As part of my teaching this term, I am screening and introducing five films (or collections of films) from around the world that deal with various aspects of international politics. Below are my synopses. Looking forward to it!
1. Apocalypse Now (1979)
Regularly listed as one of the greatest films ever made, Francis Ford Coppola's masterpiece has won plaudits and provoked controversy ever since its release. Set during the Vietnam War in 1969, the film follows Benjamin L. Willard, a Captain instructed to travel up the Nung river and assassinate Walter E. Kurtz, a Special Forces Colonel gone rogue, establishing himself as a demigod somewhere inside neutral Cambodia. Simultaneously realistic and surreal, Coppola once claimed that: "My movie is not a movie. My movie is not about Vietnam. My movie is Vietnam." Having as much to do with the drugs, the lies and the madness of the era as with the war itself, Apocalypse Now will make us ask: Does this film really criticise war or, rather, subtly glorify it? Does it undercut racism or just reproduce existing prejudices? And can we, in the end, separate the cinematic spectacle, the 'entertainment value,' from the politics it plays out?
2. Our Friend the Atom (1957)/The War Game (1965)
Appearing just eight years apart, these two short films show two very different sides of Western nuclear politics in the mid-twentieth century. Our Friend the Atom was produced by Disney to educate the public about nuclear science and extol the virtues of this 'magical' technology for everything from energy and transportation to health. In stark contrast to such bubbly optimism, The War Game depicts the events and aftermath of a Soviet nuclear attack on Britain. It was produced for the BBC but deemed "too horrifying" to broadcast. With recent debates around the renewal of the Trident nuclear weapons system and, in light of global warming, the vices and virtues of nuclear power, these films offer a window onto past attitudes to nuclear politics that will help inform our thinking in the present. These films will make us ask: How are apparently 'elite' issues of strategy and planning connected to public perceptions of legitimacy, security and science? What do these differing understandings of nuclear technology tell us about our collective attitudes towards the future? And is it even possible to have a 'rational' debate around these issues, given how massively emotive they have been for such a long time?
3. Mustang (2015)
Set in a parochial, provincial Turkish village ("1000 miles from Istanbul"), this Franco-Turkish production tells the story of five teenage sisters, rebellious and orphaned, living with their kind but conservative grandmother and brutal, controlling uncle. After one act of youthful disobedience too many, it is decided that the girls are to be married – forcibly, if needs be. As a result, their home is gradually turned into a prisonlike "wife factory" – complete with bars on the windows. However, while the film does not shy away from the horrors possible in a patriarchal society, it is not a film about suffering but, rather, about resistance, love and the exuberance of youth. With a relevance that transcends its particular cultural circumstances, Mustang will make us ask: What are the sorts of violence that young women are particularly vulnerable to and how are these vulnerabilities perpetuated? What sorts of agency do women, of all ages, have to resist these unequal and unjust relationships? And what message might this film have for those of us living, seemingly, much further away than "1000 miles from Istanbul"?
4. World War II short films (1935-1945)
World War II was perhaps the heyday of propaganda films. Huge numbers were produced on all sides, across a wide variety of genres. This session will play a selection of British, American, French, German, Japanese and Soviet short films and cartoons, as well as excerpts from feature films such as the infamous Nazi epic Triumph of the Will (1935). Placing all these audiovisual artefacts side-by-side will demonstrate the differences but also the similarities between the competing schemes of national representation and vilification that were tearing the world apart at this time. While in many ways 'of their era,' we will find in these films certain tropes and techniques that remain in continual use, right up to today. These films will make us ask: How were perceptions of the War produced through film and how did they differ between different nations? What do these differences tell us about our own hyperactive media environments? And what, in the end, is a 'propaganda' film, anyway?
