So, the film by Alexei Fedorchenko “Angels of the Revolution”. In my opinion, both the film and the author are one of the most underrated units in Russian cinema.
Watch this movie if you are attracted to it:
• Absurdist style and magical realism. In this case, it is magical socialist realism.
• Aesthetics and frame poetics. The plans are artistically beautiful.
The atmosphere of the pagan North, imbued with mythology and mystery.
• The fate of the Russian avant-garde in art.
• Action stories. In the film, despite the nonlinear psychedelic script, there will be plot twists, and murder, and revenge, and retribution. Everything is in place, it is interesting to watch.
• Artistic retelling of famous events. In this case, we will talk about the Kazymsk uprising. This is when the Soviet government came to the northern peoples of Russia to wean off paganism, to donate statuettes of Lenin, to wash them, instead of taking fish in exchange for bonds and forcing them to learn the alphabet. And what came of it?
• If you have seen the other films of Alexei Fedorchenko and you liked them. In his films there is always a lot of fabulousness, mystical atmosphere and some especially gentle tragedy.
• Strange dialogues of heroes, with high-flown turns and invariable mystery. people of art, like no other.
Anyway, it's a great movie. It consists of metaphorical and fabulous sketch scenes, which together make up one plot figure, original and interesting. The film has its own idea, its own soul and its own position, and also a chic casting. Look at these faces.
Whatever you say, the first decades of Soviet power evoked a sense of mass insanity, an active messianic one. With actions that in a normal state should be ashamed precisely because of their enchanting infantile stupidity.
Adults who grew up in a traditional environment, with a mother-dad, cultural roots, the usual way of life, without pathology of consciousness or many years, from birth, brainwashing, suddenly, from that or that, begin to draw figvams, respond to Chamberlain, portray a propeller, the world bourgeoisie or liberated labor, with an enthusiastic-idiotic grin, carry homemade banners with hastily soaped follies, walk in sle rows in front of a handful of such indum, etc. To burn, to fall through the earth.
Sometimes I dream as if I were naked in a crowded place. I wake up in a cold sweat. These are of their own free will and with apparent pleasure.
Once in this situation, any mentally healthy person will feel at least awkward. - What am I doing here? - he will ask, pulling off a fake cap and peeling off his nose. I don’t want you to post it on YouTube.
And there is also the brain center of the madhouse - homegrown avant-garde and other revolutionaries from art with their victories over the sun and other cardboard crap. These are all classical education received, in any case, the gymnasium definitely graduated. And then crunching and scrotum to paving stones. How come? How could this have happened? - I'm ashamed.
What was that? Test of the notorious HH gas?
And then, ten years later, the cocks were taken and slapped. Creative, so to speak, elite. They've already stopped painting.
The madness is shown mainly - the whole second half of the picture - on the example of the forced Sovietization of the wild peoples of the North by demonstrating to them the conventional squares of Malevich.
That’s all I can say about the content.
The frank delusion of the subject dictates the conditionality of the form. Explicit nonsense simply cannot be embodied in the form of reality. The form here is a soft grotesque, lubok, even a nativity, Kusturica without gypsies. Made plywood, deliberately in a proletarian way - by the forces of artistic amateurism, as if in imitation of characters.
Therefore, periodically there is a feeling of nudity with a claim. But finally burys the whole ending, in which the author adjusted the same damning cast-iron suryoz and summed up a bold moralistic line, straight as a rail.
Even after a hundred years, we are still ambiguous about the events of the October Revolution and the subsequent bloody establishment of Soviet power. It is important to understand and remember that this process was not instantaneous, but took a long period of time. In order to instill love for the new order, in fact, a deliberate attempt was made to eliminate the traditions and cultures that inhabited the country of peoples. Of course, such a policy could not but lead to a response, as, for example, the infamous Kazym uprising, the interpretation of the events of which was reflected in the avant-garde historical drama “Angels of the Revolution”.
Synopsis During a visit to the People’s Commissar for Nationalities, former revolutionary Pauline Schneider, the leadership instructs the task of highlighting the Khants and Nenets living in Kazym in the ideas of Soviet Russia. To help herself, Polina takes friends of interest who, like her, believed in the cause of the revolution. But having arrived at the place inspired by faith in their own ideals, the heroes do not find a proper response from the locals.
The film is characterized by a very unusual, but curious play of actors. First of all, I would like to note the psychedelic game of Daria Ekamasova in the role of Polina, whose nature, bubbling with the desire for early changes, turned her into an ardent fighter of the revolution, blindly believing in unattainable dreams.
Those who are even remotely familiar with the artistic style of director Alexei Fedorchenko realize that he is a classic representative of arthouse cinema. All his films have a special atmosphere, a non-trivial presentation of material and a special message that permeates the whole film. In the case of Angels of Revolution, we face direct criticism of the director in relation to the Soviet regime. On the one hand, the human director alternately introduces the heroes to us, letting us know that they really believed in the goodness of what they brought to the world. At the same time, the director with secret contempt refers to the elimination of the traditions of small peoples and their acculturation.
The non-standardity of the “Angels of the Revolution” was reflected in the script of the film. The nonlinear development of the action allows the viewer to get acquainted with each of the characters in turn, so that we learn more about the past of each of them to understand why they agreed to participate in this task. All of them are workers of art – the instrument that was to break into the minds of people. However, the heroes are forced to face the harsh truth that not everyone is ready to embrace a revolution simply because these others, by definition, live in a different world that does not need change. And not even a symbolic balloon made of deer skins, nor an amateur film about the myths of the Nenets, nor cosmetics, nor other joys of life open the door to the complex soul of a small people.
