Post-Soviet Russian Film

I realize that the BBC is deeply invested in giving Russia as much dramatically bad press as possible. Life in Russia is difficult, and no one here wants to claim that our coverage of Russia's political/artistic/social/criminal/etc. climate should be of the 99% POSITIVE REVIEW FOR FATHERLAND variety. I lived there, I'm a realist, and normally I relish my daily BBC feed--their reportage is usually delightfully terrible in the Fox News Melodrama kind of way. But today's article on post-Soviet Russian film really irks me for some reason. Perhaps it's the wistful nod to Lenin's love of film-as-propaganda in the beginning?

The government saw the medium as an ideal propaganda tool and promoted it from the outset, building thousands of cinemas in urban and rural areas. Consequently, Russian film-making flourished.

Yes, film as an art flourished in the Soviet period, but the decades when film had to agree with party politics at the risk of the director's life hardly seems a period when we can simply state things were great for film.

Or maybe it's the assertion that Russia's new cultural low can be seen in 1. lower earnings for local movies when contrasted with American film sales and 2. The prevalence of popcorn and cell phones in theaters.

Seriously? Do I need to invest the effort in Googling the international profits of Avatar versus the latest British blockbuster, or can I save my finger strength? Are we really going to pretend that American theater floors aren't sticky with popcorn bits and soda, or that theateres don't glow with the pale blue shimmer of a million texting cell phones?

This is not to say the article doesn't bring up some good points about distribution, funding, bureaucracy, and a lack of local interest for local films, all of which hamper the production of new films in Russia. These are certainly problems, as they are almost everywhere in the world. But the article entirely neglects a tremendously powerful film tradition that continues in Russia today. It's a tradition that could have benefited greatly from BBC coverage, had the BBC been worried about increasing awareness of talented filmmakers and not churning out yet another article dedicated to depicting Russia as a barren criminal hell-scape.

Ok, rant aside, here are some films that have come out of Russia after the fall of the Soviet Empire, all of which I believe are of note. They're not the best movies Russia has produced in the last 25 years, not by a long shot. But they are some of my favorites, and they demonstrate just how active and versatile Russia's film community still is:

* Peter FM - A simple romantic comedy, and fun.

* Burnt By the Sun - Beautiful cinematography and incredibly well acted. A family drama about a Soviet general.

* 12 - A modern adaptation of 12 Angry Men done by the same man who directed and starred in Burnt By the Sun. So well adapted I'd swear it was from a Russian original, but possibly a little too optimistic for a piece on Chechnya.

* Kakooshka - Another romantic comedy, but not at all simple. It's set during the war and follows two soldiers - one Russian and one Finnish - who are stranded with a young Lap woman on her farm. I find this movie hysterical, but that could just be me.

I'm stopping at those four because Thad knows better than I do, and can post here also. But note there are a lot more modern films that I'm looking forward to. Here are five:

* Hipsters - this movie looks weird.
* We're From the Future - this movie looks funny.
* Taras Bulba - this movie looks beautiful.
* Mermaid - this movie looks fantastic.
* Morphine - this movie is based on texts by Bulgakov.

See? There's so much modern Russian cinema I was able to get through this whole post without mentioning Night Watch.

Baby Blues (a rant, not really a review)

[Photo: mommy dearest psychotically chops tomatoes while her husband pleads with her to be reasonable. God, women are so unreasonable.]

Look. No one would claim I don't like a good exploitation flick as much as the next person. And as someone who watches *a lot* of horror movies I'm pretty accustomed to rampant sexism. My rental habits cross a lot of lines, but apparently the translation of postpartum depression into a low-grade slasher in which a mother stalks, tortures, and kills all of her children, for whatever reason, strays into an area I'd prefer not to go. I don't mind seeing mothers go crazy (Psycho), I don't mind seeing them torment their children (Carrie), and I don't mind movies that assume we all know pregnancy = crazy (Rosemary's Baby). So what exactly is it that I mind about Baby Blues? If you're up for a rant, I've made a list:

1. The not-openly-stated but clearly implied moralization of Andrea Yates' story. "True Events" and "Pray these horrors don't befall your family." Tacky is fine with me; after all, I rented this movie because I thought it was about an evil baby. But this seems a bit....tacky.

2. Some vague and thinly veiled allegorization of violence and farm animals makes it clear that motherhood is a duty to protect, any action to the contrary is a perversion and indefensible. So far I'm bored, perhaps annoyed at the triteness, but not offended.

3. The emphasis on masculinity as a foundation for any family My limit for the phrase "man of the house" lowers in direct proportion to the child's age. This kid is maybe 7 or 8, so I lost patience quickly here. My nagging annoyance notes how the eldest son embodies every christ-like trait imaginable while his sister bickers over dolls and cries through the whole movie. I tell myself I'm being too sensitive.

4. The aggressive means by which the absent trucker father is set up as a hero with strong values (he wants more children, works only because he loves them so much, is deeply faithful while he's gone, sacrifices times together to bring home the literal bacon*), while the mother is petty, jealous, and neglectful (she assumes infidelity on her husband's part, envies a local weather reporter for her flattering job, barely glances at the picture her daughter draws of their happy family). Here I'm irked. It's not just trite. Do we really want to vilify mothers for wanting a job, or not wanting a fifth child? The most recent edition to the family is, after all, about 6 months old.

5. The child killing begins with the drowning of the baby in the bathtub--a scene that feels accurate, tragic, and suffocating. This scene is sad, and it leaves the viewer a little shocked and traumatized when so real a tragedy is immediately followed by a series of slasher deaths worthy of the Halloween movies. Unconventionally, the children are killed on screen, chased by wheat threshers, skewered on pitch forks, hacked with mirrors.** As I watch postpartum depression evolve from a real tragedy to a level of deranged psychosis known only to the wizened horror viewer, my annoyance morphs into real offense. This is sensational, which is fine, and manipulative, which is dangerous.

6. This is already long, so I'll jump to the end, in which the surviving child watches in horror as his pregnant ("it's a miracle!" the tearful father rejoices) mother is released from a mental institution by a villainous band of doctors ("with therapy she's cured") and lawyers ("the law protects women with mental illness") to torment and butcher her next brood. The possibility that attentive medical treatment would have helped her is presented as an outrageous lie perpetuated by anti-family organizations that worry too much about "women's health" (McCain's air quotes, not mine), and I am straining every nerve not to call up Brooke Sheilds and ask her if we can go trounce whatever Tom-Cruise-loving hack of an executive okayed this thing.

What I resent most is being driven to take Cruise seriously, even for a moment.

*In the first ten minutes Chris commented "Personification of a pig so early on does not bode well." It doesn't. For the viewer, or for the pig.
**I don't like spoilers, so I put those in the wrong order