Two Russian Films

 

                                

 

As the war between Russia and Ukraine drags on, I recall my almost lifelong fascination with Russia. I suppose it started with literature during my high school and college years. I never took a formal course on Russian literature, but I read War and Peace, Crime and Punishment, the Brothers Karamazov and others with fascination although perhaps little understanding. A few years later I discovered the novels and histories of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, one of the greatest and most influential authors of the twentieth century. Just a couple of years ago I waded through The Icon and the Axe, James Billington’s magisterial study of Russian history and culture.

Today, I doubt if any of my college educated grandchildren have ever read or will read any of these great authors. I doubt that they have even heard their names. I suppose that their knowledge of Russia, like that of our own politicians, is likely superficial and unhistorical. Since books are too time consuming, and seemingly irrelevant in our age, film may be the only way to provide insights into a country like Russia. Here are brief reviews of two films that shed some light on this diverse country that extends over nine time zones.

 

Dersu Uzala: 

Toward the end of his long and distinguished career Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa was given permission by Soviet authorities to do a film based on the memoir of Russian explorer Vladimir Arsenyev who made a number of mapping expeditions of the vast Siberian wilderness in the years before the Revolution of 1917.  Shot almost entirely on location, the film appeared in 1975 and won the Academy Award for best foreign film. It was also a box office success especially in Russia. 

The title of the film refers to the main character, an uncivilized Mongolian frontiersman, who is taken on as a guide by a Russian surveying crew exploring the Siberian wilderness. The soldiers in the crew perceive Dersu as a naïve and comical relic of an uncivilized age. Dersu is a denizen of the forest who is at one with its creatures. He even talks with fierce tigers. He has no formal religion, but he could be called an animist who respects all living things. He is a hunter but not a killer.

Dersu quickly shows his mettle with displays of knowledge, experience, ingenuity and bravery on more than one occasion. In an unforgettable episode he and the head of the expedition, whom he respectfully calls Capitan, have wandered away from the rest of the crew to a desolate marshland. Alone in this barren expanse Dersu senses that a storm is brewing. He jumps into action and he and the Captain frantically cut long grass to make a little tent where they will shelter from the storm, kept alive overnight only by their body heat. The Captain realizes that he owes his life to Dersu. 

In the end the film is not about a mapping expedition but about the intrusion of civilization into a primitive world which will inevitably have to give way. The nineteenth century history of ancient Russia and the new United States is very similar. Americans headed west to explore and settle a vast continent inhabited by primitive tribal people, and Russians headed east to explore, settle, and encounter equally primitive tribes. Some of the primitive people, like Dersu Uzala, could be called “noble savages” but others were not so noble. On the other hand, some of the civilized people were not so civilized. 

The film is beautifully photographed, and the action scenes are amazing for a pre-special effects world. Even more beautiful is the depiction of the growing friendship and mutual respect between the Captain and Dersu. Finally, the film comes with excellent subtitles that do a fine job of reproducing Dersu’s dialect.

 

“12”:

In 2007 Russian filmmaker Nikita Mikhalkov produced, directed, wrote, and acted in “12”, a film based on the American drama and film “Twelve Angry Men.” Mikhalkov won a special award at the Venice film festival that year, and his film also received an Academy Award nomination for best foreign film. The film is a masterpiece that far exceeds the earlier American version in power and intensity. 

The film also opens a window, actually twelve windows, into post-Soviet Russia. 12 refers to the twelve jurors who are hearing a case involving a young man accused of murdering his stepfather. Complicating matters is the fact that the young man is a Chechen, a member of that ethnic group that has never been fully assimilated into Russian society. Chechens are, at the same time, hated and feared by most Russians. Alexander Solzhenitsyn claimed that even Gulag prison guards feared the Chechen prisoners who often terrorized the other prisoners.

The film, however, is not about the prisoner but about the jurors. These twelve men, each represents an aspect of Russian life after the fall of Communism. They are a diverse group that includes, among others, a successful post-communist businessman, a doctor educated in Moscow but originally from the provinces, a Russian TV executive, a former Soviet bureaucrat who fondly remembers the good old days of Communism, and even a bigoted cab driver.

The case against the young man seems open and shut but doubts arise. Inevitably, each juror reveals himself in dealing with what turns out to be a very complicated case. In revealing their own stories, they tell us more about modern Russia than we will ever find in our own media.

As mentioned above the film is powerful and intense, and filled with often mysterious flashbacks that eventually come together like pieces in a puzzle. But most of the power and intensity takes place in the makeshift jury room where twelve fine actors strut their stuff.

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