Me Too (2012)

Director: Aleksey Balabanov

Screenplay: Aleksey Balabanov

Cast: Aleksandr Mosin as Sanya; Oleg Garkusha as Oleg the musician; Yuriy Matveev as Yura Matveev; Alisa Shitikova as Alisa; Jurij Matveyev as Jura; Viktor Gorbunov as Jura's Father

Canon Fodder

 

It's easier to find work for your asshole.

[Major Plot Spoilers Throughout]

Aleksey Balabanov's last film as a director opens with one man killing four others at night with ease in the opening, yet switching to another figure collecting fir tree oil for a purpose, Me Too is a very unconventional film for Aleksey Balabanov's last. This is a reimagining of Stalker (1979­), Andrei Tarkovsky's legendary reinterpretation of Roadside Picnic (1972), the science fiction novel by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky he transferred into an abstract philosophical journey, very different from the exceptional source material itself, and one of the best sci-fi films ever made. Here in place of the Zone is the Bell Tower of Happiness, between Uglich and St. Petersberg, an environment affected by electromagnetic radiation that killed all the human beings, leaving the environment too in a permanent winter.

A band of male misfits - one gangster named Sanya (Aleksandr Mosin), a musician Oleg (Oleg Garkusha), Jura (Jurij Matveyev), who is an alcoholic sprung from a recovery clinic, and Jura's father (Viktor Gorbunov) - intend to travel to the Bell Tower, said to transport people far away, never to come back, to a better place. Among this band of misfits, also add Alisa (Alisa Shitikova), a sex worker fleeing from her life, originally a university student who could not get work in her desired field, ending up picked up and tagging along in this journey for a purpose. This interpretation is unlike Tarkovsky and Stalker in a lot of ways to avoid becoming plagiarism, in that this is a Balabanov in tone, including how like The Stoker (2010), there is a huge emphasis on music playing over long scenes of movie from locations, and in general, a very breezy tone in the first half when it is the road trip to get to the central location. Me Too is a curious finale to its director's career in terms of an abstract metaphorical journey, which is what makes it different from his other work,

Me Too too, whilst ultimate a sombre film, does challenge one last time as a Aleksey Balabanov production, as you have to contend with how Balabanov throughout his career had moments which are uncomfortable, forcing one to ask if he was challenging the viewer, believed this characters, or was deliberately attacking political correctness in a misinformed creative decision. It was something I have had to think about first since one line in Brother 2 (2000) was a jarring piece of dialogue that raised this question, and here it is our lead Sanya who is not a good person. In particular, one monologue which Balabanov stays on, will raise questions from viewers to why it is in the film, that about a gay club where he shot a gay man at, an unpleasant piece told by the character as a joke, and odd to even include. He also cruelly suggests to Alisa that the Bell Tower will not transport women unless naked, leading to her doing so in her own quest for a better life, revealed as as a joke when she meets them up again. Adding to this one character's racist streak, and these are not a likable group in some ways, but it is Sanja significantly who is going to put viewers off from the first half. That he is ultimately the central character will raise a question to what Balabanov's intentions are.

This is a challenge to get into, but as with Balabanov's cinema in general, in one hand he has this uncomfortable moments which raise concerns of his art, in the other he challenges this, as for the most part, everyone else but Sanja is not a horrible person, merely a miscreant who wishes for happiness, unable to find such and wishing to leave through the Bell Tower. Referring the 2012 doomsday conspiracy, these are lost people, Jura trying to even rationalise the world at one point by connecting God, Charles Darwin, aliens, dinosaurs and a mass of idiosyncratic takes on history at one point in front of a campfire, whilst Oleg is a Christian. Jura as the sole female character is a lost figure, absolutely sympathetic, wishing for more, and when they get to the outside of the "Zone", unlike Tarkovsky's which was guarding by the military, said military here blankly say that they are welcomed in. They do not care about another entering, as if the environment is an inconvenience they have to professional guard, only warning people who wish to traverse inside, like gatekeepers, which no one has ever returned.

This zone is strange and compelling from Aleksey Balabanov, truly closer to his earlier work when it is a frozen wilderness of abandoned buildings, where the animals have survived but there are corpses everywhere, including of those who wished to find the Bell Tower but were stuck. The Bell Tower is explicitly supernatural, and those who are accepted are turned into puffs of smoke out of the top. The film, challenging its problematic content of the first half, offers the ultimate of challenge when it is Sanja, out of them all, who is refused entry and stuck outside, wandering unsure of himself. It is explicit that his crimes as a criminal, a bandit, have prevented him from entering, and makes the uncomfortable actions and words of his from the first half more striking in that he is the refused a heaven.

It is also here Aleksey Balabanov's career ends with a befitting finale that adds more questions, before his premature death in 2013, where he himself makes a cameo as another refused into the Bell Tower. Playing a film director, poignantly he is the sole person left to console Sanja, as someone who is not transported and yet wants happiness. Though Sanja is indefensible as a character, when he is left lost you as the viewer are still stuck with having to see the world from this abandoned figure, likely to die in this Zone from the radiation. That as an image and finale, with its clear symbolic meaning, startles in what is suggests of everything, including the problematic moments of before.

It again evokes the nihilism of the director's work which undercut those moments disconcerting of his career, an acceptance that his characters were not likable, but still figures lost and stuck in a world. His take on Russia, his homeland, was bleak, and anything we as viewers were uncomfortable with also came in mind that he never glossed over this side of the country either, for good art or bad. If anything changed for the finale film, it is contrasted by a melancholia which, dare says it, is sympathetic for those not deserving sympathy, which is the most enigmatic of finales and a real provocation. It is a film that many will struggle with, for it is the final film for an artist, which are usually the most enigmatic of a creator's, the one which raises questions and causes divide. They are usually some of the most fascinating, and likewise Me Too is the case. Always the less well regarded or obscure, whether intended as the final film or not, these including outside of cinema tend to be the most unconventional and for me some of the most compelling. The journey with Aleksey Balabanov has been challenging, rewarding and is not yet finished, even in mind sadly his cinema is not readily available, including in how it is more complex with the films less readily available, but Me Too was a perfect final chapter in what it brought in terms of questions left asks and puzzles to consider.