5. Embrace of the Serpent (2016)
Like Coppola's Apocalypse Now, this film also features a journey down a tropical river – a journey taken under desperate circumstances. Théo, a German explorer, seeks the help of an Amazonian shaman, the only man for many miles who can cure his fatal illness. However, this is not another story of a white European disappearing into the frightful foliage of the wild and 'primitive.' Instead, the story is told from the perspective of Karamakate, the shaman. Set against the background of the 'rubber wars' perpetrated by Euro-American invaders seeking to exploit Amazonian rubber trees, Embrace of the Serpent is simultaneously a scathing indictment of colonialism and, in the words of its director, "an attempt to build a bridge between Western and Amazonian storytelling." This film will make us ask: What place is there in our political attention-spans for forms of violence and exploitation apparently at the 'fringes' of civilisation? Are we even able to recognise all the forms of violence that such projects of domination enact? And how, given all of that, can we 'build bridges' between different ways of living and surviving in the world?
Showing posts with label film. Show all posts
Showing posts with label film. Show all posts
Friday, 14 October 2016
Monday, 15 June 2015
The Look of Silence – a world-changing piece of cinema
Yesterday evening, I went to the Watershed cinema in Bristol to watch The Look of Silence, Joshua Oppenheimer's follow-up to The Act of Killing (2012). The screening was followed by a live satellite stream of a Q&A with Oppenheimer and Silence's protagonist, the incomparable Adi. It was hosted by fellow documentary filmmaker Louis Theroux. (I presume that the Q&A will be put online at some point but has not yet been, as far as I'm aware.)
The films concern the massacre of as many as one million 'Communists' that occurred in Indonesia in 1965-66. However, they are not, as the director is keen to make clear, historical documentaries as such. They concern Indonesia's relationship – or, in a way, non-relationship – with these events in the present.
The most crucial aspect of the history is that the killers won. They crushed their opponents ('realised their political ideals,' as one interviewed politician puts it), were richly rewarded and remain in positions of power to this day. Peter Bradshaw in the Guardian calls it "a gerontocracy of tyranny."
The first film centred on a group of killers and particularly on Anwar Congo, a gangster who claimed to have killed as many as one thousand during the massacres. Extraordinarily, because of their positions of success and safety, the killers were happy to talk freely, openly boasting about their perceived accomplishments, gleefully recounting how went about it, and even being persuaded to elaborately re-enact their crimes in what has to be the most mesmerisingly surreal and horrific am-dram ever committed to film.
The Act of Killing explores how these men live with what they did in this almost unique situation of total impunity and suggests the dark, necrotic guilt wretching and writhing beneath their bombast and bravado.
The Look of Silence is not nearly as overtly horrifying, although it is just as moving in its own way. It follows Adi, an ophthalmologist whose elder brother Ramli was slain in an especially brutal fashion – so brutally that his name has become a quietly whispered watchword of resistance in that region.
Adi is filmed watching footage of the men who butchered his brother re-enacting their deeds with a casual and almost carefree air of nostalgia. Building on the reputation of Oppenheimer's first film, Adi also meets, interviews and provides free eye tests to the commanders and politicians who presided over the events in his region, some of whom remain extremely powerful and one of whom openly threatens Adi when his questions push too hard.
We also meet Adi's family; his young children and his elderly parents. We get to know him and feel intimately part of his world. The effect is a filmic experience that is emotionally moving beyond description.
Last night I felt utterly without words. Now I am just starting to process it. However, I still feel completely overwhelmed. In the Q&A, Oppenheimer referred to The Look of Silence as a poem dedicated to the lost. It is not didactic; it mentions the geopolitical context and opens the door, I hope, to a third film that deals with the silence in the US and the wider West on these events – a deplorable hush no less profound and no less important (although perhaps less easily broken).
Adi's family have since been moved to another part of Indonesia and, while they have allies in the country, their lives were endangered by their participation in this film. Oppenheimer himself says he felt his life to be under threat. The main thing protecting these brave souls seems to be their new-found fame and notoriety.
Nevertheless, the films have succeeded beyond any possible expectation. Both have, with some difficulty, been screened widely within Indonesia and young people are having an open conversation about their own relation to the actions of their grandparents. Reactions of family members of killers in the film range from the most heartbreaking contrition to angry dismissiveness. At the film's climax, Adi meets the wife and two sons of his brother's killer (now dead). One of the sons wants nothing to do with it but the other is drawn to remark: the wound is now open, and we are here together.
