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.

War (2002)

 

Director: Aleksey Balabanov

Screenplay: Aleksey Balabanov

Cast: Aleksey Chadov as Ivan; Ian Kelly as John; Ingeborga Dapkunaite as Margaret; Sergey Bodrov as Captain Medvedev; Evklid Kyurdzidis as Ruslan; Giorgi Gurgulia as Aslan

Canon Fodder

 

[Full Plot Spoilers Throughout]

Out of all his films, Aleksey Balabanov's War is pretty accessible as a film, in which this will turn into a war rescue film about freeing the fiancée of a British couple from a Chechen warlord's military group. In mind to this however, the pre-credits sequence, involving a group of people (including the British couple, a man and a woman) being dragged into the camp as prisoners, you do however have Balabanov make an exclamation point of this being his type of cinema, not something easily digestible, when one of the prisoners has their head cut off and presented to their captors.

Ivan (Aleksey Chadov), a Russian soldier who starts the film as a prisoner here, narrates the film in the future of how, in the midst of the Second Chechen War, Ivan will help John (Ian Kelly) rescue his fiancée Margaret (Ingeborga Dapkunaite) from this group ran by Aslan (Giorgi Gurgulia). The immediate concern with the film, a more pulpy war film in the end, is how this treats this history, especially as the depiction of the Chechens within this film at first is very one-dimensional, capable of murder, death and a threat of sexual violence over Margaret. Balabanov was entirely interested in the issue, over how prisoners were treated and killed during this turbulent conflict¹, yet also has the Chechens played by actual Chechens, as the federals are actual soldiers and officials, and with scenes partially filmed in Chechen lands¹. Including the First Chechen War of 1994 to 1996, this is a history which feels it requires an entire text to go through, rather than try to sum real life conflict and death for a film review, but in mind to the 2022 invasion of Ukraine by Russia, one would come to a production like War with a lot more caution of the message it wishes to tell, something which does have to be considered with not just a film like this, but also North American films or any from countries which paint a war with a likelihood of a simplistic black-white morality and jingoistic undercurrents. Aleksey Balabanov even if this was to be argued was the case here does however undercut this potential factor with an aspect that soaks through his films, even if unintentionally, that War is thankfully more complicated due to how cynical his worldview is. For all the concerns I have had with how Balabanov has included content and sentences spoken by his characters which are discomforting, a film which could be very nationalistic like War is a lot more cynical as it goes along even when it gets to the tropes of an action war film in the second half's rescue mission.

For starters bureaucracy procrastinates here even to help free Margaret or the prisonsers. This can be read with a very right wing, conservative message, this a Rambo film of two men, Ivan mainly, being a one-man army against Aslan's group, but War complicates itself, including the sense that any government body including Russia's is not reliable in the slightest for this mission imposed upon two people. At the same time, the negotiations John and Ivan, who is later brought in as a paid mercenary, to even begin this missions has to involve a Russian gangster trading heroine with Chechens. Aspects like this in the plot does mark to War's favour that this film, even if it plays as a pulpy war film, has a very misanthropic take on conflict, that this quest to rescue someone is marked by a lot of dirty business, by a lot of sides playing off each other, and Ivan not necessary a good person, just a young soldier who decides to go into this as a paid mercenary.

Ivan is not even hailing directly from Russia itself but from Tobolsk in Siberia, from an environment away from the central urban cities like Moscow, with its boats to travel about and small community in what we briefly see. Ivan is disconnected from civilian life, and for him, this mission he ends up with is part of what he can be, rather than pretending who he is not. Alongside the ending ultimately a cynical one, where he is talking of this mission from a prison cell charged for war crimes, he will continually tell John, who follows with him, that war is not heroic and even shooting bystanders, even by accident, is part of it. Considering bystanders, including women, accidentally are killed, once the rescue mission starts in Chechnya, emphasises Aleksey Balabanov not taking a noble viewpoint but something closer to his gangster films.

Not even John is noble either. Alongside the fact, off-screen, Margaret will have fallen in love with a wounded soldier she will be stuck with in a pit at Aslan's base, but John does not go into this mission with a nobility either. Channel 4, the British free-to-air public service television network, get a kicking as John is paid by them to film the rescue of his fiancée, strapping a camera to his head eventually and trivialising the life of Margaret. His act, which he films purposely as he goes along, is as much making this significant journey to save Margaret one for his financial benefit, eventually even getting a film adaptation in the epilogue to really dig in the lack of honour here.

Even if the Chechen characters are one dimensional, which is a critique worth having, Aleksey Balabanov also introduces Ruslan (Evklid Kyurdzidis) halfway through. A shepherd Ivan takes hostage, Ruslan is a begrudging ally even if forced to at gunpoint, and eventually even he complicates the black-white morality in that, due to tribal differences, even he is against Aslan and becomes a willing participant even if Ivan has been pretending he has soldiers threatening his family. This undercuts a simplistic take of painting the Chechen characters by having one who is likable and reveals Ivan's ruthlessness, arguably being more progressive even against what Balabanov may have intended because of his clear pessimistic ideals of human beings in general.  