Result “Angels of Revolution” is definitely not a movie for the average viewer. Few will understand him, few will simply overcome him. But for all its complexity, significance, abundance of metaphors and allegories in the film there is a special feature that makes you think about the message that the author tried to convey to us.
8 out of 10
At the dawn of the 1930s, it was decided to send a group of enlighteners from among the avant-garde to the recalcitrant tribes of Khanty and Nenets. The artist, film director, poet, photographer, theater director, led by the legendary Polina-Revolution (the role of Polina Schneider brilliantly performed by Daria Ekamasova), go to the Siberian wilderness to try with the help of art and culture to reconcile savages with the Soviet government. The savages do not share the symbols and methods of the new state, and after the revolutionaries desecrate the cult of the local goddess with their presence, a violent uprising breaks out.
Paradoxically, the events took place in real life (the Kazyma Uprising of 1933). And even if the real causes of the uprising are purely socio-economic, they will remain behind the scenes. For the creators, the main motives are obvious - the rejection of alien cultures.
This is not a clash of two civilizations, but of two myths. Not only "old/new" but also "strange/foreign." In the confrontation come the myth of a bright communist future and the legends of small peoples, which became the basis of their worldview. The goddess of the new troubled time Pauline throws a symbolic challenge to the local goddess Kazym. Only here to defeat the wild pagans “pagans” red is much more difficult. And the “red” and “wild”, the natural line intertwined in the whimsical grassroots style of the film.
Real history becomes the linchpin for phantasmagoria, sometimes grotesquely rethinking the legacy of the revolutionary 20s, and sometimes surprisingly poetic. The film is woven from several novels, united by a common plot of the mission of the agit brigade to nomads. Each character corresponds to several prototypes, for example, in one of the flashbacks, a witty interpretation of an unconfirmed story from Eisenstein’s Mexican tour is clearly read.
It is not immediately clear what appears before our eyes: an incredibly funny retelling of terrible tales of the Civil War and the first years of socialist construction, or a metaphysical parable. The boundary of “sna-javi” is not always palpable and what seems wild can turn out to be an image inspired by historical facts, and what is perceived on faith – pure artistic fiction.
Director Alexei Fedorchenko rethinks the heritage of the avant-garde, trying to combine it with the traditions of the culture of nomadic tribes. He again collaborates with the original writer and screenwriter Denis Osokin (“Oatmeal”, “Heavenly Wives of Meadow Marys”), but this time the folklore of the romance of the first communists is added to the folklore of small peoples. The output is something like a symbiosis, a vision in which the shaman dreamed of suprematist figures, retold in the language of the stories of Andrei Platonov. The poetic film language of the director is much closer to video art than the cinema to which the mass viewer is accustomed, but the pretentious form of the statement is suitable for non-trivial content.
Towards the end of the film, there is a scene where the filmmaker’s chronicle is projected onto the smoke from the fire. A well-chosen metaphor applies to the Angels themselves. As if a collection of images appearing in the smoke, the film is poetic, sometimes excessively drawn and immersed in itself, but at the same time, does not lose its artistic charm. It seems surprising that such a film is a product of our time, in its style and appeal to the revolutionary years, it is more like an experimental picture of the early 90s.
As one poet said, in order to connect different times, different worlds, “the knotted days of the knee must be tied with a flute.” In fact, "Angels of the Revolution" is just about such a surgical attempt to connect cultures with the help of a "flute-vertebral". The experiment failed, the backbone of the old, folk “flute” was broken, and the prosthesis did not take root. Who knows, perhaps the films of Fedorchenko-Osokin will become a similar flute for modern Russian cinema.
7 out of 10
“Is this the Oatmeal and the Heavenly Wives of the Meadow Mary?” When you are not an artist, not a producer, not a film critic and do not cook in a movie party, but just love movies, to know Alexei Fedorchenko at this level is not bad. I haven’t seen them, but I’ve heard of them. It didn't happen. Well, because it was scary: it is marked by an art house, which is mostly maliciously disrespectful to the viewer, and to spend two hours of my life to get lost from a virtual spit in the face - I'm more interesting to find an occupation (so reasoned).
Not a movie like that. Thin, smart, stylish. For the prepared viewer, yes, I did not have enough preparation, and I had to interpret some aspects of it very approximately. Well, because I almost don't know Khlebnikov, and I hate the Kharms I know. And the one I love? “On the mountain we shall fan the fire of the world for all the bourgeois. The world's fire in blood, Lord, bless" and this: "Hush, speakers, your word, comrade Mauser.
This attitude to reality and to the time in which I happened to live. We traditionally represent the work of that time as two poles. On one: "I sent you a black rose in a glass of blue like the sky, ai" and other white acacia flowers of emigration. On the other, a revolutionary sailor tearing a veal on his chest: "Oh, apple!" On the sidelines and at a considerable distance, the silver age is the best that Russia gave the world the beginning of the XX; the peaks in the shining cap of snow, inaccessible and perfect. Those who were fond of revolutionary romance (quoted by Blok and Mayakovsky) seriously discredited themselves, and in general - art outside politics.
So, there was a whole layer of creative people who understood and accepted the revolution, put their talent in the service of its cause and, as usual, were devoured by it. Yeah, selfish. All they wanted to do was to create. Yes, cynics. The cruelty of terror did not provoke rejection in them: not you, but you: “It is not such a time to babysit you.” Our burden will be heavier, dear comrade.” Talented, intelligent, bright and educated. Completely detached from their roots. Grounded in flour with millstones and scattered in the wind.