This short note doesn't even begin to do justice to the force and poetry of Oppenheimer's film-making. His dedication to his project is a wonder to behold and the bravery of his cast and comrades is awe-inspiring.
I can only add, in what I find to be an oddly profound banality, that I've never seen an audience pay such rapt attention to the credits of a film. Rapt attention to what was not there. Line after line after line: 'Anonymous'...
With only a few exceptions, all the names shown unredacted are European. The film derives from an international movement of resistance with deep local roots. I'd love to know more about how it came about and came together, although a degree of secrecy seems to be essential to the safety of those involved.
This is a film of dignity, beauty and boundless importance, both artistically and politically. However, I do feel that the two films, taken together, are incomplete. Oppenheimer described them as a diptych; it seems to me that they should become a triptych.
The director's passionate and erudite comments during the Q&A demonstrate his understanding of how this wound goes far beyond Indonesia. The massacres developed out of the vicious mixture of Cold War realpolitik and capitalism-driven neocolonialism. Western businesses were getting up to precisely the same kinds of slave labour practices in the forests of Indonesia that fascist industries had been in Europe only two decades before.
Oppenheimer started working on these issues in 2001, when he travelled to Indonesia to make The Globalization Tapes, a film about oil plantation workers being poisoned and killed by the chemicals they are forced to work with. Their brief attempt to unionise in order to resist their own slow, horrible deaths were quickly dissuaded by the same networks that committed the massacres in the '60s. These people never went away – and nor did the corporations.
Of course, all of this has been known for years but now someone has given these issues an emotive force that no amount of didactic documentation can produce. It is so much more than a documentary. It is soaked in themes of memory, loss, ageing, love and, above all, living with the unfathomable. I cannot recommend it enough.
The films concern the massacre of as many as one million 'Communists' that occurred in Indonesia in 1965-66. However, they are not, as the director is keen to make clear, historical documentaries as such. They concern Indonesia's relationship – or, in a way, non-relationship – with these events in the present.
The most crucial aspect of the history is that the killers won. They crushed their opponents ('realised their political ideals,' as one interviewed politician puts it), were richly rewarded and remain in positions of power to this day. Peter Bradshaw in the Guardian calls it "a gerontocracy of tyranny."
The first film centred on a group of killers and particularly on Anwar Congo, a gangster who claimed to have killed as many as one thousand during the massacres. Extraordinarily, because of their positions of success and safety, the killers were happy to talk freely, openly boasting about their perceived accomplishments, gleefully recounting how went about it, and even being persuaded to elaborately re-enact their crimes in what has to be the most mesmerisingly surreal and horrific am-dram ever committed to film.
The Act of Killing explores how these men live with what they did in this almost unique situation of total impunity and suggests the dark, necrotic guilt wretching and writhing beneath their bombast and bravado.
The Look of Silence is not nearly as overtly horrifying, although it is just as moving in its own way. It follows Adi, an ophthalmologist whose elder brother Ramli was slain in an especially brutal fashion – so brutally that his name has become a quietly whispered watchword of resistance in that region.
Adi is filmed watching footage of the men who butchered his brother re-enacting their deeds with a casual and almost carefree air of nostalgia. Building on the reputation of Oppenheimer's first film, Adi also meets, interviews and provides free eye tests to the commanders and politicians who presided over the events in his region, some of whom remain extremely powerful and one of whom openly threatens Adi when his questions push too hard.
We also meet Adi's family; his young children and his elderly parents. We get to know him and feel intimately part of his world. The effect is a filmic experience that is emotionally moving beyond description.
Last night I felt utterly without words. Now I am just starting to process it. However, I still feel completely overwhelmed. In the Q&A, Oppenheimer referred to The Look of Silence as a poem dedicated to the lost. It is not didactic; it mentions the geopolitical context and opens the door, I hope, to a third film that deals with the silence in the US and the wider West on these events – a deplorable hush no less profound and no less important (although perhaps less easily broken).
