USSR

Once Upon a Time There Was a Singing Blackbird (1970)

André Crous

USSR
3*

Director: 
Otar Iosseliani
Screenwriters: 
Dimitri Eristavi
Otar Iosseliani 
Sh. Kakichashvili
Semyon Lungin
Otar Mekhrishvili
Ilya Nusinov
Director of Photography: 
Avtandil Maisuradze

Running time: 78 minutes

Original title: იყო შაშვი მგალობელი
Transliterated title: Iko shashvi mgalobeli

It’s not an objection critics often have, but in this case, it is absolutely valid: Once Upon a Time There Was a Singing Blackbird is a nice enough film but could have been a truly engaging film had it only been about 30 minutes longer. At 78 minutes, the film tells a small story of about 36 hours in the life of young orchestra percussionist Guia Agladze (Gela Kandelaki), whose charm might or might not be illusionary, but it skips between so many different parts of the story that no firm connection with anyone else is ever established, except his mother with whom he shares an apartment.

The film has an energetic opening, where the main thrust of the plot is also quickly set up and Guia’s character is sharply drawn as one who likes to take chances and usually gets away with being so flippant about serious matters. This is, of course, something that will come back in the final scene. Rushing up the grand staircase of a theatre in Tbilisi with a girl, Guia leaves her behind and worms his way through backstage corridors while putting on his jacket en doing his wait and finally reaches the door that leads onto the stage, where the number performed by a large orchestra is reaching its climax. He sits down in an empty seat, some of the musicians knowingly snicker at him and his antics, and then he takes on an air of seriousness, picks up his beaters and beats the kettle drum in front of him at exactly the right moment.

Guia quickly gets rid of the girl, as we assume he done so often before, and decides to try to find a place for him and his friends to drink. He fails to make up to another girl who has a big place but who hasn’t forgiven him yet for some past indiscretion and he ends up going to bed alone, the very intrusive sounds of planes, trains and automobiles outside his window.

He seems to be a composer, but having drawn the clef on the left of the sheet, he quickly loses interest and decides to go looking for fund outside, where he either notices girls he fancies or meets girls he has been with in the past. The crisp black and white images certainly contribute to the impression one has the film is taking place in the 1950s rather than the 1970s, but the very happy-go-lucky attitude of the central character also harkens back to characters such as Fellini’s I vitelloni.

Two incidents are important and keep us interested: The first is Guia’s constant tardiness and our fear he might once be too late and cause total chaos. The other is the appointment between him and the theatre director that keeps getting pushed back but which ought to be, by all accounts, a very important meeting and should provide the film with some fireworks.

But we get no fireworks, except for one very funny but out-of-place scene in which the camera cuts wildly from an apartment whose tenants are fighting and one guy is pushed, his back hits the railing and sends a pot plant flying off the balcony, to the street where Guia narrowly misses the plant that comes crashing down to earth. In general, director Iosseliani’s camera thinks of itself as having omnipresent powers and easily cuts between walls and even between floors, creating shots with unknown characters that also result in a complete lack of anticipation, since the viewer always knows what is coming.

Again, the lone exception is the final scene, but although it is visually well-presented, it does not make up for the very loose, jumpy character of the rest of the film, in which characters come and go and we have no way of figuring out Guia’s connection to most of them. Guia shows absolutely no character development and while the film is short enough to enjoy, despite some bad acting and rather inept use of the camera (in one scene, the camera pans and zooms in on faces as if testing out this new technology), there is far too little substance to the production.

Stalker (1979)

André Crous

USSR
4*

Director:
Andrei Tarkovsky
Screenwriters:
Arkadi Strugatsky,
Boris Strugatsky
Director of Photography:
Alexander Knyazhinsky

Running time: 163 minutes

Original title: Сталкер

Andrei Tarkovsky has a reputation for making films that are slow. This reputation is not entirely warranted, except for that eternal take inside the empty swimming pool in Nostalghia. His films usually have an average shot length no longer than 60 or 70 seconds, and his debut, Ivan’s Childhood gallops along at a refreshing pace. Now, compare that number to the films of someone like Béla Tarr, and you’ll see what “slow cinema” really means. Stalker is the second Tarkovsky film that I’ve watched in a week – the other being Solaris – and what struck me at the beginning of Solaris, and all the way through Stalker, was the number of monologues and dialogue in both. These minutes of speech, though necessary to sketch the characters in real-world terms, constitute my major gripe against both; however, they remain my favourite films from this extraordinary director.

Stalker is an incredibly simple story set in a film that constantly generates different perspectives on the theme of religion, and Christianity in particular. The “Stalker” is a man who guides anybody with enough money to a house deep within the forbidden area called “The Zone”, where it is alleged that their innermost wish will come true. In this story, the Stalker leads two anonymous men – a Writer and a Scientist – to the “Room” that is their Jinn. However, the Stalker never sees anybody again after their encounter with the Room, and he has never tried it himself. All of this can be taken as a metaphor for Heaven, from which no one has ever returned but whose existence, according to those who believe the guide, in the form of a preacher, cannot be denied. But Tarkovsky’s film never pivots to any particular interpretation of events and remains wholly ambiguous from beginning to end. While the mystical nature of the Zone may just be hogwash, the events may easily be interpreted, by those who believe the words of the Stalker, as proof of the Zone’s sentience.

