Tangerines (2013)

In a neat little smile-inducing scene in Zaza Urushadze's "Tangerines" (aka "Mandariinid") (2013), is a meta reference to the way cinema sometimes fools the audiences with exaggeration. A military van damaged during a war in Abkhazia (Georgia) in the early 90s, is being disposed of by three Estonian men, by pushing it over a gorge. The van rolls down and one of the men expresses surprise that it didn't explode like in the movies. The oldest, wisest of the three remarks, "The cinema is one big cheating". Perhaps it is a cynical dig by Zaza Urushadze at his own beautiful but almost unrealistically optimistic story that champions peace and harmony in the midst of a bitter war.

Following a crossfire between the Georgian and the Abkhazian/Chechen armies, a kindly old Estonian box-maker Ivo (Lembit Ulfsak) and his tangerine farmer friend Margus (Elmo Nüganen) rescue two wounded soldiers, Ahmed (Giorgi Nakashidze) and Niko (Misha Meskhi) of opposite factions. Both, despite being in no position to fight, are practically baying for each others' blood upon finding that they are alive and under the same roof.

Ivo, however, makes them promise that there would be no killing in his house. Being the proud soldiers that they claim to be, and indebted to Ivo for saving their lives, they vow not to indulge in violence as long as they are under Ivo's care. Ahmed however, swears that he would kill Niko as soon as they are out on their own. As days pass by, and Ivo nurses the brave men back to life, an unusual bond develops between them, one that makes them look beyond territorial disputes and awaken to the humane aspect of being.

Much like the old protagonist in the film, filmmaker Urushadze advocates unity and non-violence, emphasizing upon the futility of war. However, (referring back to the scene mentioned above) while narrating a story such as this, that makes soft human beings out of stubborn, angry protectors of the land, somewhere deep within, he feels that such a scenario is too idealistic and he is probably cheating himself to even think of, or hope for such warmth in the face of cold hostility.

But it is quite a welcome scenario for the viewer anyway to witness friendship and kindness triumph over the brutality of war. Over time, despite a superficial will to kill, one can't help but notice the gradual decline of animosity between the soldiers. They deride each other, exchange empty words of attacking one another when seated across the same table, but refrain from making a move, even with an opportunity in hand, thereby abiding by Ivo's condition. The bitterness soon melts into smiles and short peals of laughter over sporadic jests. It goes to show that it has probably been a while for these soldiers since they had such moments of pleasantries in a relaxed atmosphere.

In the scenario presented, what ensues is completely believable. Urushadze mostly keeps it all composed, and with a simple story, delivers a very profound message. With the aid of some clever writing, Urushadze makes a powerful anti-war statement that is in fact, very obvious, yet one which most men fail to realize. It might seem like a message done to death, but the treatment and the method of delivery stands out in the case of "Tangerines".

Ultimately, what difference does all the killing make? Lives are lost in vain. Men fight for their land, but when they cease to exist, and the time comes to go beneath this very land, is it of any consequence what territory they are in? You might as well bury a Georgian with an Estonian or a Chechen in the end, like the old man Ivo says. How would it matter?

Urushadze shuns excess in favour of restrained minimalism and makes "Tangerines" an easy and effortless ride. A sublime theme music plays throughout the film, evocative of feelings of isolation and longing. These moods reflect Ivo's loneliness and sadness concerning the state of affairs in the countryside he has so come to love and hence continues to stay on, while his family members move to homeland Estonia as war commences. The cinematography captures the ethereal beauty of the country landscapes, contrasting the beauty of the land with the ugliness of the war that is being fought for it.

Moments of light humour are subtly infused, while keeping the seriousness of the subject intact and the overall fabric of his material from any harm of unevenness. Take for example, that excellent exchange that takes you by surprise just when you think things would turn sour. Margus storms out in a huff in protest when Ivo asks him to forget about his tangerines business, given the conditions of war. Ivo turns to Ahmed who's unaware of what happened and asks "Does he happen to be your relative, by any chance?", a visible question mark on Ahmed's face palpable. Little moments like these and more also establish the strength of Urushadze's actors. It is difficult to single out one, for all of the primary players make their presence felt with a conviction that is rare.

