Film

RECENTLY RELEASED:

Little Dancer

REVIEWED BY CHARLES LONBERGER

Deceptively casual, and completely convincing us of the veracity of its fiction, the Russian release, Little Dancer, presents a black and determinant view of the world with brilliance. Set against the backdrop of the Ukrainian backwoods, peopled by what are essentially White Trash with aspirations, the production design of Nicola Bercek depicts the Ukraine as a virtual Third world country. The town is unkempt, and the trucks are dilapidated – save the SUVs that “gangsters” drive.

The direction of George Jecel is a gritty slice of life presented at an easy going pace, despite constructing very imaginative, narrative compositions, and digitalizing images for symbolic effects, from lightning and clouds to a bird flying into the hollow of a tree to represent the act of dreaming. His mise en scene turns from vertical to horizontal within the same shot, and keeps a dispassionate distance at the most dramatic moments, such as Marina’s impulsive suicide, rendering them all the more powerful. Similarly, we are given but very quick glimpses of brutality, which are all the more shocking due to their brevity.

The camerawork of Michael Kaufmann is formal in its establishing shots, and remarkably razor sharp in registering pre-dawn hours. The editing of Alexander Chorny dissolves to forward the action and cross-cuts to juxtapose the sexes’ complaints about each other (men mutter that women are “nothing but abandonment and pain,” while women gripe that men “carry guns”, play football and gamble). Of primary importance is the original soundtrack of Sergey Kasarenko, Vladimir Kripak, and Dmitri Snijko, which begins by quoting Hendrix, turns folklorist, and ends casting an infallibly involving, atmospheric web.   

Life is primal in this village, with gender determining one’s lot in life. Neither sex amounts to much. Women are shown to have the highest aspirations, suggested by their “hearing the voice of God in the sound of running water,” whereas men’s ambitions are as venal as they are fleeting, as they hear “the sound of money” in the running water streams. Neither aspiration amounts to much, though arguably, women get the worst of it.

This is because a woman’s real value is in her use as a sex object, and, as men are always trying to find money, this translates into sex trafficking. The screenplay, by Brook Fuller and director Jecel, does not condemn or champion this – it is simply an unavoidable fact, the way things are. Daughters belong to their fathers, who can dispose of them as they wish. (In this light, it is interesting to compare this fiction to the themes that obsessed Mizoguchi, whose father sold his sister into prostitution, something that produced outrage in his earliest films, but later was accepted as a necessity and a social good). This non-judgmental stance lends the production a darkly documentarian ambiance, though it might also be seen as a condemnation of conditions in contemporary Ukraine. The only alternative viewpoint would be to view the film, not as an unforgiving statement, but as a declaration of utter and bleak hopelessness.

The scenario is peopled by colorful yokels, who give voice to anger directed by females towards males: a father falls down dead drunk, and has feces stuffed up his nose by his daughter (Don’t worry, he gets the last laugh), while “Auntie” spits in the face of Danilo. The dead bodies of those who resisted inscription into the ranks of the prostitutes, are uncovered by happenstance. Looming behind it all is the shadow of Organized Crime, with their thinly veiled threats and explosions of thuggery and physical violence. Using rope and big sticks, they show us the Russian way of administering enforcement. Do not cross them.

“The City” is always just beyond reach of those who would escape the misery of this backwoods existence, where women daydream as they labor, while their men folk drink and smoke. Religion, in the figure of self-sacrificing Father Nikolai, is shown to be a refuge of scoundrels (as the priest had come to his calling following his incarceration in jail). While this character offers the mirage of hope (teaching ballet on the side), given the nature of things, these pyrrhic illusions are, in the final analysis, cruel and false. He waits at a bus stop for a scholarship hopeful, who has already been kidnapped, to arrive, underlining the futility of his existence.