In fact, the Kazymsky uprising has other reasons. The Soviet government implemented collectivization in the same way everywhere, putting on the brink of starvation those who were not lucky enough to become the object of its care. In the case of nomadic peoples, the breakdown of the family ancestral way of life - children were forcibly taken from their parents to a boarding school with a good, but much less necessary for children of reindeer herders than the skills of life in the taiga, the purpose of educational training. Put yourself in the place of your parents, would you give up yours? Same thing!
And then there are matters of religion, which are less important than physical survival or the care of children, but deprive a person of faith and you will take the core out of him. And he will have no need to live, and who has no need to live, he has nothing to fear. They did not understand this, fiery boys and girls of the revolution, apologists of avant-gardeism, forerunners of the Aquarius era. The theme of John the Baptist not for nothing permeates the cinema.
A severed head, a dummy that appears in a film about the Mexican Revolution. Later, the fake was replaced by real living people: “Three deserters were sentenced to execution yesterday, they still die, so let them serve art.” You heard right: the murder on film is an extreme degree of cynicism. Does that ring a bell? The forerunner was also killed for the love of art.
The scene of agitation for joining a partisan detachment: “the kolkhoz is a voluntary matter, if you do not join, we will shoot,” under machine gun fire with bodies agitated to the throat in the water. In one place it sounds plain:" Who do you think I am? - John the Baptist. Such are they, heads torn from bodies, people torn from roots, those who came too early. They won't die like that, with their heads separated. In the film, there is a scene of the suicide of a peasant posing for a monument to Jude, who repeated the fate of the prototype - hanged himself.
Real employees of the Kazym cult base were also strangled with ropes. What, are you missing and leaving no trace? Nothing happens. Before the time and by the wrong means, yes. Well, the head does not live apart from the body. I think Alexei Fedorchenko’s films are about that. Daria Ekamasova is wonderfully good.
In our world, with its seeming constancy, metamorphoses constantly occur, which are able to expose hot cracks of the soul on the cold marble of human flesh. In times of global social change, this internal flaming energy sometimes begins to merge with the hot blood flowing into the icy sunlight, and this energy, which seemed inexhaustible, begins to flow into the emerald spring grass.
Such metamorphoses, which require precious human blood for the germination of a new life, capture deep layers of personal and social existence in times of revolutions and begin to mix them and heat them up, involving them in new reactions impossible under ordinary conditions. Thinkers, revolutionaries and their leaders, like medieval alchemists, tormented by old dreams of immortality, pour into their enormous diabolical retorts the juices of our common lives, beginning a long tormenting experiment for entire peoples to accelerate time. Both science and culture flourish in a heated history, trying to somehow justify this bloody price.
The heroes of the film, the best of the accelerators of time and the beacons of progress, hardened in the red revolutionary fire, are nailed to the outskirts of a changing country (or on the eve of an invariable boundless world) to launch a catalyst (both in the form of a film and in the form of a whistling bullet at the temple) for the transition from traditional to industrial society. Any methods, any tools are suitable: a new cult instead of an ancient goddess or new myths in place of the original ones passed from word of mouth. But it is still a pity that avant-garde thinking and vivid abstractions often prevent people, even the best of the best, from seeing the gray face of reality. And it is useless to dress beautifully, wear stunning masks, speak colorful speeches, if the interlocutor easily recognizes all the tricks.
Alexei Fedorchenko’s film, her unusual film language, created from the interweaving of dreams, memories, present and past, history and fiction, reality and blatant surrealism, perfectly conveys the boiling of human destinies, the unpredictable flow of time between the callosum fingers of an alchemist who is not yet a scientist, but just an ordinary dreamer.
"Angels of the Revolution" gives us, to some extent, a synthesis of an exotic spirit, in this flood of flowers and formed the historical heritage of socialist realism. The action of the picture takes place in Soviet Russia in the early 30s. In the story, a company of enthusiasts, not without some danger, go to the Far North to build a cult base. All of them are virtuosos to the bone, in the field of effects: film director-primitivist Peter (Pavel Basov), theater director Smirnov (Alexey Solonchev), architect Nikolai (Konstantin Balakirev). Courageous and full of self-control Polina Schneider (Darya Ekamasova). The composer who created the symphony of factory pipes, Ivan (Oleg Yagodin) refuses to participate.
Missionaries try to cultivate the peoples of Khanty and Nenets, interfere in their life, in the smooth course of social life, overthrow the nature of their gods. The adventurers have one common aspiration: to forge a path to new reforms of Soviet power. They instinctively believe in “progress” and “future,” when the indigenous people show respect for antiquity, believe in prejudice, honor ancestors, fear the wrath of the gods. The seekers of “modern” ideas taught their age art, to which all the colors of wild diversity flocked, their way of thinking did not find a hospitable reception in the Northern land. Attempts to forcibly impose their own forms of perception, to reconcile both morals, in essence, end with the onslaught and defeat of both sides. The finale pours out to us in the light of crazy semi-barbarism.
In short, a whole culture crystallizes in the tape. Heroes with sophisticated curiosity demonstrate a commitment to avant-garde perception. Charming “fanatics” break traditional concepts, overturn religion, installing a monument to Judas Iscariot, replacing the church with “advanced” crematoria, in their arsenal there are other non-trivial ideas. Memorable scenes with wings on domestic dogs, meditative play on the theremin and other phantasmagoria of postmodernism.