The Zone is one of the most beautiful areas ever conceived on film. The different shades of green, the water, the fog and the serenity of the silence make for an atmosphere that can only be described as heavenly. At the same time, however, the characters are mostly enclosed by frames – window frames, door frames, walls – and seem to be trapped even while they should feel completely liberated. One very impressive use of this technique occurs during a scene where the characters wait in a room where a telephone suddenly starts to ring – a moment that startles because the landscape around the building is littered with broken telephone poles and power lines. Tarkovsky, by means of sound and image, suggests a boundless complexity in his characters; however, as I mentioned above, it is unfortunate that a few very long speeches contribute to this complexity, but even so, they are relatively effective.

There are a few obvious religious references, such as the narrated Biblical story of Jesus’ meeting with two men shortly after his death without being recognised by either of them. It is the voice of the Stalker that relates the story to us, but the story is changed slightly: the men don’t have names either. The choir’s rendition of “Ode to Joy” in Beethoven’s 9th Symphony also ends the film on a beautifully spiritual note.

While the film deals with hope, desire, dreams and religion, it has been composed in a way that eludes definitive interpretation but is easily accessible and while a few scenes do drag on a bit, in particular, the climactic scene at the Room, as well as another silly scene in a room full of small sand dunes, the film overall is an absolute joy. The film’s cinematography is pitch-perfect and the entire film is on the level of some of the other very moving moments of beauty in Tarkovsky’s films, such as the frozen lake in Solaris and the final shot of The Sacrifice.

Solaris (1972)

André Crous

SolarisUSSR
4*

Director:
Andrei Tarkovsky
Screenwriters:
Fridrikh Gorenshtein
Andrei Tarkovsky
Director of Photography:
Vadim Yusov

Running time: 160 minutes

Original title: Солярис

The reality of the world in Tarkovsky’s Solaris seems to be as clear as daylight and yet as difficult to pin down as the reality of the three individuals on board the Solaris Space Station. Things seem to be straightforward (despite being a science-fiction film, there are no aliens here), but as characters’ memories start to physically materialise around them and we realise that no one can really trust the physical existence of anyone or anything around them, the world of the central character, Kris Kelvin, becomes very flimsy indeed, and many essential questions can never be answered.

Andrei Tarkovsky’s film, arguably one of his most accessible (together with Ivan’s Childhood and The Sacrifice), is based on the novel Solaris by Polish writer Stanisław Lem, which was published in 1961. People and their situations constantly shift in and out of focus, and while the central dilemma is quite easy to comprehend (Kelvin is confronted with the physical manifestation of his late wife), the questions resulting from this situation are profound and incredibly relevant today given mankind’s ability to (re)create images.

Kris Kelvin is a psychologist sent to the space station above the planet Solaris to investigate the situation there. Solaris itself is covered by a whirlpool of an ocean, and Kelvin soon discovers that the ocean is sentient. At the space station, a close friend, Gibarian, has committed suicide under strange circumstances, and the only crew members remaining are a Doctor Sartorius, who spends all day locked up in his laboratory, and Doctor Snout, who tries to warn Kelvin about the unexpected apparitions onboard.

These apparitions take the form of someone whose trace of a memory is found deep in the recesses of a crew member’s soul, and in the case of Kelvin, it is his late wife, Hari, who committed suicide 10 years ago. Kelvin is visibly affected by her appearance, even though he knows that she is not real. After he sends her out into space, a substitute appears. These substitutes are, of course, externally identical but always copies of the memory. As such (and this is an important point that is made much clearer in the 2002 remake by Steven Soderbergh), Hari can never know anything that Kelvin does not.

Even though Kelvin knows that Hari is merely a copy, he interacts with her in a way that causes him joy instead of sadness. She does not remind him of a loss as much as her presence makes him happy, and therefore, ultimately, Solaris fails to succeed in torturing Kelvin.

The film opens at Kelvin’s house next to a lake, where clouds or fog are always visible in the background. The environment seems pure, and a lone horse passes through the frame now and again while Tarkovsky takes care to show us water flowing over lush green water plants. It seems to be nature at its most innocent, but the film slowly and surely subverts our preconceived notions until we are left with the realisation that things in the world of the film are never quite what they seem.

Solaris is long and contains a number of scenes that would have benefited from a number of cuts, including, most importantly, an early scene during which we watch a film extensively detailing a mission to Solaris. Another scene, which takes place in a library onboard the space station, has some interesting components, including references to Don Quixote, a work of literature that also investigates a world where reality is no longer virginal.

Bach’s organ choral prelude (“Ich ruf’ zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ”) is used in a striking way throughout the film, and the film’s final scene, when we are confronted with a frozen lake that brings to mind a painting by Bruegel (“The Hunters in the Snow”) shown in fragments earlier in the film, produces a moment of such beauty it nearly brought me to tears.

During a scene that immediately precedes Kelvin’s journey to the space station, viewers are obliged to immerse themselves in the flow of sound and image rather than story. It reminded me of sequences from Koyaanisqatsi and shows a car driving along the highways of Tokyo, at different speeds and in different colours, the sound changing as well to produce a sequence of indescribable energy that finally serves to propel the story itself forward, and Kelvin into space.

The film has a few scenes in black and white, but they are not entirely distinct from other scenes in colour, though sometimes they are flashbacks and sometimes they are not. However, our inability to easily distinguish flashback, dream and immediate reality from each other is of course part of the dilemma that the film poses to us and to Kelvin.

The examination of reality in a world where copies resemble the original to such a great extent is very pertinent and has recently been treated in many other films, from David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ to Christopher Nolan’s Inception. I found the plot more interesting and more accessible than Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, though they are both enigmatic in their own ways and lend themselves to hours of interpretation.