The acting performances are so natural as to make us forget we are watching thespians at work. As Danilo, Vladimir Goryansky traffics in shattered dreams, feeding the organized crime machine in the process. His gaze confronts us at the film’s conclusion, and dares us to do anything about it. As good ol’ dad, Rado, Eugene Malhute uses his daughter as construction labor, before paying the bills with her. As Vasa, Artyon Pasynkov tattoos “his” Tatiana, before getting his lights knocked out. He is rewarded by masochistically watching his “beloved” kidnapped and carried off in front of him. One can say the latter two figures represent Experience, while Vasa symbolizes Innocence. And then some.

As drug-addicted Marina, Alina Alimova gets no respect, “doesn’t want to die a junkie” and blows her brains out, after her ambitions come crashing down around her.

This fate may be suggested to await the film’s central character, Tatiana, played by Steph Seymour, a “toothpick” who labors, first, for her Dad, and, ultimately, for the crime syndicate. Naively, she is “proud when her feet bleed” as she dedicates her life to Art in the form of ballet. Whether daydreaming or posting notes before she meets her fate as a female, it is all for naught. What she is determines what she will become, in a highly internalized performance.

Although Tatiana does, although unwillingly and with bitter irony, escape the village, she only does so due to the involvement of organized crime, and on their terms, not hers, unconditional as they are.

This PR for this uncompromising and unsettling film is handled by Magic Lamp.

FROM THE VAULT:

The Damned

REVIEWED BY CHARLES LONBERGER

Despite rich production values, Luchino Visconti’s The Damned (1969) represents a nadir in that director’s career. A multi-national production, it also represents the birth of what has come to be known as Eurotrash, the result of an emphasis on decadence, which is borderline vulgar, and a lighting design that is, at times, garish, suggestive of all manner of things.

Visconti is aloof and contents himself with scene setting, and descends into the actor centric. His use of natural locations lends the action a sense of authenticity, but, most centrally, his approach here is dualistic: he celebrates the homosexuality that the script he works with, by Nicola Badalucco and Ennio Medoli, condemns as degenerate.

Accordingly, the script portrays the early years of the Third Reich as a big book burning party, all male brown shirts bonding with drunken transvestites. The conflict between the black and brown shirts visualizes a conflict within the Nazi party, but, basically, the tale that is told is focused on the semi-operatic von Essenbeck family saga. Germany is depicted, with hindsight, as “An elite society where everything is possible.” The conclusion is paraphrased from what actually transpired in a Berlin Bunker in April 1945.

Technically, the film, while typically opulent for Visconti, is marred by the lazy zooms of cinematographers Pasqualito De Santis and Armando Nannuzzi, while the editing of Ruggero Mastroianni mostly is an exercise in rigorously avoiding any full frontal male nudity. The costume design of Piero Tosi gives us designer SS, while the soundtrack of Maurice Jarre is more befitting a horror film, when it is not liberally quoting Beethoven.

The acting is a hodge podge of 60’s European acting. Visconti gives the plum part of Martin to Helmut Berger, who is crippled by his thespic limitations. He does, however, make for a fine mannequin, as a Freudian nightmare (transvestite, pedophilic and incestuous, he has “waited years for this.”).

As his Mother, Ingrid Thulin “is the worst.” Accordingly, she gets raped by her son and receives cyanide pills as a bridal gift. As her betrothed, Frederich, Dirk Bogarde is urbane, “learns to kill” and is wracked by guilt. Florinda Bolkan is Olga, the chic whore, while Charlotte Rampling is trademark cool as Elisabeth Thallman. As her husband, Herbert, Umberto Orsini “sacrifices” himself, while Renaud Verley, as Gunther, discovers “pure hate.”  Reinhard Kolldehoff is guttural and crude as Konstantin, but best of all is Helmut Griem, delicious as a sly, suave Nazi.

The moral and sexual ambiguity of human behavior by being cast in the historical context of Nazi Germany, is easily condemned, while being allowed to be lovingly depicted. This creative ambiguity does not result in any insight; rather, it is only exploited and indulged in.

| Home |