It is worth paying tribute to the creators of the film, they managed to catch all the necessary things that should carry a work of art. While watching “Angels of the Revolution” you can taste how the culture of the past century was tempered and look for references to the present century.
For my part, I find that modern cinema lacks deep Russian cinema, expressing the mood of the younger generation, ambiguous complex characters. History makes people, thus, the role of cinema to film people's stories, glorifying their achievements and highlighting their weaknesses. Watch and make a good movie!
Alexey Fedorchenko, who directed “Angels of the Revolution”, can be attributed to those authors who reconstruct the events that have already happened absolutely artistically and in their own way. The most difficult time is the 20s of the last century, Soviet Russia. A time of tectonic upheavals not only for the government of a huge part of the globe, but also for culture. Soviet avant-garde art and Proletkult were to be the counterweight that would throw away all the old bourgeois culture alien to the victorious proletariat. Avant-garde art was designed to make a cultural revolution and create a completely new Soviet man. An arch-complex time, comrades, for a film based on real events. Therefore, Fedorchenko’s film is mysterious as solitaire for the uninitiated.
The film takes place in 1934. This is the fateful year when the course towards socialist realism was proclaimed by the respected proletarian writer Maxim Gorky. Changing course, in fact, meant abandoning avant-garde art, tragedy, creative crises, repression, camps and exile. It was a time of great tragedy for the locomotive “Soviet avant-garde”, which by that time had slowed down and lost its revolutionary pathos. It was in this tragic year that it was decided to reconstruct the reality of the “Angels of the Revolution”.
There was no longer in 1934, shown Fedorchenko, the People's Commissariat for Nationalities with a sentry with an ocarina at the entrance. Hasn't existed in ten years. Nevertheless, it was this People’s Commissariat that Pauline Schneider was called upon to solve the problem of advancing the Soviet to the territory of the Khanty and Nenets. They must be friends with the Soviet government. They are good people, but they are afraid of everything. They took the kids out of school so they wouldn't turn into Russians. They listen to their demons and shamans. Very strange from the point of view of ordinary logic. This is not surprising to those who believe in a world revolution. Why are you in this?! That's how we study Oceania, just in case. The World Revolution.
Who, if not Pauline, should have been called upon to address such a complex issue? And another manipulation of facts from the director: once Pauline Schneider on behalf of the Soviet government proclaimed the Persian Soviet Republic. We cannot do without you, Pauline, we will give you the best of our fighters. More than an hour of screen time Fedorchenko presents real samurai of different directions of avant-garde art, not forgetting to pull together at this time (1934) all the ideas of these titans.
Composer Ivan, who dreams of performing a symphony for locomotive horns, had a real prototype in the person of Arseny Avrahamov. Such a symphony was indeed written and performed by Abrahamov, but also ten years earlier in 1923, during the heyday of the Soviet avant-garde. Literally, the authors quote in the film the text of Avrahamov himself, describing the performance of this symphony. Ivan has been in love with Polina since the time of Civic, he proposed to her, but time has changed, and Ivan refuses this cultural proletarian conquista. I don't want to hold the Mauser, I want to hold the conductor's wand. Tambourine and vargan, these sounds will die with the wildness of the natives. I will be the People's Commissar of Music of the USSR.
Soviet film director Peter (a kind of allusion to Sergei Eisenstein), on the contrary, is sure that the Khants need culture, need music, cinema and theater. Only by art can they be tamed to Soviet power.
The artist, sculptor and photographer Zahar is a collective image capable of absolutely anything. In the Civil War - a monument to the first God-fighter Judas Iscariot, a defender of human rights for the construction of the world, who challenged heaven. Like cut off. And the devil is necessarily a nature for the first God-fighter. Before meeting with Polina - an immoral photographer, a lover of cute nude German ladies. Turn around, you can't see the cake.
Architect Nikolai, designer of the first Soviet crematorium, which, by the way, was opened a few years before the events of the film. Only in the USSR will cremation be cheap and accessible to everyone. People's Commissar of Health Semashko at the presentation of the current model of the crematorium, converted from the church. Build it fast, or I'll die, maybe soon and can't wait for it. Ashes over the fields of the republic. A volcano should be each of us, a volcano awakened, not extinct.
Theatrical director Smirnov, actively experimenting with form, like his prototype Vsevolod Meyerhold. You are not a Latvian, you are a Jew. Every vegetable has its time. "Comrade in anticipation of reprisals and reprisals."
Each of these people is a magnitude, a great artist and a creator of new art, believing in the humanism of the avant-garde and ready to serve it with all fury. But the system sacrifices its passionate adepts. She just doesn't need them anymore. The cultural paradigm has changed. In Kazym, they are called upon to create a new cultural space. It does not matter whether these creators become angels for the Revolution or horsemen for the Apocalypse of small nations.
Kazym as a place and the Nenets and Khanty as a population became, according to Fedorchenko, parts of a huge artistic and cultural experiment, designed to change thanks to avant-garde aliens. Initiation into the Voroshilov arrows, Zakhar's supermatism, maternity hospital, do not let the shaman into the native council. All could tolerate the domesticated, but not mocking the beliefs and memory of ancestors. Tomorrow you will fly to heaven and make sure there are no spirits or gods. "Are you alive?" “We have long since died. And now come for you, Pauline answers the question of the sentry at the beginning of the film. The avant-garde is dead, and we are not yet, so with fanatic fanatics we will plant it in any tymutarakani. We lie down, we smile, we are dead, cover us with red flags.
