Political phantasmagoria, or on the political cinema of Russia beyond its limits. Political cinema in Russia is a sensitive matter. There are many reasons for this: political, psychological, market, geographical. Trying to disassemble them, and especially overcome them, is the same scrupulous thing. At best, you won’t even be heard, at worst... (and here you can fantasize). It seems to be customary to talk about politics, but here it is like a dead man: either good or not at all. Even if you run a glance through the programs of Russian film festivals, and even more so, having gathered the courage to watch the proposed films, there is a dual sense of something very vague. It is possible to single out idyllic-heroic narratives (even Nikita Mikhalkov to mention it became quite a bad tone) or to succumb to pseudo-documentary dramas, albeit “shot politically”, but from this do not lose all artistic doubt (even the thundered “Combine “Hope” Natalia Meshchaninova and “Class of Correction” Ivan I. Tverdovsky, despite the seriousness of the topic, remain underage films on the subject and in execution). Russian political cinema, in a way that is supposed to make sense of the reality imputed to it, has transferred this burden of cinema to documentary. ArtDocFest, which took place in December, vivid proof of this (suffice it to mention the Ukrainian section).
All the more strange seems the figure of Catalan Sergio Caballero. His first film, Finisterrae, was released in 2010 and is about two ghosts from Russia. They cannot come to terms with their disembodied state and go to the “end of the world” (the name of the film) to re-materialize. This seemingly abstract work, on closer examination, turns out to be a philosophical parable about the Way of the Cross, about the search for oneself and, even, with a reference to Soviet animation and Catalan thrash video of the 80s.
Then this film won a prize at the film festival in Rotterdam, deserved special mention at the film festival in Melbourne, where it was perceived as fun, extravagant video about incomprehensible Russian ghosts. But with the release of the film “Distance” in 2014, both the director’s first film and the discussion about political cinema in Russia have reached a new level. It can be described as a phantasmagoria of a special, political kind.
In fact, three dwarfs with medium abilities must find the "Distance", that is, the exit to other worlds. This task is given to them by a clay-headed Austrian magician. He was given this task by a Russian millionaire who became rich after the collapse of the USSR, by the time the film began, he had already died. The “distance” is stored at the factory, which is guarded by a certain “guard”, also related to the Russian millionaire. Everything turns out to be tied in a bizarre tangle, with the inherent physicality of the crime detective genre.
The harshness of the landscape is emphasized by the uncomfortable voiceover of the characters, by which you can always distinguish the Soviet recording school. In dwarfs - "brothers" from the 90s - somehow unexpectedly appear features of Sergei Bodrov Jr., Viktor Sukhorukov, and in the Russian millionaire - Stanislav Govorukhin in the role of Krymov from "ASSA". But there are also Japanese-speaking kegs, German-speaking Austrian-allegories on coveted belonging to the developed world. In the course of the search for comparisons, meanings, the name of the film “Distance” pops up with an alarming bell. And at this point, the word penetrates into all the hastily selected answers: the “distance” between Russia and Europe, the “distance” between Russian society and the government, the “distance” within Russian society, the “distance” between political images and their actual embodiment.
The fact that political cinema goes into the field of fantastic is inherent in Russian political reality, and the fact that it goes beyond Russia is peculiar to the local film process. And that makes it sad, but not hurtful. It hurts that such logic is inherent in the Catalan director, for whom filming about Russia is a means of artistic expression, and not the real agenda on which human lives depend.
6 out of 10