It is a hell of a lot more worthwhile for Aleksey Balabanov to have this pessimism, because it at least means that, any concern one could have with the film, or a lot of content I have seen in his films, he yet was constantly undercutting it with a world weariness suggesting we were stuck with these figures trying to survive in a hostile society. He still has to be taken to task for the moments he had crossed a line into glamorising problematic characters, including ones spouting racist and homophobia ideas, but his nihilism even paints potentially glamorous characters with the same grimy brush, even Ivan here, more likable, stuck having to be a ruthless soldier to kill because he is stuck with no options aside from this. Far from self defeating and accepting it, it feels begrudging, especially as War is an action film eventually, one with the beats and energy of one that is exhilarating, but contrasts this with the punch line of the bookending narrative. That being that Ivan will not be celebrated, and even if not a good character, his role is proclaimed fully criminal by lies as much as what actually happened, with someone taking the fame from the moment. In many ways, whilst it can be read as a problematic message, a pro-lone wolf mentality, it feels instead like sod's law instead, befitting Aleksey Balabanov's worldview from the films before and only streaked with greater melancholy after this. War is, personally, not as meaningful a production in his career, clearly the biggest film in scope in his career, especially next to some of the smaller productions from this time, but it still has a lot to say.

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1) Aleksey Balabanov's film "War" is released in Russian cinemas, published on newsru.com on March 14th 2002.

A Stoker (2010)

 

a.k.a. The Stoker

Director: Aleksey Balabanov

Screenplay: Aleksey Balabanov

Cast: Mikhail Skryabin as Kochegar; Yuriy Matveev as Vassily 'Bizon'; Aleksandr Mosin as the Sergeant; Aida Tumutova as Sasha; Anna Korotayeva as Masha; Varvara Belokurova as Vera

Canon Fodder

 

[Some Major Spoilers]

There is in the centre of this film a stoker (Mikhail Skryabin) who sets up the fires for Russian mafia to dispose of unwanted bodies into at a furnace. Writing a novel on a typewriter in-between working at the furnaces, the stoker continues his days working between his real job, with the burning of coal, and intermittent visits from the mafia. Out of the later Aleksey Balabanov films, A/The Stoker became for me one of the strongest as, even if a pessimistic film at heart, the humanity it still there intermingled with the nihilism of Balabanov.

A Stoker's entire plot is a petty dispute, a romantic triangle between his daughter Sasha (Aida Tumutova) and the daughter of a mobster, Masha (Anna Korotayeva), over one of the latter's goons, leading a disposal within the furnaces that the stoker himself will react to. Though complicit in helping to dispose bodies, he is still arguably an innocent living in his own world until that moment and the path he goes onto in response. Notably, without being directly part of the narrative, the stoker and his daughter Sasha are of Yakut descent, continuing Balabanov's fascinating and admirable trait from The River (2002) of working with Yakut actors as the leads, not presented as different from anyone else but with their own stories and only keeping this in mind to that back story, in this case following an older man who was a former soldier. He has not been paid over two months at his work when we first encounter him, and the mafia using the furnaces at his workplace for other illegal purposes is more of a way to support himself, living there with a bed nearby, in mind to this. This does not even have the exaggeration of Dead Man's Bluff (2005) here when dealing with its crime plot threads, as the banality and ultimately pointless nature of hiring hit men to kill people, and the required disposal of bodies in the stoker's furnaces, is a system we witness throughout this shorter film's novella-like narrative.

A Stoker, steeped in pessimism, is humane nonetheless in reducing all these gangster tropes into pettiness. The banality is found in one hit man having to get his sum for the work from a dingy safe, watched by a man watching porn, in the room near a downstairs bar. The mafia boss who uses our lead knows him and served under him as a sniper when the stoker was part of the military during the Afghan-Soviet War of the eighties, friendly with him only to transgress this when his daughter, out of selfishness, makes an ill-fated decision with a real tragedy. The mafia boss himself is a man comfortable in his own life with an adult daughter, living in his middle age in a well off middle class home, only with this side of working in the criminal underground nowadays, his involvement entirely from an adult daughter whose lack of moral consequences will be traumatising for her and doomed for him.  Marsha, before she betrays Sasha, have a business in a fur store with her, financed by her own father, and even the man they are unwittingly sharing is one of her father's own contract killers, Vassily 'Bizon' (Yuriy Matveev), a mostly mute and silent figure who feels less like a figure cheating behind each of their backs but casually drifting between their arms.

Nothing is over-the-top or passionate. Only the stoker's finale decision has a weight beyond the banal world, one willing to self sacrifice as he dons his old military uniform again. Beyond this, set in the brown and grey industrial and urban world of Russia, the only things of passion here are the rock songs on the soundtrack, a trademark of Aleksey Balabanov that have a profound influence, and how compared to the other films how explicitly sexual the film is. With the two female leads Aida Tumutova and Anna Korotayeva comfortable in doing full nudity, the presence of such casual eroticism, amidst the bland wallpapered rooms and snow covered exteriors, feels less lurid softcore but the eroticism of paintings in how they are depicted. Rather than destructive, they are scenes and interactions with Vassily, the male and female bodies eroticised, with emotions beyond the world even if corporal physical interactions. Sadly, even this is undercut by the fact, once one realises Vassily is being shared between them, the passions they unwittingly share with the same man separately will crush and traumatise many when a body count is created.

As jealously, a petty one with an additional layer for greed, causes pointless death, eventually the stoker himself will act differently, a revenge that is as casually done as it is also unexpected, including by precise use of a ski pole's tip from someone who uses it like a soldier able to use anything would. A Stoker is a bleak farce within its heart, one where you can however still see Aleksey Balabanov possess some semblance of hope even if he dashes it in his characters' fates here. It is hopeful in that there is moments of lightness amidst all this. One legitimate innocent is here, Vera the child (Varvara Belokurova) who visits the stoker continually, even to the point her father visits to see if he is on the level, and admires him from their one interaction. She is the one who will preserve the stoker's unfinished novel, a folktale of an outsider being welcomes into a Yakut home, in an unknown past, only to commit transgressions including raping the wife which will not be left unpunished.