“The war is not over until the last dead soldier is buried,” said Suvorov. To paraphrase it, art and culture end when they stop inspiring people. The difficult time of the post-revolutionary 20s created an absolutely new and unique cultural phenomenon on the cultural field - the Soviet Vanguard, which has not been fully understood until now. “Angels of the Revolution” through the eyes of Fedorchenko canonize that difficult era by means of cinema and act as a requiem for the dream of a completely new art, free from the load of the past.
10 out of 10
The last fifteen minutes of the film seem to me to be a failure because of a decided disconnect from the previous canvas. It could be completed anywhere, informatively informing about the fate of the characters there and ending with the song Katya. The film was absolutely glorious in the spirit of absurdism, a lot of Kharmsovism. Until then, he caused me to compare with “About freaks and people” – adjusted for the difference in aesthetics, color and tempo of the creators. A sensible, very thoughtful film in which primitivism is not simple.
Yes, in fact, for a powerful debut with the production of the play “about raccoons”, a number of flaws can be forgiven. The ideological component is not quite obvious to me. A high-quality set of sketches, the aesthetics of suspension are intrinsically valuable as a thing in itself. As in every absurdist part, the works of dignity are determined by the individual beauty of the vision of the creator and its consonance with the viewer. With humor, style, beauty Fedorchenko everything is fine in this picture, which is very authorial, certainly arthouse, not at all popular and bright thing perpendicular to everything that was done in the year in our cinema. The film was shot last year, but from those seen in this, perhaps, I tend to put it in second place after Zvyagintsev’s much more mature and emotional film.
7 out of 10
We loved Pauline
The heart beats against the trouser.
For some reason, this line from the cinema is most memorable, and even beautifully built, but such cold shots (is it only in the autumn nature of Western Siberia?). Against their background, inconclusive avant-gardeists are bending (here Mayakovsky in a yellow jacket was convincing), completely in love with Polina Schweitzer. Described from Larissa Reisner, it seems the most unfortunate element of the plot; Although Larissa was beautiful, but a smart woman, Polina only severely moves her wide jaws.
The real futurists did not go for the class revolution, they went for the beat of a new life that gave strength, inspiration, titanic performance. Our heroes are dull and powerless, like decadents. Everything they do, they do sluggishly and lifelessly, without fire in the eyes and heart - it is not surprising that no one and Polina failed. It is not surprising that they lost not even to the new, more formidable forces of history, but to such quiet and naive Nenets, in whom there was simply more life, more passion. The heart should not be in the pants, but in the chest.
“Angels of Revolution” is a new film by Alexei Fedorchenko, which evokes in memory his debut film “First on the Moon”, as indicated by the atmosphere of banter, anecdotal adventures of avant-garde, reminiscent of the quasi-realistic journey to the moon of Soviet cosmonauts. The director understands very well the spirit of the avant-garde, its planetary, universal swing, huge aesthetic ambitions and artistic puff on the way out, the absurdity of the result. All this is cute, funny, funny, but nothing more.
Fedorchenko has an amazing sense of detail, he can build a chic symbolic frame, create a visually fascinating scene, but he does not have a sense of dramatic composition, he cannot combine episodes into a single meaningful sequence. This is the main trouble not only for him, but also for most modern Russian directors (for example, the Tale of Darkness by Homerica). After all, cinema is a structure and rhythm, it is an impeccably working mechanism, a kind of living creature with its heartbeat (which is editing), with breathing, with a biological clock.
The rhythm of the film work is one of the most difficult topics: how should the director use the editing so that it does not oust it, so that there is no clip chaos? At the same time, so that the idea does not become tyrannically displacing any accident on the set, which is the cause of dry, boring cinema. “Angels of Revolution” is boring in the most primitive sense of the word: the artistic anemia of actors who are unable to charge the viewer with emotions, the dull, sluggish editing that violates the proportionality of the scenes. In cinema, the most important thing for the director is to feel the cinematic time, intuitively feel the sequence of each episode, each plan.
It is very difficult, the great go to this for years, but what we see here are anecdotal, funny, not without imagination episodes, not connected in any way into a single whole. But these are claims to form. Now for content. The history of the avant-garde, called upon by the party to culturally colonize the forest Nenets, is an anecdote in itself, in which the anemic behavior of the avant-garde sharply contrasts with the natural behavior of primitive tribes. Fedorchenko in his latest films follows the path of Herzog, acting as an anti-globalization director and singer of small cultures, but when this apology is served in the form of an anecdote, it turns out to be no more than an anecdote.
All this, of course, is sad, given, of course, the mature visual culture of the picture, but the attempt to combine the style of his debut mocumentary with later films and small nations turned into a stylistic catastrophe for Fedorchenko. These are incompatible moments - shoot either an anecdote in the style of "First on the Moon", or ethno-kino, in the spirit of Herzog or Makhmalbaf. There's no third.
The artistic merits are obvious - a great game of great actors; a strong, non-slacking plot; a lively, "breathing" picture ...
But that didn't fascinate me. I am delighted with how carefully and with what love the author approaches the most complex and controversial period of Russian history.
Revolution. Civil war. The Red Terror. Blood, blood, blood... And it's impossible to understand: what is it? Madness? So, all of a sudden, the whole population went crazy and rushed to stab each other with bayonets, gnaw their teeth? Usually, when we talk about this historical period, we take one side and demonize the other. Or we swear at the red devils, fire and sword bringing new orders, or kulaks-flawed, because of the chest of their mothballs, blood-blooding fiery romantics from the revolution.
