Translated material
"Fatherland, tradition, heroism..."
Films about war at the Moscow International Film Festival
It was announced in advance that June 22 will be War Day at the Moscow festival. The premiere of “Brest Fortress”, a film shot with joint funds from Russia and Belarus, in the “Gala Premieres” program in “October” and screening at the House of Cinema as part of the Russian program of the films “Pop” and “Imminence”. A round table about war cinema, where Vladimir Khotinenko said: “Today we have one common idea - the Great Patriotic War, and it still remains our main national idea... We don’t yet have another idea that would united us”... The ceremonial events took place against the backdrop of the everyday life of the festival, where they also showed a fairly rich assortment of films about the war. I chose the Israeli film “Lebanon”, which received the “Golden Lion” at the Venice Film Festival, the North Korean “Diary of a Servicewoman”, and the American documentary “. Restrepo (Grand Prix of the Sandes Festival).It seemed to me that against this background we can consider a variety of models of approach to the military theme in cinema.
And disaster averted
The most exotic impression, of course, was the Korean film. Even in the wildest dreams of a Soviet propagandist such a naive and straightforward story could not creep in, although our cinema of the forties and fifties was often remembered when watching. Against a bright blue and green background, beautiful girls dressed in military uniforms act out the drama. One of them, dreaming of a military career, Hyun Sunn, is disappointed with her place of service - she has to stand at a post on the railway in a distant mountain valley, where there is no opportunity to show valor. However, everything is not so simple - the girl learns that her missing grandfather once accomplished a feat here. With tears in their eyes, the girls learn the details (and they are exactly described in the famous poem by Sergei Gandlevsky: “It used to be that a fast train used to rush by, / The tracks were dismantled due to an oversight, / It seems that a catastrophe is inevitable, / But there are people there...). The train, which was transporting important equipment to the fertilizer plant, arrived on time, and the girls literally sobbed with emotion when they were informed that the commander-in-chief himself noted the soldier’s courage. And then fate smiles on the heroine - although she injured her palm, she manages at the very last moment to pull away a tree that has fallen on the rails and thereby, at the risk of her life, saves the train, which clearly did not have time to stop. The passengers wave to the girl, and she salutes them with a happy smile. And the commander-in-chief himself conveys his approval... The girls cry, sing, raise their hands to the sky - what a joy it is to be a patriot of your country! There is no such happiness anywhere else - only in North Korea.
Personal experience
Soldiers from a remote checkpoint in Afghanistan, brave American boys, disciplined and well-equipped, cry not with happiness, but with despair when their comrades die in firefights with the Taliban. Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger filmed the film "Restrepo" over the course of a year and a half, starting with the arrival of the recruits at the base and ending after the soldiers returned to their homeland. Not everyone returned after 15 months of business trip. Those who returned cannot sleep, are on antidepressants and constantly remember their stay in that Afghan hole, where it is never clear where a shell will come from, where you have to burn your own shit, where you have to kill those who did not keep weapons in their hands, but perhaps he helped those who were holding them... The guys have no doubt - this is how it should be, they came to fight, the captain explains to them that even the death of a comrade does not negate the need to fight again tomorrow... True, the captain himself falls helplessly silent in weekly negotiations with elders, who are not at all impressed by his convincing speeches about the flourishing economy, healthcare, and work. The old people look into the distance with their light eyes lined with black mascara and stroke their henna-red beards with their dark palms... They have their own worries: their grandchildren, wounded by American bombs, are crying, their children are dead, their clay yards are blown up...
The soldiers fight well, they are proud that it was not in vain that they spent this year on foreign soil - they secured a stronghold, now they can build a road here. They just can’t sleep. They don’t sleep at all - because in their dreams they see war.
Israeli army soldier Shmuel Maoz also saw war in his dreams. After the first Lebanese war, he could not talk about it for a long time. Because then, he explains, the older generation lived with memories of the Holocaust, people went through the camps, their loved ones were killed, and they remembered that they wanted to destroy the Jews and that they had to fight to preserve themselves, their people, their state. But we, says Shmuel, were already different. And what we had to endure in our war did not at all seem like a natural consequence of that struggle. And after the second Lebanese war, he realized that the time had come to make this film. "Lebanon" received the main prize in Venice. Although there is nothing in the film that would make it a truly important artistic event - a strong, professional and quite conservative cinema with a small budget. But its meaning is clear and evokes a strong feeling - war is terrible. It is contraindicated for humans. A soft, living, feeling person is squeezed into the cramped and gloomy space of a tank. Through the viewing slit, he sees how others die, how houses burn and collapse, how hell arises where there was life. The person is scared, ill, stuffy, he cries and wants to see his mother. This man is Shmuel Maoz himself, he made a film about himself.