Alongside the ending having this child tell the story, which is clearly done as a jarring choice, Balabanov reflecting his past work, including his use of early cinema, tells this story-within-a-story as a monochrome narrative too. This tale-within-a-tale's moral complexity in itself, the discomforting morality of the director's own films, does not with other films of his come perilously close to being tasteless, even if it involves the wife being punished too by the husband and wishing for it like a pleasure in itself, but becomes elusive and adds a strange discomfort to the entire work we have witnessed. A lot can be gained from Aleksey Balabanov's films in general, even if you do find yourself in uncomfortable territory, and in this case, A Stoker in both its simplicity and when it does not go forth in a clearly meant way are all compelling. In terms of character studies, it is one of the most empathetic even in terms of characters whose deeds are not defendable, all within a tale where everyone, painfully, makes decisions which they let themselves fall into. As a result, as already mentioned, this was one of the strongest of the director-writer's career for me in general because of this attitude.

Cargo 200 (2007)

 

Director: Aleksey Balabanov

Screenplay: Aleksey Balabanov

Cast: Agniya Kuznetsova as Angelika; Aleksey Poluyan as Captain Zhurov; Leonid Gromov as Artem, Professor of Scientific Atheism; Aleksey Serebryakov as Aleksey; Leonid Bichevin as Valera; Natalya Akimova as Antonina; Yuriy Stepanov as Colonel Mikhail; Mikhail Skryabin as Sunka

Canon Fodder

 

[Some Major Spoilers]

Set in 1984, near the end of the Soviet Union, during the Afghanistan War with Russia, in a world of rebellious teens and their Soviet fathers, Cargo 200 is deceptive in its prologue that, once this adaptation of William Faulkner's novel Sanctuary properly starts, the infamous film even in Aleksey Balabanov's career does feel like a grotesque experience even for him. It is a film that comes after Dead Man's Bluff (2005), a nasty parody of Brother (1997), but something more startling in contrast, from an era post-The River (2002) and films which brought the director-writer's side that is more melancholic took over. More so as the film is not presented as an adaptation of the Southern writer Faulkner's novel, but is told as a true story, this feels more provocative than offensive for the sake of it.

The title marks what the film's tone is, "Cargo 200" as a title referring to a code used in the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Union countries referring to the transportation of military casualties. This is a world where a professor of scientific atheism, Artem (Leonid Gromov), finds himself in the middle of the countryside, after his car broke down, in the home of a working class patriarch who wants to know where the consciousness came from over mushroom soup, cucumbers and vodka, like this is a bleak comedy from Aleksey Balabanov about the stagnation of the country in the era. Even in 1984 here, the God believer challenges the atheist for all the dead, God or otherwise, left strewn in the history of the Soviet Era before it fully winds down by the end of the decade.  

The horror is not even this patriarch, as if a Texas Chainsaw Massacre scenario is about to transpire, but ultimately a figure of the state, a police captain named Zhurov (Aleksey Poluyan), head of a squad in a small town who kidnaps Angelika (Agniya Kuznetsova), the daughter of the secretary of Regional Committee and Artem's niece who, when she and a male friend breakdown at the same home, frames the home owner for killing Sunka, the Vietnamese employee who tries to take a stand, and does to Angelika over the film what made Cargo 200 as notorious as it became. And, before anyone asks, and with a huge trigger warning, the source novel from William Faulkner, legendary as an author for work like As I Lay Dying (1930), a figure of grand significance in Southern US literature, was as controversial. Penned in 1931, emphasising how literature could get away with far more than cinema at the time in the United States, it was an attempt at a more accessible work for Faulkner which was yet also a lurid pot boiler. With Zhurov being played by a prohibition gangster , in mind to sexual violation with a glass bottle that marks the moment Cargo 200 gets into the horror territory, the source material had this but with a cob of corn, the film for its deeply uncomfortable content still working from a source that was startling when published decades earlier and would decades later in this form.

Scored to rock and pop music, like many films from this period, Cargo 200 could have easily been a tasteless film, and good grief, Cargo 200 will get more extreme as it goes, as Zhurov, claiming Angelika as his girlfriend, has her handcuffed to a bed in the home he shares with his mother, fully complicit to his crime. This psychologically damaged side to him is contrasted by the fact that his police force is just as horrifying, cops who torture their suspects, even killing one at one point and covering it up as resisting arrest. This makes the nastiness of Brother to Dead Man's Hand more understandable in context, but here it fells more significant, in that this for as extreme as it is, is also as extreme a condemnation of what the Soviet Union was as you could get, positioning it as this repugnant period of Russian history even for Aleksey Balabanov's cinema.

Huge trigger warnings are required for the film, managing, even if sick, to try for humour, in that actress Agniya Kuznetsova, in one of her first ever roles, has a hard role to play.  She deserves credit to act this film where she spends most of it naked handcuffed to a bed, and that is before this becomes a ghoulish film too. That, where in an extreme macabre moment, when assigned to help ship the Cargo 200 with his officers, in coffins lined with zinc, Zhurov finds her boyfriend, a soldier killed in the Afghan war, and takes him to her as a bedfellow to keep her company, or lets others have sex with her before shooting them and not taking the corpse out the room. It is never objectifying to her, before one should ask with understandable concern, as this is all ugly, the brown and industrial locations adding to the bleakness without the sense of it being miserable and nasty for a cheap pop.