Adi's family have since been moved to another part of Indonesia and, while they have allies in the country, their lives were endangered by their participation in this film. Oppenheimer himself says he felt his life to be under threat. The main thing protecting these brave souls seems to be their new-found fame and notoriety.
Nevertheless, the films have succeeded beyond any possible expectation. Both have, with some difficulty, been screened widely within Indonesia and young people are having an open conversation about their own relation to the actions of their grandparents. Reactions of family members of killers in the film range from the most heartbreaking contrition to angry dismissiveness. At the film's climax, Adi meets the wife and two sons of his brother's killer (now dead). One of the sons wants nothing to do with it but the other is drawn to remark: the wound is now open, and we are here together.
This short note doesn't even begin to do justice to the force and poetry of Oppenheimer's film-making. His dedication to his project is a wonder to behold and the bravery of his cast and comrades is awe-inspiring.
I can only add, in what I find to be an oddly profound banality, that I've never seen an audience pay such rapt attention to the credits of a film. Rapt attention to what was not there. Line after line after line: 'Anonymous'...
With only a few exceptions, all the names shown unredacted are European. The film derives from an international movement of resistance with deep local roots. I'd love to know more about how it came about and came together, although a degree of secrecy seems to be essential to the safety of those involved.
This is a film of dignity, beauty and boundless importance, both artistically and politically. However, I do feel that the two films, taken together, are incomplete. Oppenheimer described them as a diptych; it seems to me that they should become a triptych.
The director's passionate and erudite comments during the Q&A demonstrate his understanding of how this wound goes far beyond Indonesia. The massacres developed out of the vicious mixture of Cold War realpolitik and capitalism-driven neocolonialism. Western businesses were getting up to precisely the same kinds of slave labour practices in the forests of Indonesia that fascist industries had been in Europe only two decades before.
Oppenheimer started working on these issues in 2001, when he travelled to Indonesia to make The Globalization Tapes, a film about oil plantation workers being poisoned and killed by the chemicals they are forced to work with. Their brief attempt to unionise in order to resist their own slow, horrible deaths were quickly dissuaded by the same networks that committed the massacres in the '60s. These people never went away – and nor did the corporations.
Of course, all of this has been known for years but now someone has given these issues an emotive force that no amount of didactic documentation can produce. It is so much more than a documentary. It is soaked in themes of memory, loss, ageing, love and, above all, living with the unfathomable. I cannot recommend it enough.
Saturday, 17 January 2015
Whiplash
Just out in the UK, I can't say much more than see this film—and in a cinema. The louder the better. Wow. Just wow.
Whether you have the slightest interest in jazz drumming or not, this is a breathtaking piece of cinema; heart-pounding from the first minute to the last with barely a pause for breath. And the ending. Well, every music movie ends with a set piece like that but ... never quite like that. Amazing.
Wednesday, 31 December 2014
My top ten films of 2014
I watched a lot of films this year. Of those released (in the UK) in 2014 here are some of the best:
1) Under The Skin: Mesmerising, disturbing and haunting on every level. Something utterly, brilliantly singular. The pick of a very good bunch.
2) Pride: I cried with laughter, joy, sadness and regret for the loss, or near loss, of a world where solidarity still meant something. Achieving its seamless combination of politics and entertainment is a brilliant achievement.
3) Boyhood: It's amazing that no one has tried this before—although perhaps no one else could have pulled it off. Watching these people age before your eyes in this way is more moving than I thought possible. A perfectly realised vision.
4) Two Days, One Night [Deux jours, une nuit]: Marion Cotillard's portrayal of the egg-shell fragility of depression is heartbreakingly on the mark and the manner in which she musters the strength to discover and accept the love, friendship and solidarity of those around her when it really does seem like the world is against her is astounding. No film has stayed with me more than this one this year.
5) Frank: Funny, brilliantly constructed and with some incredible music. Maggie Gyllenhaal learned the theremin for her role in this film. Nuff said.
6) Leviathan: A complex, intelligent and brave piece of film-making. Utterly without the upliftingness of the other political films on my list but perhaps its lead-coat fatalism is an important counterpoint. Also, no one does alcoholism like Russian alcoholics. Blimey.
