I don’t know why, but immediately after watching, I suddenly wanted to write a review on this different, difficult, unusual and very poetic and thoughtful film. I will not retell the content, only my impressions.
The picture and atmosphere seem to be created, but there is no filling. There's emptiness everywhere. I don’t know, maybe that’s the idea.
The real people are displaced, hollow and soulless shells, inside the invented unfinished world, the same as the unfinished house around which the plot revolves.
The tape consists of interconnected novels, which should be combined into a single image of the perception of the world.
But the integrity just did not catch, everything is damp, confused, unfinished.
Life here alternates with global problems. Either there was not enough time to express everything completely and thoroughly, or the director's freedom of thought.
The unfinished palace is a symbol of the collapse of hopes - they wanted, lived, waited, built their future, and received an artificial identical reality where there is no place for creativity and development.
It turns out a post-apocalyptic universe in which the spiritual component is almost completely replaced. A film about changing values. The real and living world is replaced by the fake under the electric clouds. This suggests that a huge gap has grown between the old and the new generations.
This movie is like a premonition, the expectation of something greater, grandiose, which is about to come.
Of course, real art is obliged to pose and leave questions, but it is also responsible to suggest ways out of the positions, at least with hints that everyone can understand in his own way. Alexei Herman Jr. does not give us ways or hints, probably because he himself does not know how to be.
A huge, unfinished, futuristic building on the edge of the city unites the fates of different people, so different from each other, from different social strata, habitats and even time. The actions, thoughts and actions of a principled museum worker of the 90s echo the life tragedy of a teenager who lost his family in the war of the mid-10s. A guest worker who does not know a word in Russian, who came to an abandoned construction site, feels the same loneliness as a misunderstood architect or the heiress of a rich businessman who has fallen into a difficult situation. Destinies and lives are woven together, and over all this, heavy, gray, lead clouds hang glowing with the taste of waiting for a new big war.
“Under Electric Clouds” is a very rich, visually and plot-wise movie. The unfinished building on the edge of the city symbolizes nothing more than Mother Russia: a grandiose, but, in general, ridiculous structure that unites and destroys the fates, plans and dreams of all who touch it. This is a film about those who do not believe in the monolithic and steadfastness of this building, whose faces are shattered by resentment and anger at the mere sight of its crumbling partitions, broken glass and absurd gigantomania of an architect misunderstood by anyone. This is a film about restless souls, about intellectuals with principles, but without a penny in their pockets, about those who do not want war and world domination, about the fact that ideally man is a brother to man, not a wolf, but that happiness cannot be bought, and freedom is not sold. Epochs and heroes are brought together in the finest way, both by purely plot intersections and incredibly stylish visual solutions: a gray-blue range of colors, a camera that is “embarrassed” of its presence in people’s lives, a heavy sky overhead. It's not depression yet, but it's longing.
On the other hand, this picture by Alexei Herman Jr. was a good example for me of how strange, non-obvious directorial decisions can seriously affect the emotional perception of a film that could be a masterpiece for me. First of all, this is, of course, Herman’s attempt to squeeze something out of non-professional actors who play many main (!!) roles in this tape. I understand the logic of this action: ordinary people play ordinary people, thereby making the film more intimate and filling it with shades of secrecy. However, the actors play lousy, and this can not help but "scratch" perception. One way or another, the least I liked were those novels in which the key roles are played by the debutants of a big movie: a story about two architects and a novel about an heiress. On the other hand, professional actors squeezed everything possible out of their pieces: Chulpan Khamatova, who did not say a word, brilliantly portrayed a downtrodden, but not broken by life, teenager, and the charismatic, self-confident Merab Ninidze perfectly coped with the role of a stubborn creator with a crystal honest soul and empty pockets. I also did not like Herman’s excessive flirtation with art house techniques. Damn it, you’re making a film about people and for people: why are these endlessly long, obsessively empty plans, why is it going around the bush, flashbacks and other tricks, due to which Herman tried to convey the complexity, contradiction and even some fatality of life in modern Russia. I am not saying that this should not have happened at all, I am only saying that, in my opinion, at some point Herman’s sense of proportion changed.
The inconsistency of the painting “Under Electric Clouds” is felt not only within itself: in every frame, in every new word and action of the characters, but also in its external context. This is a film that could become a huge event in the world of domestic cinema, along with the more mainstream “Leviathan” and “Fool”, but was deliberately lowered by the creators to the level of claims of a narrow art-house “party”, and watching all the novelties of film critics. In this niche, the film earned respect, recognition and even love, but it remained not just not understood, but generally ignored by some more or less significant circle of film lovers. Of course, this is a conscious choice of the director: but, damn it, when are already smart, have something to say creators will begin to emerge from the cinematic “underground”?