The exaggerated extreme managed to not just be disgusting, but provocation for a director who has played to the grotesque in Of Freaks and Men (1998), and it is contrasted by the grounded reality. A semblance of hope is to be found when Artem by the end comes to church and faith, less a contrivance, especially when you consider just how nihilistic Aleksey Balabanov's cinema is, but having felt he has went through something so horrifying with the events that transpire, particularly as Angelika is a niece, that it alters him and forces him into finding his faith from the darkness of the world, not the opposite way round as one would presume. It feels not shock for shock's sake, but a twisted farce that plays throughout the film. When the person to end this is an older woman out for revenge with a shotgun, it is in a room full of decaying bodies like a Tobe Hooper film, and that it is an act that has little interest in rescuing anyone, like a perverse Jacobean revenge story. For obvious reasons, Cargo 200 has to be proceeded with in caution, even for Aleksey Balabanov's career, in that this feels like the bleakest, nastiest film from the director even when later films like The Stoker (2010) deal with pointless killing and violence. It is a film which is compelling as a sudden stark shock, but with mind that even this ends with an atheist professor finding God from the horror, even Aleksey Balabanov in his lurid story here marks itself out with a greater spectrum of emotion in its stomach. That it is told as being a "true story", itself as brutal a condemnation of Soviet Russia as you can get, adds so much weight to what he had for this film.

Morphine (2008)

 

Director: Aleksey Balabanov

Screenplay: Sergey Bodrov

Based on the short stories by Mikhail A. Bulgakov

Cast: Leonid Bichevin as Doktor Mikhail Polyakov; Ingeborga Dapkunaite as Anna Nikolayevna; Andrey Panin as Feldsher Anatoliy Lukich; Svetlana Pismichenko as Pelageya Ivanovna; Katarina Radivojevic as Ekaterina Karlovna; Yuri Gertsman as Gorenburg; Aleksandr Mosin as Vlas; Irina Rakshina as Aksinya; Sergey Garmash as Vasiliy Osipovich

Canon Fodder

 

Based on the autobiographical short stories of Mikhail A. Bulgakov, A Young Doctor's Notebook which he wrote between 1925-26, the source material which Morphine adapts drew upon the author's experiences as a newly graduated doctor in 1916 to 1918, practicing in the small village hospital of Smolensk Governorate, an experience as replicated by his stand-in Doktor Mikhail Polyakov (Leonid Bichevin) which included an addiction to morphine. Bulgakov is someone I am familiar with through The Master and Margarita (1966-67), a masterpiece in terms of literature, a figure who, in mind to this being set within 1917, when the October Revolution looms over the narrative of Morphine, would have his work censored by the Soviet state, with even The Master and Margarita, a novel he started writing in 1928, only being published in 1966, decades after his passing. Morphine is still a Bulgakov film though too, set during the period of the October Revolution, up to the time the country of Russia would be changed drastically in the 20th century, where Mikhail the doctor has to still work within an isolated community in the countryside.

This is a time when medicine is in a primitive form, where an autopsy is only allowed if you ask for it, and even then, could be considered sacrilege even in 1917. The title is literal - "the first injection", as a chapter intertitle states, comes from an anti-diphtheria serum which Mikhail is allergic to, leading to his nurse Anna Nikolayevna (Ingeborga Dapkunaite) having to inject him with a morphine shot to overcome the pain from this. In the middle of icy nowhere, as the Revolution beckons, in a small medical station, life for Mikhail is with a great lack of confidence as a doctor, one who still needs to consult his medical text books to complete a woman giving birth even if he succeeds entirely in the goal, as he does with a tracheotomy for a young girl.  Even that later task is under the strife of the girl's grandmother trying to refuse the surgery taking place, as if a taboo. This is a time as well, alongside ether needing to be used as anaesthesia, customs exist like lining a pregnant woman's vagina with sugar to tempt a baby out, leaving Mikhail in a position with many obstacles. From the lack of adequate anaesthesia to having to rely on only a nurse and a fellow doctor, which could prove an issue if they fall unconscious mid-surgery, his is a stressful position, and the accident of having his first morphine shot becomes an overbearing desire to just have them to avoid the cold turkey state.

Worse is when an amputation when required, due to destroying a limb in a breaker for flax with one female patient, is likely to lead to death. One of the more ornate films Aleksey Balabanov, in terms of a period drama, you are however thrust into his usual tone in that this is the scene where the prosthetic effects are fully on display, nasty but in mind to realism of what these scenarios would look like. Some of the tales Morphine adapts are of another time period, where one hazard for anyone let alone a doctor in 1910s Russia is being chased by wolves in the middle of nowhere, at night, on your horse drawn sled. Not much changed though in how busy and hectic medicine is as Morphine's tales, and Mikhail's strain attests to this chaos also being timeless, struggling against what resources are available and, whether one would like to admit this or not, also members of the public who are treated, the balancing board between the Hippocratic Oath and the need to help anyone with full kindness having to negotiate around how a patient or their family can act, even in ways potentially destructive to their well being in petty ways.

Only one aspect of Morphine jars as an issue, and it is unfortunately another layer to how the director-writer skirted problematic content in his films. In this case how a Jewish doctor is the issue, one Mikhail butts head with for morphine, dwindling in availability as supplies are fewer and far between in the midst of war, and a figure who eventually becomes a villain who takes advantage of the new regime to have some power. There is some explicit anti-Semitism from Mikhail at one point, when he goes to the town of Uglich for kicking the morphine addiction in a psychological ward, even if contextually that scene is to provoke anti-Semitic soldiers, with a slur, to attack to the psychological hospital and distract whilst he escapes with some of their morphine stock. It is the one aspect which undercuts Morphine, which is a bleak work which yet stands out from Balabanov on a tight rope between its sombreness and bleak humour, another of those complexities with the Russian director in what is intentionally a provocation, whether justifiable to have, and what is just undefendable.