"Tangerines" is a work of elegance and pure excellence. One would have to struggle to find a fault with it and would certainly have to try very hard not to be moved by the extraordinary third act that restores one's faith in humanity. How great a place this world would be, if everyone recognized the human in them and let the sweetness trump the sourness, much like in a tangerine! "Don't give my men any money. Just give them a few boxes of tangerines", says a soldier who promises to send men to help Ivo. If only he realized the symbolic significance of his words that goes so much deeper; that it is kindness and compassion that should be chosen over material possession.


Score: 9/10

 

Dead Man's Letters (Pisma Myortvogo Cheloveka) (1986)

There is nothing remotely uplifting about the hellish world depicted in Konstantin Lopushanskiy's "Dead Man's Letters" (aka "Letters from a Dead Man") (1986). The first thing that grabs our attention is how depressing just about everything in every frame of this film looks.

It is a post-apocalyptic nightmare of the worst kind. Total annihilation, death, destruction and decay is all that you see. There has been a major nuclear disaster, which has presumably, completely destroyed a few cities including the unnamed town in which the film is set, or perhaps even the entire world! Apart from the physical destruction of property, the air is polluted with radioactive elements, thereby making it impossible to walk in the open without a gas mask and a protective suit on. A few survivors take shelter in underground vaults of a large museum. One of them is an old physicist/professor (Rolan Bykov), the protagonist, who is nursing his ailing wife.

Some other individuals, who seem to be the military police have taken up the task of imposing curfews, isolating the dying from the healthy, and shifting them to another place which is the central bunker. Energy to light up bulbs in the world below is generated by manual pedaling. The old professor writes the titular letters to his son Eric, whose whereabouts are unknown; he is probably dead following the holocaust. We don't really see the man actually writing the letters for the most part, so it is possible that he writes them in his mind, as there is no place to send them. But these letters, the contents of which, we learn through his voice-over narration are heartfelt and full of emotion. They are sometimes cries of despair, and expressing deep regret about the past and a general lost cause, while at other times more philosophical and conveying that there could indeed be a silver lining.

He is also reeling under a sense of a huge disillusionment that his beloved science had let him and mankind down. He is unable to fathom the idea that science could be responsible for a catastrophe of such monumental proportions. Somewhere he still insists that he has some hypotheses, but no proof, that it is impossible that all of mankind has ceased to exist on the outside. However, most of the outside is a blind spot, so there is no way of knowing what is really left 'out there', beyond the known realms. And one can't go very far either, what with limited supplies, all the broken railway tracks that go nowhere, and the sorry sight of mountains of rotting corpses all around. The damage isn't just physical, but psychological as well. There is a group of children who are more or less rendered lifeless, in a strange stupour, as if in a shell-shock.

Lopushanskiy's biggest success lies in his astounding vision of mass obliteration. The visual form given to the devastation is such that it messes with your psyche and puts you into a mourning mode! This is arguably the ugliest, scariest depiction of a post-apocalyptic world to ever grace celluloid. Not only does it make you feel immensely miserable; but you also get the feeling of being suffocated and trapped in its gloomy, claustrophobic atmosphere that literally emanates rot.

One of the most effective and hair-raising sequences in the film is that of the professor visiting the central bunker, and eventually breaking into terrified screams of shock and repugnance, as he walks through a children's ward, amid their cries of agony. This sequence, along with a few other scenes and the central idea of isolated individuals in underground bunkers also brings to mind a particular vignette in Juraj Jakubisko's masterpiece, "The Deserters and the Nomads" (1968).

Lopushanskiy had been an assistant to the great Andrei Tarkovsky on his "Stalker" (1979), and the influence on his film is evident from his stylistic choices. It is almost prophetic that "Stalker" depicted a cordoned off 'zone' that, it was later said, resembled the depopulated area which was a direct consequence of the Chernobyl disaster. "Dead Man's Letters" is in turn inspired by the happenings of the Chernobyl incident. The dilapidation, the wetness of the land, the presence of water all around, and the sight of railway tracks, albeit broken ones bring some frames of "Stalker" to mind, instantly.