7) The Grand Budapest Hotel: Yes, it looks like a cake—but what a cake! Stylised to within an inch of its life but erring just on the right side of brilliant.
8) The Past [Le passé]: A perfectly constructed drama that somehow has all the twists and turns of a thriller. Bérénice Bejo's performance I can only describe as the most explosively kinetic I've ever seen.
9) Calvary: Clunky and heavy-handedly allegorical at times but with a redeeming charm and thoughtfulness. All in all a very clever look at the place of the Catholic Church in Irish society without ever for a moment being, dare I say it, preachy.
10) Blue Ruin: Shoe-string film-making at its best. There are other films I enjoyed more this year but I can't leave this one out. I'll never be able to watch a 'revenge thriller' in the same way again and it's not often that a film permanently transforms your sense of a genre.
And ten of the rest that didn't make it into the above:
The Lego Movie: I enjoyed this as much as any film this year but it is essentially a feature length advert...
Guardians of the Galaxy: Rip-roaring fun. Didn't see Chris Pratt as a muscle-rippling movie star but he wears it very well indeed. Can't wait to see future instalments.
Maps to the Stars: It's quite amazing that Julianne Moore's paranoid, narcissistic monster of a character isn't even the nastiest on show. A dark-hearted piece, for sure.
Snowpiercer: I liked it but didn't love it. It's an interesting concept and was very well realised but I found it to drag a little. I'm not sure why I didn't like it more.
Locke: The kind of film that cannot possibly sound as good on paper as it does on the screen. A bravura one man show from Tom Hardy. I can't imagine anyone else in the role.
Nightcrawler: Very nearly in my top 10. A spot-on satire of the horror economy of cable news with a spookily gaunt and superlatively sociopathic Jake Gyllenhaal.
Mr Turner: Timothy Spall is brilliant and the story was perfectly interesting. However, not exactly life-changing. Probably a little over-hyped.
Foxcatcher: Again, brilliant performances (particularly from Steve Carrell although Channing Tatum's emotionally stunted athleticism is also well done) but not enough to put it anywhere near my top 10.
Cold in July: Michael C. Hall is never less than excellent and this film hops genres with aplomb.
Interstellar: A stunning spectacle (I'd love to see it in IMAX) but 'problematic', as cultural critics like to say.
(Other films could have featured depending on what one counts as the release date. I've counted 12 Years a Slave as a 2013 release, as most people seem to have done. Inherent Vice isn't out here yet but I'm looking forward to it.)
I've by no means seen everything that I've wanted to. Particularly notable in their absence: Ida, The Imitation Game, Winter Sleep, '71, Citizenfour, Merchants of Doubt, The Golden Dream. I'll hopefully catch up with at least a few of these over what remains of my Christmas break (which, so far, has been anything but!).
1) Under The Skin: Mesmerising, disturbing and haunting on every level. Something utterly, brilliantly singular. The pick of a very good bunch.
2) Pride: I cried with laughter, joy, sadness and regret for the loss, or near loss, of a world where solidarity still meant something. Achieving its seamless combination of politics and entertainment is a brilliant achievement.
3) Boyhood: It's amazing that no one has tried this before—although perhaps no one else could have pulled it off. Watching these people age before your eyes in this way is more moving than I thought possible. A perfectly realised vision.
4) Two Days, One Night [Deux jours, une nuit]: Marion Cotillard's portrayal of the egg-shell fragility of depression is heartbreakingly on the mark and the manner in which she musters the strength to discover and accept the love, friendship and solidarity of those around her when it really does seem like the world is against her is astounding. No film has stayed with me more than this one this year.
5) Frank: Funny, brilliantly constructed and with some incredible music. Maggie Gyllenhaal learned the theremin for her role in this film. Nuff said.
6) Leviathan: A complex, intelligent and brave piece of film-making. Utterly without the upliftingness of the other political films on my list but perhaps its lead-coat fatalism is an important counterpoint. Also, no one does alcoholism like Russian alcoholics. Blimey.