Aside from this, and it is a tiny part of the entirely production, Morphine could be seen as one of Balabanov's more "conventional" films if it did not have streaks of his more melancholic and nihilistic touches, alongside arguably more humanity than the content may suggest. Humanity is there in that, barring one moment talked of in the paragraph before, and that he does kill someone in defence, Mikhail is the closest to a good person in the director's world, one who is not irredeemable but just wears the costume of a gangster or someone "cool", instead an innocent who desires to help people as a doctor and, sadly, has his worse aspects revealed under the spell of the morphine addiction. Alongside their burgeoning romance, Anna is also a sympathetic figure, even willingly becoming an addict to know why he is, her guilt in having given Mikhail the first morphine injection influence this choice. Morphine as well, befitting Balabanov, has a lot of twisted humour within itself even it is paints a gristly image of the Revolution and the rise of Communism.

There is a joke about Mikhail getting caught trying to take a shot in a gentleman's bathroom, or grotesqueness when, mid-oral sex, as Mikhail is having another relationship with a mistress of a man of power, morphine related nausea and vomiting undercuts any chance for pleasure he can feel.  It neither feels exploitative either, but continuing Balabanov's style from before if, arguably, with a greater sense of sombreness. The sense of this is found that, finding himself succumbing more and more to the titular drug, as Russia is turned upside, Mikhail unlike other protagonists in the director's films has no chance of crawling into power, an outsider simply because he is, truthfully, one of the few with an innocence, if tragically one who is being chewed alive by the drug addiction. [Major Plot Spoiler] Mikhail A. Bulgakov lived as an author, even as a suppressed one, until 1940, becoming as revered around the world as he is in his homeland of Russia. Mikhail in Morphine, within a film theatre laughing at a comedy, continuing Balabanov's fascination with early cinema, pulls a gun on himself and ends his life in the midst of this brief semblance of happiness. Breaking from history, he becomes an Aleksey Balabanov character in the world weary bleakness this ending represents. [Spoiler Ends]

Morphine is a fascinating film, touched by Balabanov's earlier films like The Castle (1994) and Of Freaks and Men (1998), especially in the sense of humour. But it also feels older in terms of the air being more sombre, touched by the populist success of the crime films of his in moving away from overt artificiality for a more realistic period setting. It is a rewarding film from Balabanov's films like many others, and as the one that is closest to an accessible film, only to undercut it with his tone, Morphine does stake out its place with worth.

Two Short Works from Aleksey Balabanov: Trofilm (1995) and The River (2002)

 

Trofilm (1995)

Director: Aleksey Balabanov

Screenplay: Alexey Balabanov

Cast: Sergey Makovetskiy, Zoya Buryak, Semyon Strugachyov, Aleksey Balabanov, Aleksey German

Canon Fodder

 

Trofilm was made for Pribytie poezda (1995), a Russian anthology film which had entries from Vladimir Khotinenko, Aleksandr Khvan, Dmitriy Meskhiev, and Balabanov himself. The anthology is one I have never heard of, and it is an obscure production despite the fact all four directors, not just Balabanov, were prolific in their filmmaker, and Meskhiev is as prolific as a film producer in Russia. At this point, Balabanov had not made Brother (1997), the film which made his name, Trofilm instead connecting closer to the film made before, his Kafka adaptation The Castle (1994), and also nods to Of Freaks and Men (1998), his transgressive bleak comedy set at the turn of the century and about the beginning of cinema. The year 1995 would have also been the 100th anniversary of when cinema was technically "created", when the first moving pictures presented to a paying audience were the Lumière brothers in December 1895 in Paris, France. In 1995 there was a lot of celebratory works commissioned, Lumière and Company, a insanely huge anthology, in terms of the famous directors involved and using an original Lumière Cinématographe camera, which most only know of now for David Lynch's Premonition Following an Evil Deed short. There were documentaries commissioned too, with two by Nagisa Ôshima (100 Years of Japanese Cinema) to Jean-Luc Godard (2 x 50 Years of French Cinema). Trofilm is a sibling, as Pribytie poezda, also known as The Arrival of a Train, was a hundred year celebration for cinema in itself. Co-produced by Roskomkino, a state body representing Russian industry of audiovisual content, Balabanov could be argued to have thumbed them and the other producers in the eye with how this short ends, a film reflecting on the hundred years of cinema if more pessimistic or critical of how cinema was preserved in Balabanov's time then.

Shot in sepia, a man played by Sergey Makovetskiy, a regular cast member for Balabanov, murders his brother because he was romantically connected with his wife. One botched attempt at a hanging later, where the noose just breaks whilst trying to do so in the barn house, and our protagonist wanders forth out onto a train. The short is set between the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5, when Russia fought Japan, and alongside being a faithful depiction of this world, Trofilm has a deadpan bleakness to it. Our protagonist will openly admit he hacked his brother to death to almost anyone he passes, be it the train conductor, even a female sex worker later on when she temps him into her bedroom in the pub she is within.

The film is slight in what happens, as inevitably despite this casualness of him admitting his crime of passion, he will be turned in to the authorities. Where the film touches on Of Freaks and Men is that, unlike that film showing how pornography soon into the creation of the medium came about, this plays as both a bleak humoured take on the early actuality films, but almost becomes a nod to how cinema preserves time. Our lead interferes with early cinema history when a French filmmaker is trying to shot a train coming into the station, evoking both L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat (1896), the legendary Lumière film, and their own remakes and the likely replications of this film from the era.