A striking aspect of the film is the cinematography, with its heavy usage of coloured filters, mostly a darkish tinge of yellow and in some scenes, icy cold blue. Could it be coincidental that in a film with excess of yellow dominating most frames, the protagonist in the letter voiceover, once says "..for the twilight is monotonous."? Nikolai Pokoptsev's brilliant cinematography, Aleksandr Zhurbin's eerie, somber score and Leonid Gavrichenko's terrific sound design accentuate the dreariness of the universe portrayed by Lopushanskiy.

It is a deeply disturbing picture of death and madness, as some folks give up, burst into fits of hysterical and nervous laughter, and turn suicidal. Amid lull periods of despair, there are long ramblings, albeit stemming from a mental deterioration, about what went wrong with humankind, its mistakes, lamentations about the scant remains of humanity, and advocacy of love. A theory as to how the holocaust really happened is briefly touched upon. There is a suggestion that it was accidental, thereby avoiding putting a direct blame on anyone for a planned attack, but there is no way to ascertain what really happened. For even this revelation, if at all it is one, comes in one of musings in the form of the so-called letters of the old man.

The town also isn't really supposed to be a Russian one. It is not clear, for all the artefacts, paraphernalia, weaponry and vehicles seem to suggest that it is a non-Russian territory. In one of the film's best scenes, a shot from the top shows two masked men in conversation, one the physicist and the other, presumably an astrologer, wading through the flooded ruins of a deserted library amid papers scattered all over. The astrologer, in a long monologue, possibly with a tinge of hysteria too, suggests that there really was no war, no attack. It was all written, a prophecy. Doomsday was here, the apocalypse as described in the Book of Revelation, and it was but an inevitability!

But despite the feeling that all chances are lost, our professor is the one epitome of optimism. He lights candles of hope on a presumed Christmas time with the children, highlighting the essence of Christmas, that is spreading happiness. And therein lies the principal message of Lopushanskiy's film. In showing us the ghastly nature of the aftermath of a nuclear war, and by creating a very hapless picture of the same, Lopushanskiy is attempting to open the eyes of mankind. War of any kind is a losing game all the way. Seeking happiness through a peaceful path of love, and most importantly, being human, is the wisest way to be.

The film ends with a profound quote from the Russel-Einstein Manifesto that pretty much sums this sentiment up: "There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge, and wisdom. Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? We appeal as human beings to human beings: Remember your humanity, and forget the rest."

Score: 10/10

 

Elena (2011)

A bird is seen perched upon a cold, lifeless, leafless tree. Simultaneously, we see interiors of a similarly cold, empty, but plush, wealthy home. The opening frame of the dry tree is so dead, that we are almost tricked into believing that it is a still frame, but for the diegetic crowing of a few birds. The stillness and the dead calm of the tree and of this particular shot is suddenly destroyed when another bird enters the scene and perches itself on the other end of the branch, and shakes it vigorously, thereby disturbing the tranquility and creating ripples in an established, stable system.

The central plot of Andrey Zvyagintsev's "Elena" (2011) sums up this scenario to a significant extent. A portly old ex-nurse Elena (Nadezhda Markina), is married to a wealthy ex-patient she took care of some ten years ago. The husband is an old rich man by the name of Vladimir (Andrey Smirnov). He has an estranged, hedonist daughter Katya (Elena Lyadova) from a previous marriage, who admittedly needs her father only for the money. Elena, on the other hand, has a no-good son, Sergei (Aleksey Rozin), from a previous marriage, and his family, including a 17 year old grandson who desperately needs money to get into college, failing which he may have to be sent to military service. 

