gessen (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} gessen) wrote,@ 2006-06-22 01:30:00 |
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Thursday's Moscow Times column
Thursday, June 22, 2006. Issue 3437. Page 8.
A Troubling, Repetitive Premise
By Masha Gessen
Sitting in a movie theater the other night, I found myself fuming. No, it was not the cell phones going off all around me, showcasing their polyphonic rings for half a minute or so before someone deigned to theater-whisper, "Sasha, I am at the movies." Nor was it the couple right behind me, who insisted on commenting on every event on screen as though they were watching a football match. Rather, it was an insistent sense that I had been duped: I had been sold an expensive ticket to sit in a very comfortable chair and look at a very large screen and listen to high-quality sound, all in the name of a half-baked script treatment masquerading as a movie.
Now, of course, there are lots of bad films out there and many of them are shown at fancy movie theaters that sell expensive tickets. What made me mad was that the shameful -- and shameless -- quality of the film was entirely consistent with the worldview it represented: that all things Russian are hopelessly pathetic but they are our hopelessly pathetic things so we had better love them. And what made me even angrier was that this worldview is evidently representative of the entire Russian movie establishment.
The film I watched was called "Мне не больно." It repeats the plotline of "Love Story," "Autumn in New York," and countless other melodramas: He and she meet, she has a fatal disease she hides from him, he finds out but sticks by her anyway, and in the end she dies. Fair enough. It is the plot details and secondary characters that are telling. There are six recurrent sympathetic characters in the film, and five of them are drinking themselves to death. Only one of the six is a hard worker who is actually good at what she does and who does not drink, and in the end she leaves Russia, thereby betraying her friends, who are useless and broke without her. This, we learn, is an unpatriotic act, while some examples of patriotic acts are: spending all of your and your friends' money on a useless plot of land in the remote Russian countryside; going to war in Chechnya; getting falling-down drunk and singing war songs. Now note that this is not a film from the recent crop of avowedly patriotic war movies like "Proryv" or "Svolochi"; this is a melodrama.
How can I be so certain that this world view reaches beyond the brain of one single film director? It's not even the fact that the film was directed by one of Russia's larger stars, Alexei Balabanov; it's the recent episode with the Moscow International Film Festival. Earlier this month, Austrian film director Michael Haneke stepped down as chair of the festival jury, explaining that he could not free up the time from his own directing projects. His unfortunate decision was by no means unprecedented: Five years ago Jodie Foster pulled out as chair of the Cannes festival after accepting a last-minute film offer. The Cannes organizers were gracious about it, calling it a delay rather than a cancellation.
The organizers of the Moscow festival, on the other hand, wrote an open letter to Haneke calling his act "dishonorable" and adding, "You have insulted not only the Moscow film festival but have shown disrespect for our country." The Moscow film festival is an international one. Imagine how absurd it would sound if the Cannes organizers accused Foster of insulting France.
A letter like that could come only from people who have a deeply ingrained inferiority complex and really do not believe the stature of their festival commands the respect of international figures. It fits right in with the view that everything that is made or done in Russia is of poor quality but patriotism requires us to love it and be faithful to it anyway.
Thursday, June 22, 2006. Issue 3437. Page 8.
A Troubling, Repetitive Premise
By Masha Gessen
Sitting in a movie theater the other night, I found myself fuming. No, it was not the cell phones going off all around me, showcasing their polyphonic rings for half a minute or so before someone deigned to theater-whisper, "Sasha, I am at the movies." Nor was it the couple right behind me, who insisted on commenting on every event on screen as though they were watching a football match. Rather, it was an insistent sense that I had been duped: I had been sold an expensive ticket to sit in a very comfortable chair and look at a very large screen and listen to high-quality sound, all in the name of a half-baked script treatment masquerading as a movie.
Now, of course, there are lots of bad films out there and many of them are shown at fancy movie theaters that sell expensive tickets. What made me mad was that the shameful -- and shameless -- quality of the film was entirely consistent with the worldview it represented: that all things Russian are hopelessly pathetic but they are our hopelessly pathetic things so we had better love them. And what made me even angrier was that this worldview is evidently representative of the entire Russian movie establishment.
The film I watched was called "Мне не больно." It repeats the plotline of "Love Story," "Autumn in New York," and countless other melodramas: He and she meet, she has a fatal disease she hides from him, he finds out but sticks by her anyway, and in the end she dies. Fair enough. It is the plot details and secondary characters that are telling. There are six recurrent sympathetic characters in the film, and five of them are drinking themselves to death. Only one of the six is a hard worker who is actually good at what she does and who does not drink, and in the end she leaves Russia, thereby betraying her friends, who are useless and broke without her. This, we learn, is an unpatriotic act, while some examples of patriotic acts are: spending all of your and your friends' money on a useless plot of land in the remote Russian countryside; going to war in Chechnya; getting falling-down drunk and singing war songs. Now note that this is not a film from the recent crop of avowedly patriotic war movies like "Proryv" or "Svolochi"; this is a melodrama.
How can I be so certain that this world view reaches beyond the brain of one single film director? It's not even the fact that the film was directed by one of Russia's larger stars, Alexei Balabanov; it's the recent episode with the Moscow International Film Festival. Earlier this month, Austrian film director Michael Haneke stepped down as chair of the festival jury, explaining that he could not free up the time from his own directing projects. His unfortunate decision was by no means unprecedented: Five years ago Jodie Foster pulled out as chair of the Cannes festival after accepting a last-minute film offer. The Cannes organizers were gracious about it, calling it a delay rather than a cancellation.
The organizers of the Moscow festival, on the other hand, wrote an open letter to Haneke calling his act "dishonorable" and adding, "You have insulted not only the Moscow film festival but have shown disrespect for our country." The Moscow film festival is an international one. Imagine how absurd it would sound if the Cannes organizers accused Foster of insulting France.
A letter like that could come only from people who have a deeply ingrained inferiority complex and really do not believe the stature of their festival commands the respect of international figures. It fits right in with the view that everything that is made or done in Russia is of poor quality but patriotism requires us to love it and be faithful to it anyway.