It is, for a film which is ultimately pessimistic, funny to see the logic conclusion that likely happened to the earlier cinema pioneers, of a bystander look aimlessly into the camera, even block the shot, out of curiosity.

Trofilm ends in the then-modern day, nodding to how film shot in the past even preserves the figure on a roll of 1904 Pathé cinematograph footage, showing a train arriving at St Petersburg. A random person, who committed a crime which will be forgotten, unless recorded in the law books, manages to survive in this moment he bumbled into a shot and ruined it. That would be if the most pessimistic joke was not the punch line, completely undermining the point of film archivalism, the people working on the filmmaker's creation calling our lead an idiot, and then proceeding to cut his shots out of the film they would rather have. Trofilm, which looks distinct with its sepia brown look and recreating this time period, fits Balabanov's worldview even in that joke. It neither feels cruel for the sake of it, but a cruel irony on point.

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The River (2002)

Director: Aleksey Balabanov

Screenplay: Aleksey Balabanov, Evert Paiazatian and Vatsslav Serashevskii

Cast: Tuyaara Svinoboyeva as Mergen; Vasilii Borisov as Kirgilei; Spartak Fedotov as Salban; Anna Flegontova as Anchik; Mariya Kanaeva as Kutuyahsyt; Mariya Kychkina as Bitterhai; Mikhail Semakov as Knyaz; Mikhail Skryabin as Janga

Canon Fodder

 

The River in contrast sadly has a tragic back-story to its creation, real history altering and affecting what was meant to be a feature length production, but became both a micro-feature and an unfinished production. The tragedy is that, for a narrative set in the end of the 19th century within a leper colony in the desolate Arctic region of Yakutia, Tuyara Svinoboeva, the leading actress of his film The River, was killed in a car crash during the shoot. The film was released in 2002 with what footage exists, exposition to clarify the context of scenes not filmed, and made into a chamber piece for what was shot.

The River is fascinating in that, alongside The Stoker (2010), Aleksey Balabanov has devoted himself to two films about the Yakut, a Turkic ethnic group who mainly live in the Republic of Sakha in the Russian Federation.

Considering Balabanov has skirted dangerously thin ice with characters who are racists in his films and nationalism, it fascinates that, whilst very bleak films, his work with Yakut actors and stories around them in these two films are absolutely admiring and respectful for them. Again, these are bleak films, The Stoker melancholic and violent, and The River ultimately his most straightforward drama, of jealously and human petty attitudes causing tragedy within one family. The sense of respect is entirely in how, in the initial narrative, we follow the central family, within a leper group, living their lives in a yurt tent, a large family of people who have to make do with what they have in isolated snow covered environments. Even for those whose leprosy has altered their faces and bodies completely, they live and exist, with the period dress and normal activities depicted. The film, as well as having exposition narrative for plot missing, is acted in the Yakut language too, with a Russian narrator who translates into that language at the same time, showing an admirable attitude in Balabanov in trying to depict these characters.

The tragedy is that, in what he could film, how a younger female character lashes out in this yurt environment. Most of the film does not feel like it is missing significant parts, which helps it a lot, only missing a section where attempts to steal food from others has led to injury and antagonism a huge plot point to consider. The central female lead, the one healthy woman in this leper colony, reacts more and more antagonistic to the other members of this yurt, more so as with the man she has fallen in love with, another woman, his wife, has returned into his life, spiralling into a violent jealously.

The breaking point is ultimately when they acquire a cow, a thing of happiness, especially for the youngest daughter there, but becomes the straw which breaks the camel's back. Hating members of this yurt, the lead will willingly wish to maim the cow, likely others too, by setting a fire, an act ending the film with a tragedy even she regrets and what makes The River incredibly nihilistic. It is so least in terms that for Balabanov, as throughout many of his films, people will even kill others out of petty reasons, which comes back for The Stoker considerably.

The River, in mind to how it sadly was not finished as intended, is an admirable piece, where he showed the diversity of Balabanov's career. Alongside Trofilm, his cinema was wider than that which was released outside of Russia, and sadly, The River is the kind of production which would be ignored, something which would be a crime as by itself. Even in its historical context, it has a lot to admire.

It Doesn't Hurt Me (2006)

 

Director: Aleksey Balabanov

Screenplay: Valeri Mnatsakanov (with Aleksey Balabanov)

Cast: Renata Litvinova as Tata; Aleksandr Yatsenko as Misha; Dmitriy Dyuzhev as Oleg; Nikita Mikhalkov as Sergei Sergeyevich; Inga Strelkova-Oboldina as Alya; Valentin Kuznetsov as Vasya

Canon Fodder

 

A romantic film with comedy from Aleksey Balabanov...which is unexpected from the director of Brother (1997), the result of which being his least violent, his least nihilistic and ultimately most optimistic work from him, even if touched in melancholia in its narrative. Following two men, Misha (Aleksandr Yatsenko) and Sergei (Nikita Mikhalkov from Dead Man's Bluff (2005)), and their more carefree, more food fixated friend Alya (Inga Strelkova-Oboldina), they have gotten together to work on home renovations for well-off clients. That is if Misha is not seduced by Tata (Renata Litvinova), the female resident for the house they are currently working on.

In truth, It Doesn't Hurt Me is one of Balabanov's weakest films in terms of how conventional it is, but it finds redemption in how, yet, the humanity this unexpectedly offered is something that grows in greater weight when you see his filmography. For the most part happiness is not to be found in any other film for his world at all, so this stands out considerably among them, alongside the fact the film also improves greatly when it gets the second half and contrasts its tone with melancholia against people finding love and bonds the slither of hope. This touch of hope in his filmography is worthwhile, only with the issue from the get-go being how much of a conventional melodrama this is, becoming less a problem thankfully when the drama develops and expands.

