My friend, a scriptwriter, once told me that there is a recipe for a movie about Eastern Europe that will be popular in the West.
The recipe was: take all the stereotypes about people living there, make them victims either of the system or fate, and make the message of the movie as clear as possible to avoid any misunderstandings.
I recalled this advice when I was watching “A Gentle Creature,” a drama film by Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa, in an overcrowded cinema during the Odesa International Film Festival.
Hundreds flocked to the Ukrainian premiere of “A Gentle Creature” on July 21. The film, which was first screened during the Cannes Film Festival this year, was considered one of the Odesa Festival’s most important screenings. There were more movie fans than seats, so people were sitting right on the floor between the rows.
“It’s the first audience to which I don’t have to explain the context,” Loznitsa said, presenting his movie.
“A Gentle Creature” is a grim film about a woman who lives in the outskirts of a Russian village. One day, she receives back the parcel that she sent to her imprisoned husband, without any explanation.
For the next 2.5 hours the audience watches her going to various Russian bureaucratic institutions trying to figure out what happened to her husband and getting into trouble because of “asking too many questions.”
This short description of the film’s plot already defines the movie’s main message: In contemporary Russia a person’s life means nothing to the state’s vicious system. There’s no chance for multiple meanings or controversy.
The film’s set of characters follows all the patterns: The protagonist with no name but innocent Bambi eyes (played by theater actress Vasilina Makovtseva), several vodka-drinkers, a bunch of babushkas, a prostitute, a corrupt police officer, and several murky people who are probably human traffickers or pimps.
One scene was particularly stereotypical – the movie’s characters drank vodka in a cheap train car, while listening to the Russian prison-themed songs. I must say though that I truly liked the director’s match of songs to the actions on the screen.
One of the final scenes dotted all the I’s, leaving no room for the imagination. The main character had a dream, in which she found herself at the table with all the characters she met during the film. Each of them made a speech, toasting to one or another virtue of Russia, which in reality are still too good to be true for the state. Those speeches pretty much explained why each person appeared in the movie.
Perhaps, Loznitsa’s direct film language and theatrical dialogs between babushkas in a bus seem exotic and revealing for someone who lives outside of Eastern Europe.
But for me, the characters were rather bleak, played by people who often overacted. I felt like I was watching rather a recorded theater play than a movie.
So I went out of the cinema thinking that my knowledge of the context didn’t benefit the director at all: during these 2.5 hours I didn’t get any new thoughts about Russian bureaucratic institutions or state’s neglect for people’s lives.
The fact that it was a film by one of the most acknowledged Ukrainian directors made me worry about Ukrainian features films in general. In fact, many other Ukrainian films and especially series have the same problem: theatrical acting, plain characters and black-and-white perspective.
Alternative generation
Luckily, you can still find new stars in Ukraine’s filmmaking, whose films are real and fascinating.
One of such films is the recent winner of the category Best Ukrainian Feature Film at Odesa Film Festival, a documentary “Dixie Land” by Roman Bondarchuk.
Bondarchuk, 35, made a break-through to Ukrainian and partly international mainstream audience in 2015 with his film “Ukrainian Sheriffs,” a story about two volunteers who were appointed as sheriffs in a remote Ukrainian village. Ukraine nominated this film for Oscar in 2016.
This year Bondarchuk presented “Dixie Land,” a story about children’s jazz band in Kherson Oblast called Dixie Land. Bondarchuk filmed children who played in the band during seven years, catching their struggles of growing up and unbeatable passion for music.
“Dixie Land” is not a traditional call-to-action documentary, aimed to slightly push viewers to some further decisions or actions. The director makes a complex picture about what it’s like to grow up in the Eastern Europe and finds the one-of-a-kind real characters: a genius music teacher, a talented boy- trombonist from the workers’ family, a girl-prodigy who plays many instruments. The documentary is very romantic and heartwarming despite it’s also beautifully sad: the teacher dies, the band splits and some of its members leave the city.
The same day when Bondarchuk was awarded, on July 22, Kateryna Gornostay, a 28-year-old Ukrainian director, received FIPRESCI prize from the International Federation of Film Critics during Odesa Film Festival for her short movie “Lilac.”
Those victories made me realize that the new generation of Ukrainian directors is already here.
They are bringing a new, non-cliché, cinematic language to Ukrainian films and, hopefully, at one point they will bring the worldwide fame to Ukrainian movies as well.
