In a tiny village in the Russian heartland, a desperate cop tries to fight the consequences of a terrible accident.
Russia
4*
Director:
Yuri Bykov
Screenwriter:
Yuri Bykov
Director of Photography:
Kiri Klepalov
Running time: 100 minutes
Original title: Майор
Transliterated title: Mayor
On a desolate road in the Russian countryside, a man is driving like a bat out of hell. There are very few cars about, but he seems to pose a threat to himself every time he passes another vehicle on the highway.
He is called Sergey Soubolev (Denis Shvedov), and despite his reckless driving, he is his small town’s deputy chief of police. He has just received a phone call from the maternity ward in the next town, where his wife has gone into labour, and he is desperate to be there as quickly as possible.
But in his frenzy, he fails to notice the pedestrian crossing in time, and fearing the icy road would pose a greater threat to his safety if he slammed on the brakes, he heads for the ditch on the side of the road, but at exactly that moment, a small boy runs away from the oncoming car… in the same direction. The 7-year-old Kolya doesn’t die immediately, but in his shock, Sergey throws the mother, Irina, into his car, locks her inside and phones his colleagues at the police station. In the meantime, the boy perishes in the snow.
What follows is a harrowing scene that we know will turn out badly for the grieving mother, whose fate is in the hands of the policemen who want to protect their friend Sergey, a colleague whose record is otherwise spotless and who gets along very well with the rest of the force.
Although not exactly an indictment of the corruption among the Russian police in the countryside, The Major is a fascinating study of power in the tiny setup that is the local police station, affected by the regional forces of the Internal Affairs Ministry, their reputation among the townsfolk and the ever-present criminal underworld that we notice on the margins. Sergey, the second-in-command at the station, wants to hold on to his job, but he has come this far without turning his back on his own moral values, and now that he is about to become a father, he is between a rock and a hard place: He wants to be in a position to provide for his family, but he also wants to atone for what he has done, and he doesn’t shy away from his guilt in Kolya’s death.
However, an admission that he was at fault, especially after the speedy cover-up his friends provided at the scene of the crime, would have disastrous consequences for the reputation of the police force, and everyone around him tries to convince him to coerce the mother into taking the blame for her son’s death. His friend Pasha (played by director Yuri Bykov), who at first seems to be helpful, becomes a force of violence in the film, who seeks to solve the ongoing crisis in the department with aggression, openly insulting and intimidating Irina and her husband, whose son’s body isn’t even cold yet.
In the second half of the film, Pasha, who obviously considers himself to be the keeper of the police force’s standing, takes centre stage as he uses his firearm as often as possible to obliterate the rolling avalanche of problems that originated with Sergey’s accident and the cover-up that he feels Sergey is not sufficiently grateful for. We see almost as many scenes with Pasha as with Sergey, and we get small clues about his character’s motivations that greatly enrich our impression of him.
There is a lot of bloodshed in the second half of the film, as events continue to spiral out of control, but the camera stays on top of everything, and a few characters deliver important snippets of dialogue that make us second-guess our thoughts on some key individuals.
Director of photography Kiri Klepalov supplies superb unbroken tracking shots, and two in particular stand out: The first occurs in a crowded hallway in the police station while there is a hostage situation one floor down and Sergey takes control of his men again, showing his skill at tactical solutions when he feels passionate about protecting his men; the second is seen a few short scenes later, when Sergey exits the police station, gets into a car, drives through the town to blocks of high-rise apartment buildings and exits one of them. The unbroken continuity of this second take and the continuous excitement and interest its content provokes are signs of a detailed directorial approach that should be commended.
One flaw is that the opening scene, in which Sergey gets the phone call about his wife at the hospital, seems to take a back seat for the entire duration of the film until it conveniently rears its head again to create a convenient bookend in the final scene.
Although action-packed, The Major, thanks to the director’s role as Pasha, the very likeable title character, Sergey, and a dynamic camera with some wonderful moves, rises above the level of a pure adrenaline ride. The individuals at the heart of the drama have some very understandable conflicts that provoke tension because a bona fide solution escapes us, too.
Viewed at the International Film Festival Bratislava 2013