The conventions at the beginning go as far as suggesting Misha, the seduced, has accidentally fallen in love with Tita's other, a mob boss named Sergei she is the younger mistress of, with the added surrealism that he is played by Nikita Mikhalkov, a filmmaker known in the West for the likes of Burnt by the Sun (1994). Even when the tone and style of the film is conventional throughout, the film for the better twists on this expectation fully, as the greater concern for the film is about Tita having blood cancer (leukemia), the director known for confrontational work trying to be emotionally sincere in a curious tangent in his career. The second half, when Sergei is brushed aside and he is no longer in the film, is when It Doesn't Hurt Me improves as the drama changes. It becomes a hopeful drama with an inevitable conclusion but a tenderness, a huge change for Aleksey Balabanov, more so as in 2007, Cargo 200, which is an adaptation of a William Faulkner novel, became one of his most controversial films, an extreme film in how nasty and nihilistic it was.

Even beforehand, one considers War (2002) and Dead Man's Bluff, and you see this as a vast contrast in terms of almost being a needed tonic in his filmography. There is a sense, when one is able to see Balabanov's filmography as designed rather than a couple of films, that if Cargo 200 is a uncomfortable last gasp of transgression, still feeling alien to the earlier crime films, than the bleaker films even beyond then like his Mikhail Bulgakov adaptation Morphine (2008) or The Stoker (2010) feel more retrospective in their tones. It Doesn't Hurt Me is tinged in sadness, with characters hiding alcoholism and a romance tinged in tragedy, but it is also a film about friendship, love and people sharing drinks and enjoying life, really making a wonderful change even if its conventional tone is definitely not "cool" like the crime films. Certainly, it is a film which improves, less for quality but for building its creator's personality in his art, when you can see it with the other films Aleksey Balabanov made.

The Castle (1994)

 

Director: Aleksey Balabanov

Screenplay: Aleksey Balabanov and Sergey Selyanov

Based on a novel by Franz Kafka

Cast: Nikolay Stotskiy as the Land Surveyor; Svetlana Pismichenko as Frida; Anvar Libabov as Helper Arthur; Viktor Sukhorukov as Helper Jeremiah; Igor Shibanov as Brunswick; Andrey Smirnov as the Teacher; Vladislav Demchenko as Varnava; Bolot Beyshenaliev as the Village Senior; Svetlana Svirko as Olga

An Abstract Candidate

 

Long before his crime films, the controversial or confrontation content of his films, Aleksey Balabanov began with films like Happy Days (1991) and this adaptation of the unfinished Franz Kafka novel, which begins with hurdy gurdy music announcing our protagonist played by Nikolay Stotskiy, a land surveyor wandering through the snow. This feels different from later films, yet in itself, it seems not at all different from the worlds of Balabanov's dog-eat-dog gangsters and death, only here it is a period piece and everything has an irrational sense of humour to it.

The land surveyor's fate is pretty much summed up when, in that introduction, he slips on the ice following immediately after by the title credit. Most of The Castle is taken from its source, Kafka's work one of irrational worlds, The Castle taking the simplest premise of a land surveyor in an unknown European world trying to reach the titular castle, only to be constantly be prevented from doing so as he goes. Balabanov's film has its own quirks, and this feels more openly humorous than his later films, even if a very twisted sense of one. Set within an imprecise nation or time, absolutely a period from a century or so earlier, the bureaucracy here from the book feels as much a satire in itself as it is still irrational. His own touches, not expected from a director who would become very nihilistic, is the wackier takes on this world.

Aspects are direct from the source - the land surveyor ends up with two male assistants abruptly provided to him, jokers who seem more inclined to act like prats to the point it seems like they are not sane, possibly sabotaging his progress on purpose but as much likely to be his increasing paranoia. Aspects do have weirdness entirely for Balabanov, where with the aforementioned hurdy gurdy music prominent throughout, he emphasises this as a world of dance and music. Only with special permission, which takes a while, can you play your own waxes of music, and there is someone assigned in the community to make them for the castle, whilst dancing is common place, from maidens attempting the can-can to strange juddering by men in union on stages. These acts seem the only entertainment in general, not just in the pub. Boys, actual choir boys alongside a unisex child choir, are prevalent throughout, possibly with sinister intentions but also because they are a commodity in themselves. Even with the castle, when we eventually enter it, they have a system where members inside can call on a young boy of his choice to come to his room just to sing, even in the midst of a meeting. Considering, when forced to take a test, the land surveyor gets interrogated whilst a choir is on hand to sing in the background, this film's take on music is very important, which also means the sound design and Sergei Kuryokhin's score itself become a prime focus.

The music is compelling in itself, and Sergei Kuryokhin, a former keyboardist for a rock band named Aquarius, was a prolific experimental musician up to his 1996 death as well as a composer for cinema. Since this is a rare moment to talk of him, learning of him for the first time through his work with The Castle and impressed by it, I cannot pass either probably one of his most infamous moments, aptly suitable for this film's tone. Whilst a tangent, it befits the ideas The Castle touches upon, that with a reporter named Sergey Sholokhov, well regarded as a film and theatre critic too, Sholokhov and Kuryokhin created a hoax, during an interview on the television program Pyatoe Koleso (The Fifth Wheel) on 17 January 1991 on Leningrad Television, that Vladimir Lenin consumed psychedelic mushrooms and eventually became one himself. Whilst some immediately presumed it was a joke, this stunt, which was built around an elaborately constructed argument over an hour's worth of programming, a show hosted by Sergey Sholokhov seen as a factually accurate news and cultural show at the time, managed to capture a rare moment in Russia's time period as well as manage to have people believe it was true.  “Lenin was a mushroom” is a phrase that has relevance decades later as a pop cultural phrase, and there is even an account the day after the episode aired, a group of Bolshevik veterans approached an official at the Leningrad Regional Party Committee and demanded to know whether it was true that Lenin had been a mushroom¹.