And in this film, all the heroes are sympathetic. On one side are the red agitators. Fantastic, incredibly talented, sincere, inspired. Yeah, they're not angels. But each in his own way is beautiful, and most importantly - straight, honest, everyone firmly occupies his place in the vanguard of the war against tradition. And on the other hand, the native Khanty. The native children of the taiga, bright, strong, reliable, people, honestly and sincerely devoted to the dreary tradition, as ancient as the people themselves, holding to their millennial foundations, drawing strength from them.
Everyone's good. Everybody's pretty good. However, the result is beautiful avant-garde, brilliant, talented, lying, barbarously killed by the crowd, in a frozen taiga hut. People of the taiga, brave, strong hunters, shot by the Red Army, and those who have not yet been killed, go for interrogation and torture, drag themselves behind a sleigh, half naked, in the snow ... And it wasn't fiction, it was true! The film is not documentary, of course, it generally gravitates to the grotesque (and not to shoot otherwise about those amazing times, then everything was grotesque!), but the basis of the plot is a real historical event.
How, how could this happen, as two groups of honest, sincere, generally good people? This movie shows how. And you believe him. I believed you.
Another festival film, which is recognized by critics and the jury only because the propaganda of anti-Soviet culture in the world is most appreciated, all boils down to the fact that the Bolsheviks and the entire Soviet government were incompetent and illiterate people.
The plot of the film is the development and introduction of the peoples of the North to the culture of the “new order”. This is entrusted to the girl and her comrades, who behave in a foreign land completely disregarding the traditions and customs of other people, which presents the elite of the Soviet executive power as some not far away. Mikhail Bulgakov perfectly showed the absurdity of the Soviet system in the Heart of a Dog, but immediately it shows on the verge of a sura. In this film, Soviet citizens are just short-sighted characters, and the peoples of the North and more.
The money spent on the film was divided in Russian by the Ministry, I can’t assume any other explanation, it is the only Russian thing in this film. The film “Fool” was shot for less money, but the acting in this film was simply beautiful, the plot was truly catchy and acutely social. They showed a simple Russian guy who really operates with Orthodox norms of behavior, which makes this film more philosophical and the main character evokes more empathy in the process of fighting the “proverb system” that wins, the hero dies in front of the viewer, but settles in their souls.
By contrasting the philosophical component of this film, we can say
The film “Angels of the Revolution” is a mixture of anti-Soviet cartoons of the Cold War, from which we can say that the author’s goal was not to make a reliable historical film, but to get recognition at festivals where there is a foreign audience who thinks of Russians as savages saddled their bears, wearing their Ushanka hats, drinking a bottle of “Capital” and playing balalaikas, while dancing insane dances arriving in a state of fever.
It is very symbolic to watch this on November 7. Long live the Great October Socialist Revolution! Yay! Urrrah! It should also be noted that 30 years ago this film would have been a masterpiece. In it and now there is something super original, episodes even genius, but the general theme does not affect. Designed for older people, national minorities and residents of a very deep outback.
From the one that cut into memory is the monument to Judas as a denial of faith in God (somewhere it has been described, but looks quite hilarious, despite the dangling monastic corpse on this monument). There are many deaths in the film, but since nature is one of the themes of the film, the deaths are perceived quite organically, except, of course, the killed deer, even if it is a pet and even if it is by the hands of the Nanai. Or whoever. Khanty-Mansi, Nenets, Latvians – everything is mixed in a heap, in the film a million characters, the images are memorable, the sound range is impressive. It's clearly a languish under the great worlds of cinema, but unfortunately the film's theme is rather weak to claim anything more. Well, what do I care about the concepts of perception of the heroes of revolution, infringement of the rights of small peoples, even natural disasters. It's all out there, unrealistically far away. My skin is thick and it is not such a sentimental punch.
Nevertheless, it is very correctly noted that the frozen traditions of small peoples are so ineradicable that even now they can be touched with your hands. Turn on some Kalmyk television and there will be the same type of news, as under Brezhnev, consisting of three parts. The head of the region. Some old grandfather who fought for our freedom, for a clear sky over something. Children preparing to become worthy citizens. Actually, again from history, it is remembered during the Great Patriotic War of the year to the 43rd Soviet troops acquired a different appearance, more of a patriotic type, since they consisted of natives of Central Asia, the Caucasus, etc., who hardly understood what was happening.
The film in the faded sky of the current Russian cinema is quite outstanding, it does not look very easy, but at times it is quite interesting. Another of the real moments is the reception of volunteers with a loop around the neck, in the water and on you from a machine gun. A good choice is to drown, drown or be shot. As Gumilev said,
Not to hide from the share of blood that the earth intended firmament.
But be silent: the incomparable right is to choose your own death.
We'll die near Moscow. How our brothers died. I didn’t have any brothers, so I did it myself.
Documentary tale about the campaign of the army of beauty in the wild North
If you carefully remove the skin, remove the guts, cut all the meat from the movie "Angels of the Revolution", then the naked skeleton will be extremely Hollywood. To solve a complex problem in the far exotic North, Pauline is called the Revolution, behind which lie ethnographic exploits. A kind of cross between Indiana Jones and Lara Croft. She recruits a “dream team” of the best cultural figures, and they go to transform Ugra (throw the ring in Orodruin, kill the Emperor and save the universe, free the princess, along the way downing the relic reptile). Remember, these films are dark. And the angels could be the same.
If it weren't for meat.
Yekaterinburg director Alexander Fedorchenko, known (including the audience of “Amur Autumn”) for the unusual films “Oatmeal” and “Heavenly Wives of Meadow Marys”, said in an interview that in “Angels of the Revolution” he wanted to come up with a country without stamps. So he said, "Invent a country." Those who saw the film remember the amazing madness that took place in the frame. Now, I don't know if I'm going to surprise you, but almost everything that's been shown in the movies is historical facts that have taken place. The authors just concentrated them in one story.