7) The Grand Budapest Hotel: Yes, it looks like a cake—but what a cake! Stylised to within an inch of its life but erring just on the right side of brilliant.
8) The Past [Le passé]: A perfectly constructed drama that somehow has all the twists and turns of a thriller. Bérénice Bejo's performance I can only describe as the most explosively kinetic I've ever seen.
9) Calvary: Clunky and heavy-handedly allegorical at times but with a redeeming charm and thoughtfulness. All in all a very clever look at the place of the Catholic Church in Irish society without ever for a moment being, dare I say it, preachy.
10) Blue Ruin: Shoe-string film-making at its best. There are other films I enjoyed more this year but I can't leave this one out. I'll never be able to watch a 'revenge thriller' in the same way again and it's not often that a film permanently transforms your sense of a genre.
And ten of the rest that didn't make it into the above:
The Lego Movie: I enjoyed this as much as any film this year but it is essentially a feature length advert...
Guardians of the Galaxy: Rip-roaring fun. Didn't see Chris Pratt as a muscle-rippling movie star but he wears it very well indeed. Can't wait to see future instalments.
Maps to the Stars: It's quite amazing that Julianne Moore's paranoid, narcissistic monster of a character isn't even the nastiest on show. A dark-hearted piece, for sure.
Snowpiercer: I liked it but didn't love it. It's an interesting concept and was very well realised but I found it to drag a little. I'm not sure why I didn't like it more.
Locke: The kind of film that cannot possibly sound as good on paper as it does on the screen. A bravura one man show from Tom Hardy. I can't imagine anyone else in the role.
Nightcrawler: Very nearly in my top 10. A spot-on satire of the horror economy of cable news with a spookily gaunt and superlatively sociopathic Jake Gyllenhaal.
Mr Turner: Timothy Spall is brilliant and the story was perfectly interesting. However, not exactly life-changing. Probably a little over-hyped.
Foxcatcher: Again, brilliant performances (particularly from Steve Carrell although Channing Tatum's emotionally stunted athleticism is also well done) but not enough to put it anywhere near my top 10.
Cold in July: Michael C. Hall is never less than excellent and this film hops genres with aplomb.
Interstellar: A stunning spectacle (I'd love to see it in IMAX) but 'problematic', as cultural critics like to say.
(Other films could have featured depending on what one counts as the release date. I've counted 12 Years a Slave as a 2013 release, as most people seem to have done. Inherent Vice isn't out here yet but I'm looking forward to it.)
I've by no means seen everything that I've wanted to. Particularly notable in their absence: Ida, The Imitation Game, Winter Sleep, '71, Citizenfour, Merchants of Doubt, The Golden Dream. I'll hopefully catch up with at least a few of these over what remains of my Christmas break (which, so far, has been anything but!).
Tuesday, 18 November 2014
"that Mortall God" — Zvyagintsev's Leviathan; law, structure and the state
"This is the Generation of the great Leviathan, or rather (to speake more reverently) of that Mortall God, to which we owe under the Immortal God, our peace, and defence." — Thomas Hobbes
Although Andrey Zvyagintsev's highly (and justly) celebrated film Leviathan obviously connotes Thomas Hobbes' famous treatise, it should perhaps also be linked with one of Nietzsche's most famous lines, specifically when he called the state "the coldest of all cold monsters". 'Leviathan' gives this film not only its title but its whole sense of world; it is a film about structure, about the crushing, irresistible weight of this great, horrible, monstrous, but also mortal being.
If it can be summed up so simply, the film reflects on the immense, destructive, tragic but also transient force of assembled societal power; a power that seems utterly vast and yet will, in time, crumble like everything else. Churches will become ruins in which teenagers hang out, powerful leaders will become jokes (albeit private ones), whales will wash up and leave only their skeletons on the beaches.