Each member of the couple ends up defending their own blood child when it comes to arguing about who deserves more attention and care based on their overall demeanor and gratefulness toward their respective parent. A sudden change of events concerning Vladimir's health problem leads to the question of a will, which leads to further complications, as Katya's change of heart towards her father and vice versa pose as a threat to the future of Elena's wasted son. Blood threatens to be thicker than water, and circumstances put Elena in a fix as she finds herself subjected to the ultimate test of loyalty...!

Zvyagintsev, who previously crafted an equally complex, gripping and effective family drama, "The Return" (2003), surprises and disturbs with this minimal tale that unfolds with its deliberate pace and calm atmosphere, and yet hits you like a ton of bricks when it gets to its turning point. This time around, Zyvagintsev takes his own sweet time in letting his audiences observe his characters. And therefore, in what may seem like wasted running time, we are shown some subtle, yet deliberate sequence of events, that make us well aware of the kind of characters we are dealing with.

The many shades of gray of each character are revealed in some realistic and convincing sequences, never far-fetched. Nevertheless, it is nothing that would make you hate or love a character, but merely understand where the person is coming from and what kind of an influence he/she may have on the people who they are closely related with. 

Quite a few fleeting clues are thrown about, hinting at the overall message of the story and how a bad seed begets a bad seed, and how every person needs to gauge their standing in the society or the kind of parents they would make, to even think of breeding and bringing more children of their own kind to this world. The very nihilistic, cynical and unabashedly frank daughter of Vladimir, Katya, even seems to befriend the old man after all, for she always portrays with all honesty that the only string attaching her to her father is that of monetary needs. And yet, somewhere in her arrogance, we at least see an integrity, unlike her old father, who seems to be all heart otherwise, but then doesn't think twice before leching at a comely young gym member, his daughter's age, working out as he sweats it out on a treadmill!

Not offering any ray of hope on the other side, is Elena's son Sergei, a lazy, jobless drunk, who cannot even afford his teenage son's education, yet wastes away his life and doesn't care about getting employed. Perhaps it is out of a sense of taking his stepfather for granted and that his financial needs would be taken care of anyway. How hypocritical of him then, that initially refused a grant of any sort, he calls Vladimir a tight-ass and later, when he ends up getting some sum of money after all, goes on to make a toast to the old man, and decides to name his unborn son after him! 

It is a two-faced world all the way, and one wonders if it is the socio-economic environment as depicted in the film, that has created such an indifferent, inhuman atmosphere. In an almost Claude Chabrol-esque finesse, Zvyagintsev reveals the inherent class conflict, be it in terms of mentality or in terms of lifestyle. Despite all the awesomely colourful and crisp cinematography by Mikhail Krichman, we see a distinction between classes that takes almost black and white extremes! Vladimir's home is a dream house, with all the works of luxuries, while Sergei's place is a crummy, shabby old neighbourhood run down apartment, that can barely contain two, let alone, his upcoming family of five!

Symbolic images like the birds and two smoking chimneys flanking one non-smoking one clearly drive home the gist of the story of a dying old man and the two most important but headstrong women in his life, his new wife and his ungrateful daughter, both wanting a piece of the man's dough! An excellent musical score composed by Philip Glass makes its welcome appearance at scenes that, on a normal basis build up to nothing significant event-wise, but do serve to reflect an internal angst or sentiment of a character in that very moment. 

These instances and the brilliantly written pieces of tense drama are accentuated by the marvelous performances by an all round talented cast. Andrey Smirnov is spectacular as the old man, confident at one point and well aware of his mortality on the other side of an illness, displaying an eerie genuineness to his ailing self. Surpassing Smirnov is the astonishingly natural Nadezhda Markina in her portrayal of the complex, eponymous Elena. This is a performance for the ages, and coming from an actor who makes her debut on the big screen here after graduating from the small screen. Emerging strong in supporting acts are Elena Lyadova as the compulsively rude Katya and Aleksey Rozin as her beer-guzzling stepbrother. 

A film like "Elena" is a sheer delight for every cinephile hungry for some tense, brilliantly acted, edgy, morally complex films that don't have to try too hard to establish that they are a work of true genius. It would be a crime to miss this film.

Score: 9/10