So, 1934. The Dark Khanty do not want to join the progressive humanity “in the face” of the Soviet Republic. They do not thirst for culture and science, they are drawn to wild taiga and primitive cults. In order to acquaint the unreasonable with the socialist family of peoples in the Kazymsk region, Pauline Schneider and “special forces of art” are sent to the avant-garde titans, standing at the forefront of culture. I think it's wonderful to expand the Empire through art. Beauty is stronger than ideology. And for me personally, the whole movie, Angels of the Revolution, is about beauty and its powerful impact on people.
The revolution of 1917 is an acute and problematic topic. Much has been said, written and filmed. But almost always talk about the political, social aspect. Meanwhile, the Russian revolution is a powerful cultural revolution. The decadence of the Silver Age is replaced by pure modern water. Cut off the pedestal! Down with the old, self-lost art! We'll build a new one, from scratch! Unlaced with bourgeois salad paws, pure refined art. This idea was most vividly developed by Mayakovsky in his "In the full voice":
"I, the drainer and the water carrier"
Reconstructed and mobilized by the revolution,
He went to the front from the bar gardening.
It’s a beautiful poem.
In the film, they say: everything old will die - tambourine, Vargan. What's the replacement? For example, symphonies for locomotive horns. This is not a metaphor, friends, one of the heroes of the film does exactly that. And believe me, this is the least and modest of the creativity of the “titans of the avant-garde”! What artists have done since 1917 is a global cultural vision. A real rebellion of the new art against the old. Great idea! It may be monstrous, but grandiose!
And Alexander Fedorchenko decided to show the ideals of the modernist revolutionaries in their own language. When in the very first frames Pauline Schneider entered the building of the People’s Commissariat, which was a gaggy gingerbread house of patterned wood, painted in all kinds of colors, it immediately became clear that there would be no gray postmodern realism on the screen. Only bright colors, only juicy large strokes!
The film consists of two parts. In the first, Pauline collects the titans of the avant-garde, and in the second, they bring Beauty to the unwashed hantas. The first part takes up most of the picture. Each artist is shown in all its glory, you can fully appreciate their obsession with art, their courage and madness. Each of them is a resident of another universe. Prophet of Beauty. Sometimes breath takes away from what is happening on the screen. It is difficult to overcome personal blindness, it is difficult to look at everything impartially. To see only art, detached from social, moral and other barriers.
Of course it's a requiem. And at the same time, Dr. Frankenstein's lab. Because Fedorchenko does not introduce us to the Great Modern Revolution. It depicts the world of mad geniuses with their own brushes, and thereby revives it. So that all of us, residents of the postmodern twenty-first century, can feel the power of art that does not obey standards, art that looks forward and does not look back.
There are no impossible tasks before Polina and her like-minded people. Real beauty can do anything. And when they came to the Khantas, they promised them not much, not little, but the sky itself: “We will fly together, we will make the sky our home!”
Beauty, which has no roots (she cut them off herself), faced a culture that goes back thousands of years. And, of course, it could not end well. However, I personally was not sad about the failed experiment in the taiga deaf. I was terribly dreary at the fact that very soon all this art will be crushed throughout the Union and shoved into the spiny steel frame of socialist realism, subordinated to one task, one goal. It will be so darkened that we who are here and now will completely forget what the real revolutionary art was.
9 out of 10.
Progressive generation, carrying with it new standards of culture and new thinking - and small tribes living quiet and peaceful habitual way, with their own foundations, beliefs, traditions and aspirations.
A pile of cogs of one huge machine called "Soviet power" - and individual living people, and in the twentieth century did not forget to believe in what is believed, and not in what is imposed by someone from outside.
Confrontation between two cultures, eternal and continuous.
And all these Soviet “heroes”, so bright, so fresh and by the time thinking on the first, superficial, cursory look at verification turn out to be absolutely the same type, as if they have the same gray (or scarlet) bags on their heads, and the texts to them all were written by one person, and he gave out intonations, and facial expressions, and gestures.
And they all go together, with education, with what, in the opinion of the authorities, it is necessary to plant and plant in the shortest possible time, with all this avant-garde, new-fangled meaningless films, theremins, maternity hospitals, schools, factories and steamers - and it is not planted.
The inhabitants of Kazym have their own world, and this world is their love, as well as their simple, by the standards of the Soviets, life. With all the cat goddesses, owl sisters, face masks on freshly fallen snow, skin clothes and dolls dancing. And throat singing. And with tambourine, of course, with tambourine.
And these little people turn out to be big, and Power is small and spineless, albeit for a few days.
Let the rebellion be suppressed in the end.
Let the first children of Soviet Ugra sing no less Soviet songs and study in no less Soviet schools – this is just predictable and understandable from the very beginning of the film.
But all this colorful, kaleidoscopic, bright and childishly naive world, shown by Fedorchenko - it is so pleasant to the heart, and the soul responds to it so easily that you look and think - and, maybe, well, their avant-garde and theremins, spaceships and flights to Pluto, maybe the sky - it is not ours at all, but those who are further and much more significant than us, and we should learn at least on earth to live so that it will not only become our home and shelter, but we are her friends?
Maybe everything is much simpler and sincere - to sing what you see and feel, to say and do only what you believe in, to live with the light inside, to fear nothing and stand for your beliefs to the last?