"Canst thou draw out Leviathan with a fishhook?" (Job 41:1)There is a strong sense of anger but also, overwhelmingly, futility in this film. Non-resistance seems to be the only means of survival for any of these characters (indeed, the Book of Job-speaking priest offers precisely this advice at one point). The protagonists perturb the status quo in the first act but, like a sturdy ship, it rights itself and it is as if that wave had never rolled in. The state's fragility (and here taking 'state' in its broadest sense, including the church, organised crime, and so on), its transience, its mutability is of no comfort to those caught up in its wheels and cogs. It is something that is only even really perceptible on a broader scale of time than that of a human life. It would take the whole 140 years that Job is said to have lived in order to make anything of this mortality. The skeleton on the beach, while deeply symbolic, doesn't suggest any real possibility of resistance. Structural mortality and fatalism come together, without contradiction.
There is far more to this film than I am able to go into here. Despite its bleak themes, it is often very funny and is beautifully shot. Many shots of the decaying ships in the harbour recall the cinema of Tarkovsky so strongly that had they been held for 50 seconds rather than 5 one could have been excused for mistaking parts of Leviathan for his Stalker.
In short, the film is about church, state, Russia past and present. The fact that it was sponsored by the Institute Of Modern Russian Culture is interesting in itself. The film treads an extremely fine and precarious line with regard to the current regime. Overt criticism is more or less avoided but the subtext sounds out like a foghorn. The various portraits of Putin hanging about the place, the Orthodox figures of Jesus staring from every mantlepiece (and dashboard), the scene with the portraits of past Russian leaders, the brief glimpse of the words 'Pussy Riot' on a TV screen. Iconographically the film is incredibly rich and it'd take someone far better qualified than me to do any of it justice. It is a remarkably critical film in many ways although clearly one that has elected to mind its historical moment (one character says precisely this in one of the film's most crucial political scenes — a scene that occurs, tellingly, far out in the wilderness, 100km from the small town in which the film is mostly set).
The one other thing I'd like to mention is the law. One of the most striking scenes in the film is found in a court room where the presiding official reads through the judgement so fast that the words become just a blur, a solid block of somehow insignificant signification, a stream of pronouncement without even the slightest hesitation; she barely even pauses to breathe and when she does it seems almost reluctant. It is a barrage, an avalanche, a volley of legalese. The force of the power on display is its total incontestability. Never mind 'getting in a word edgeways,' there is no gap for any objection whatsoever.
It is also quite amazing how surprised everyone at the police station and courts appear when the hotshot lawyer from Moscow swans in and presents them with legal argument (with the ever so naive belief that this will have some force). It is not only that they do not accept its force, it is that the very notion that they would appears to be the strangest thing in the world. 'What? That is not how things work here,' they seem to be saying. For the most part this is without any particular maliciousness (except for where the principle antagonist is concerned, who is nothing but malevolence, maliciousness and greed). It simply is not the way things are done. It is an alien proposition.
Here we are presented with the institution of law without its process. The hollowed out shell, the great fleshless ribcage of the social in a society corrupted, captured by organised crime of one sort or another. Although this is a film on the most ostensive level about law there is precious little legality within it. All legal utterances fall flat against an edifice that has simply rendered them not unspeakable but inaudible. (And here perhaps it would be interesting to reflect on the preoccupation of structuralism with speech — 'can the subaltern speak?' In the case of the main character, a socially privileged male in some respects but utterly incapable of engaging with bureaucratic formality on its own terms, he clearly cannot speak or act in the language of law. And yet when his incomparably more nuanced, cultured lawyer friend speaks for him in perfect, considered, calm but also forceful and pointed sentences he meets an infrastructure simply incapable of hearing his flawless, metropolitan speech acts.) This is a world in which law has, to all intents and purposes, died; reduced to procedure; reduced to a tool of power, of organisation.
Like so many excellent films, this one has, its excellence notwithstanding, perhaps been a little overhyped. I went into the screening with mildly overinflated expectations. It is not an epic. It is a low budget film with a relatively small cast but, most importantly, big ideas. It is the epitome of what film making should be; however, I certainly didn't find it to be life-changing or anything of the sort. An absolute must watch for anyone interested in political or legal theory, or simply anyone who likes slow moving, beautifully made, slightly dystopian tragedies. Since I tick all of those boxes it is a film that I'll be thinking about for some time to come.
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