Many considered the film anti-Israel, and at a Moscow press conference the director was asked how it was allowed to be shown and what the authorities thought about it? Maoz replied that he had not shown the film to the authorities, but, however, the Israeli Minister of Culture came with him to Venice to receive the prize there, because, Maoz said, “we are looking for any reasons for joy.” And to Peter Shepotinnik’s question: “What do you feel as a patriot of Israel?” - Maoz was very surprised: “Yes, somehow I don’t feel like a patriot”...
Document against ideology
The film "Brest Fortress", judging by the words of its producer Igor Ugolnikov, was intended to play the role of a story about the fate of a grandfather from a Korean film - reminding today's youth of how their great-grandfathers fought and died, arousing patriotic feelings. However, the material that formed the basis of the script dictated its own meanings. Yes, the defenders of the Brest Fortress, turned into a cauldron by the incompetent actions of the Soviet command, died, but did not surrender. Only women and children surrendered and were taken out of the fortress, while the soldiers of the Red Army remained and died, fighting to the end. It’s hard to watch - for two and a half hours we are shown how the quiet peaceful life of the fortress first turns into crumbs from the remains of bodies, and then how still living, exhausted people emerge from this mess and, with their last strength, shoot from everything that is still intact. We can guess what is going on in their souls, but they won’t show it to us. The film does not explain why the heroes, who are quite difficult to distinguish, and whose fates are barely outlined at all, do not give up. The viewer, however, knows that everything will end very badly.
Alexander Kott, the director of the film, tried to keep everything “true.” The film was consulted by employees of the Brest Fortress Museum and used real documents. From which it followed that people were afraid of death and lived in hope: “I wait for death every minute. You can’t even glance at the dead and wounded, but there are even more dead and wounded Germans. So whoever survives this war will be very happy,” a Red Army soldier from near Gomel wrote home to the Rostov region. His letter did not reach him - it was delayed by military censorship.
In the film "Brest Fortress" a lot is shown without censorship - just as it was. But it would be better to make a documentary about this - because there is something unbearable in the way the hell of war was honestly and meticulously restored on screen.
No, perhaps, I still don’t want Vladimir Khotinenko to be right; war is a bad national idea, and if it’s the only one, then that’s completely sad.
Looking for Joy
Domestic films in the competition program confirm one thing - we are very bad with meanings, and what suffers most from this state of mind are scripts where you still need to tell a coherent story and, if possible, tie up loose ends.
There is one film in the main competition this year: “Sparrow” by Yuri Schiller. Schiller is the fourth person from Russian documentary cinema to take on a feature film; Marina Razbezhkina, Sergei Dvortsevoy and Sergei Loznitsa did this before him. Let's face it, Schiller did it worse than his colleagues. The story he came up with looks like a student short film at best. Money is tight at the state farm, and the director decides to sell the herd, and for meat. Residents are against it, but their objections are weak. Then eight-year-old Sparrow, the son and grandson of the herd keepers, takes a gun and stands in the road of the truck with horses, threatening to shoot... The child’s courage sobers up the adults, and they force the director to cancel the order. How the state farm then repays the loan remains behind the scenes.
It seems that the film, with its archaic plot and even more antediluvian shooting style, was made only to show the audience the glorious face of the main character, the boy Denis with the cozy surname Babushkin, organically and selflessly weaving on the screen pseudoscientific theories about the origin of the Sun and black holes. Such a hero is half the success for documentary films. But for a feature film it’s not enough, especially since all these conversations have nothing to do with the plot, and the organic nature of the child only emphasizes the stiffness and unnaturalness of the adult actors.
But the infantilism of the consciousness of Russian citizens, who still live in hope of justice, which someone must provide them - even a child with a gun - this picture reflects quite accurately. Perhaps this was the intention of the selectors who invited the film to the competition.
In “Perspectives”, the second most important competition, where radical and exploratory cinema usually compete, there is also a film from Russia. Shot in Tatarstan by St. Petersburg TV director Yuri Feting, the black-and-white film “Bibinur” tells how the heroine, an old woman and a poetic nature, saves the old cemetery of her village, showing the new owner of the land, a businessman of a new generation who grew up in America, all the beauty of the ancients customs and humanity of antiquity. The young man decides to abandon his plans to seize the property.... The idea, of course, is positive, but the execution is such that the film seems to be the same age as its main character.
The fact that this year Russia is represented at the MIFF with films demonstrating archaic and not very skillful cinema, clearly chosen according to the principle: but it shows that kind and good people live in the country and there will be light at the end of the tunnel, speaks about the objectives of the festival more than anything else. The social order has been captured - there is no way to spoil the country’s reputation on this forum, there are almost no foreigners here, and even this will do for our own people - but a special spiritual path and closeness to the Soviet heritage is obvious. It’s not far from our comrades from North Korea - here they are, beautiful, kind and patriotic, waving red flags at us: steam locomotives are coming - hello to Malchish!