Maybe happiness – here it is, at the fingertips – bass houses and long feathers, evening gatherings and a quiet, inconspicuous, but absolutely full life?
In this mode and in the twenty-first to live much quieter - and breathe more freely at times.
And the game – yes, it is on the verge of grotesque, and the pathetic is off the scale, and all the primary characters are flat and unwritten – so they should be, they are just the voices of the system, why do they have faces?
Enough with them and small love, and small dreams – this is what little they have left of themselves.
Much more important than the idea, even more important is the sky.
And this healthy balloon that says "Narcotics" and a shot in the head instead of flying.
This is important, and it is worth looking at, and once again looking at, and reviewing - until you see the main thing; until the small pieces of this mosaic fresco, so desirable for any viewer - acting, micro-mimics, dialogue, understandable and hedgehog texts - or rather, their absence will not cease to cause surprise, and what should actually ring in the heart will not ring bells; until the soul wakes up, and all this systematicity ingrained in consciousness will not fade into the background, but rather completely evaporate.
That’s why such a movie lives, for that it is created, despite all the ambiguity of assessments, despite the bewilderment of the audience and the rows in the cinema halls emptying by the middle of the show – so that those who remain understand that they are alive, and that there is faith in them, and the soul is on the spot, and the heart trembles and throbs, everything works like people, not machines; that they empathize not their seemingly fellow citizens, but these small bright people, and that everything in life is like them – honestly and truly.
And this is such a painstaking, thoughtful work of both the teams and the cast - to unearth all this permafrost in at least one viewer out of a hundred, that those who take up such a thing should either install monuments somewhere in heaven right during their lifetime, or add a couple of hundred ideal days to this very life.
Even though the sky is giving them away, it can be seen - otherwise they would simply not be able to create such deep things.
I must say that I, as a resident of Yekaterinburg, got the opportunity not only to watch high-quality cinema, but also to make a tour of my native places, to see a bunch of familiar personalities, namely the majority of the Kolyada Theater troupe. Apparently, Fedorchenko, being a regular visitor to this theater, decided not to strain himself in choosing actors and, however, did not lose out.
As always, Alexey Stanislavovich’s film is beautiful. Beauty in the faces of the actors, and in their play, which does not cut the eye, but harmoniously merges with the environment. Serious Polina blossoms once she sees the artist Ivan with his comic smile. In general, although Oleg Yagodin and Daria Ekamasova appear together on the screen not often, this duet can be called quite successful. You believe every word they say, you feel the connection of their characters, you feel sad for them. And also sad, worried about all the events presented in the film. is it a joke? the time of the revolution, 30s.
In the beginning, you get lost in constant temporal and geographical jumps. You can’t follow the storyline. But it is these small excerpts from people’s lives (dogs with wings, angels with hearts made of potatoes, Bolsheviks and Mexicans, crematoria, a monument to Jude) that convey the atmosphere and mood of that time, tell about the main characters. Text extravaganza slogans of the bloody machine-revolution. After the appearance of a constantly tracked storyline, it is no longer possible to break away, with a sinking heart you wait for the resolution of the story about how the expectation of the future of some did not work out with the present of others.
Fedorchenko with great love carefully conveys the life and culture of Khanty and Forest Nenets from the Amnya River. The culture of the Russian Avant-garde, which cuts into Ancient Paganism, gives a strong resonance, makes one look at what is happening on the screen with great interest. In my opinion, according to his work on the frame, attention to the details of Alexei Fedorchenko can be called a kind of Russian Wes Anderson. Color, music, costumes are completely immersed in the sometimes absurd, theatrical, but such a real and living world of the “Angels of the Revolution”.
This typically festival film is suitable for the “ordinary” viewer, longing for beauty and deep stories.
Hail the genius of art!
They left the movie. First one by one, then stretched in groups, then freed whole rows. Cinema is devoid of dynamics. Many episodes, but no single plot. It is impossible to link the film together. You can't follow anything. It seems that they are going to send Polina, an excellent shooter with pistols and revolvers, to some island to solve the problem. But she's not going anywhere, and that's when she breaks. Some episodes are interesting, although not finished, have no continuation, development. For example, the unveiling of a monument to Judas Iscariot, “a rebel, a rebel who rebelled against God” with a capital letter. The monument is impressive and terrible. And the discovery is terrible, and the assessment in the film itself is a monk who fell into a stupor at the opening. That's it. Then another movie begins. Parajanov shot the same mosaic. "Pomegranate color," for example. But there it was interesting to follow the constantly evolving beauty of the frame. "Heavenly wives of meadow Mary" is built on the same principle. It is impossible in these films to capture the plot, movement, dynamics, development. It is impossible to even identify the faces of the actors. There are so many faces that it is impossible to accurately understand, for example, the director of the theater for whose actors the Commissar-Death has already come, and a revolutionary artist who opens the statue of Judas, the poet is one person or different. On the one hand, they are no different in their characters, clothes, appearances ... on the other hand, they seem to be different actors, different characters. And so with all the characters. They are, after all, just shadows of people, they cannot be empathized with, they simply cannot be identified. The director believes that if a face appeared in the frame, albeit in the background, then the viewer is already obliged to remember it forever. Take into your life, experience as a personal experience. This is not the case at all.
In order for the viewer to remember the character, you need to try very hard. After all, the audience owes nothing to the filmmakers. They are not obliged to study posters, lists of actors and performers, read annotations. View photos of actors, compare them with screen images. This is only done if you like the film. Only then is there an interest in everything about the film. The viewer has the right not to look, the viewer has the right to leave without checking.