To get back on tangent, even The Castle itself has its stranger moments even above the intentionally absurdist tone, having not even taking into consideration one of the more broad and sillier running jokes, that at certain periods an alarm will call, and in any building as they all have tiny doors set up within them, a herd of pigs run through in and out. Where the pigs go to and from is never explained, and once it ends, with everyone having to stand out when the alarm goes, the alarm stops and everyone can then sit down. I will not attempt to "read" Kafka. His is a fascinating life internally, complicated knowing he never wanted his work even published originally, and that alongside being released posthumously against his will, The Castle is unfinished, something Aleksey Balabanov goes against by having an actual ending of sorts. The term "Kafkaesque" in this case is a world of illogical and cruel structure against oneself, where for the land surveyor, he cannot as a stranger stay in the inn originally, and no strangers can be in peoples' houses. With the black clothing of many almost puritan, there is a structure of strict law here, which does leave one to also wonder how much of this film as an art house production is a critique of the Soviet Union or touched by it, something which cannot be denied. More so as, whilst there is law, the Castle itself is a vague force, and bureaucracy is the source of power here even if one hand clearly does not know what the other is doing. The land surveyor at one point is informed he was not needed, a mistake of someone still sending a letter out and taking years for confirmation to not have land surveying in the first place.

Notably, and this is where The Castle in this form has an actual ending, whilst there is strict law, you can change identity, one mistake particularly with the land surveyor becoming obsessed with the wife of the wax music maker becoming his folly, as a name can be exchanged for another with ease. Considering the original source novel, for an ending, cuts off at when you finally get into the castle and the protagonist is in the middle of listening to a person of rank inside the fortress, recreated here but continued in original material, does not undercut the source as a travesty. It was an accident of a work never finished, of an author who originally wanted his entire life's work burn by those who knew him, that gained an accidentally great ending by never leading to somewhere. In contrast, Aleksey Balabanov to his credit managed with Sergey Selyanov, more known for producing films including Balabanov's Cargo 200 (2007), to find an ending which does not resolve a thing but leaves at a right point, adding to the irrationality of the world our lead entered. Adding an ending to this narrative was a risk, but it works here, with some hope but also because of this twist emphasising the point of Kafka's work well in itself. His is a world, and in mind to a director here growing up in the Soviet Union, this is a world of forced order where people happily comply with its ill-logic. The only truly sympathetic people the land surveyor finds are Barnabas the professional messenger and his sisters, formerly of a higher standing and viewed as beggars and prostitutes by he rest of the community, the sisters having to be sex workers or try to woo higher ups, even posing as their own siblings, due to one slighting a high ranking official's flirtations being a cause of their downfall in the social pecking order.

Even that the land surveyor is married at one point, to a barmaid who he is caught undressed with, and ends up in a caretaker job at a school, becomes a farce of social norms being illogical, constructs which exist but have no ground in reality. More so with how the modern world is, as throwbacks to conservative views of social structures in family are being fought for, even if at the expense for people's rights and healthy social norms, even logical and empathetic views of society, Kafka's work is unfortunately quite relevant still in the modern day. For me this is becoming more so as his work is about social structures which, presumed holy, are human constructors which distort and are irrational when you stop and consider what they are and how they fail. This can go from The Castle to The Trial (1925), that a man is on trial for a crime he is not even sure he has any connect to let alone committed, and even Amerika (1927), a work set in the USA by a man who never went to the country, and built his own version from research, which still has an unfortunately relevant paranoia in that survival, even in a book started in 1910s, involves having to search for work that is menial and takes a person's whole day to finish for some wages.

A moody film, lit with a dark brown look, The Castle is also very different from what the image of Aleksey Balabanov is for many, unless you were aware of Of Freaks and Men (1998), a film which reflects this film tone, especially in its openly aesthetic touches such as the titular castle being only initially sense in dreams/hazes of the protagonist. Seen as monochrome shots of the castle in the background whilst in the foreground is a bubbling oil-like body of water, the castle is always out of reach even when he someone manages to finally get inside it. Even with a tinge of a happy ending here, it makes sense to have it in context. Barring Barnabas, whose sisters will still try to achieve that illogical thing called status in the castle, that children (at least one boy) are the people who will see how strange this world they live in is is not out of place for Balabanov. If anything, more overtly humorous than his other work, such as the assistances pretending to be horses for a sled, it befits the moments of strangeness of his later films, only with the sense that when he became more commercial with the crime films, Aleksey Balabanov's take on an illogical world became a dog-eat-dog one where the criminal underworld was the only way to survive.

Abstract Spectrum: Eccentric

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Low

 

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1) How Vladimir Lenin Became a Mushroom by Eric Grundhauser, published for Atlas Obscura on December 5th 2017. As an additional note, I recommend looking into Sergei Kuryokhin's music, starting with Sparrow Oratorium (1993), the random album of his I looked into just by a few tracks during the writing of this review; just by itself, least beginning with the first track Winter (Зима), presents something truly as unconventional and memorable as The Castle as a film or the Lenin mushroom phenomenon.