its politics but highly thrilling. Liberal films—or at least films that tout liberal ideas—are a dime a dozen, most of them barely interested in political ideas. But director Andrei Zvyaginstev and screenwriter Oleg Negin have deliberately taken on class in what spins into a Hitchcock-like thriller, and brings such an apt and nuanced hand to its political statement, cleverly disguised as a morality tale. It’s the type of great filmmaking that could easily convince you of its talking points.

Screening Log: All Russian All The Time Edition

          No real notes of interest before this week’s screening log, but I’m very glad I sort of on a whim decided to attend Film Society’s Aleksei Guerman retrospective, whose films are completely unavailable on DVD (even though My Friend Ivan Lapshin was a dud after the first half hour and never really improved). Also of note, I was able to see Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia on 35mm at Film Society, and it is shocking how even not a particularly nice print can be better than any DVD (as in comparison to the embarrassing DVD of Stalker I saw last week). But before this becomes my latest rant against digital projection, let’s get to the films:

-Nostalghia, 1983. Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. 35mm Projection at Film Society of Lincoln Center.

-Khrustalyov, My Car!, 1998. Directed by Aleksei Guerman. 35mm Projection at Film Society of Lincoln Center.

-Trial on the Road, 1971. Directed by Aleksei Guerman. 35mm Projection at Film Society of Lincoln Center.

-My Friend Ivan Lapshin, 1984. Directed by Aleksei Guerman. 35mm Projection at Film Society of Lincoln Center.

             It’s really interesting to write about Guerman’s Khrustalyov, My Car!, a whirlwind trip through all 9 layers of hell during the end of Stalin in the USSR, because it’s the type of film in which I’m not sure its viewers should have all the context or none whatsoever. What I mean is Khrustalyov, My Car! doesn’t particularly play perfectly for those who aren’t extremely familiar with the history of Russian culture. However, not knowing any of these details still made the film a vivid and inspiring masterpiece in my eyes, perhaps the best film I’ve seen in at least a month (and I’ve seen some real classics).

NYFF Review: Silent Souls

Silent Souls

Directed By Aleksei Fedorchenko

Russia

            Have you ever heard of the Merjon people of Russia? In Silent Souls, director Aleksei Fedorchenko traces some of the rituals and customs of this ancient Russian tradition, in a narrative that is almost as compelling as the traditions are, which sad to say, does not bode well for both parties.

It’s hard to know if some of these customs—some of them extremely misogynist and offensive—are actual realities, or if Mr. Fedorchenko has taken a very poetic license; They haven’t managed to get a Wikipedia page up yet to explain this all. Of course, the real issue with Silent Souls is that Mr. Fedorchenko wants to tell us about these customs, but never cares to invest a narrative in them as well.

We begin with Aist, a middle-aged and alone Russian man, going to work, in almost a Malick-like fashion of voiceover. And then Miron, he best friend, informs them that his wife is dead, and the two must travel 1,000 miles to perform an ancient ritual. This ritual includes braiding ties to the woman’s pubic hair, rubbing her naked body in vodka, and burning it, while pouring bottle after bottle of vodka onto it.

None of this is really explained well, but Mr. Fedorchenko, who must be a descendant of the tribe, is fascinated by the process, and shoots it accordingly. He finds this all to be a lyrical poem, and his compositions are quite picturesque, if rarely making much sense in the purpose of the narrative, which falls completely behind. We aren’t really given any entry into Aist nor Miron, who travel often in silence, and Aist only uses his narration to explain customs, in the hopes we are less offended by some of the sequences or revelations revealed.

But Mr. Fedorchenko is in love with his symbolism—water, chipping birds, and doubling to name a couple—and thus he forgoes any narrative cohesion for a conclusion that should provoke mocking more than tranquility. On the plus side, Silent Souls runs a brief 75 minutes, so this crash course on why Russians can be offensive people and pass it off as “culture,” comes to an end not a minute too soon.