“Under Electric Clouds” is a good, very deep and stylish film that could have been even better without the director’s dubious, in my opinion, staging decisions, and if Herman had any interest in his creation being appreciated not only by a handful of moviegoers who follow the cultural life of the country. However, it is certainly one of the best domestic films of 2015 release.
"Under Electric Clouds" A. Herman is a tissue that dissolves and dissolves. Like the finest gas of undefined color, the film lacks density, gravity, certainty. He calls to experience the weightlessness of falling into the cloud fog of “pure art”, which does not know how to instruct, guide, push. But in it you can fly, tremble, moan with questions: who are we? where are we? who have we become? where are we going? or came? The risk of complex internal changes and the pain of the answers that Herman prompts will most likely alienate weak souls, but will please those who like difficult, traumatic, thought-provoking and heart-wasting (rather than watching and spending money on popcorn) movies. Who is able to see hope in the apocalypse, in postmodernism – Chekhov’s nerve, in a desert landscape – the light of poetry, in a gray fog – the sky in diamonds, in the frame of an unfinished building – the common house of the future.
Each of the main characters of the seven “cloud” novels suffers from a beautiful intellectual split: a manic thirst for truth, ideal, miracle and uncertainty in them, in themselves, in their dreams. Hence the split atmosphere of the film: constant transitions from mild absurdity to a heavy sleep outside time and place. In the characters quietly sounds dull decadent music. With a flash of nostalgia for a life that didn't exist. With the old creed: “Someday we must build our new bright life.” "Once upon a time" is the main word.
Russian Futuristic Post-Apocalypse. The world is on the brink of war. Against the background is a difficult transition for Russian civilization from an industrial society to a post-industrial one. The country is full of beggars, drug addicts and unemployed. Artists create unnecessary objects of modern art. Educated people are losing hope of finding themselves in the modern world. The past has ceased to be necessary, has become a dump. She was chosen by people who were searching. Someone is looking for a friend, and someone is the meaning of the existence of the world.
The film has six storylines, united by the construction of a skyscraper. Each line is a story about how this building affected the lives of completely different, unrelated people. By the end of the film, some lines cross. One complete story, in my opinion, does not work, and this is one of the main problems of the film. It seems that the director built too much into this film. There are incomprehensible scenes out of the context of the film. For example, the scene with the worker and the murderer seems to me rather meaningless and out of touch with the story itself.
The artistic design of the film is one of its main advantages (although by the end of the film it does not make such a strong impression as in the first part). The film takes place mainly in two spaces: in the city and in the wasteland. Not much can be said about the city, in places it looks quite futuristic, but often it is quite unremarkable landscapes. The wasteland is a post-apocalypse: destroyed buildings, old monuments that no one needs. For the wasteland are held by the so-called “extra people”, among whom there are both intellectuals and simply homeless. Most intellectual artists find refuge there from the new dead world, where only indifference and hypocrisy live. The wasteland itself resembles a landfill, on which everything reminiscent of the terrible past of the country was thrown (for example, a monument to Lenin, near which the architect’s daughter spends a lot of time).
The performance in this film is also commendable. Landscapes are shot non-standard and interesting, using general and medium plans (apparently to relate the main characters to the surrounding dead world).
It is difficult to say something about the acting, it seems to me, little catches the eye. I can single out the heroine Chulpan Khamatova - this character in the film is revealed much more than all the others. In general, with the disclosure of the characters here everything is quite difficult, even the names of most of them the viewer does not recognize.
If we sum up, then we can say with confidence that from the visual side the film is beautiful – good camera work and unusual stylization give a beautiful and lively picture that immerses those who wish in the gloomy and hopeless world of the film. Drama is weaker. A. Herman Jr. failed to combine all the stories of the characters into a single integral film, although all this does not negate its content and relevance.
The film itself hints at the fact that there are directors in Russia who are able to express interesting and difficult thoughts in a curious form. I think that Herman Jr. is waiting for many more works, equally loud and unusual for Russian cinema.
7 out of 10
The painting by Alexei German Jr. “Under Electric Clouds” continues the traditions of Russian literature and illuminates the existence of “extra” people, so relevant in our time, “after all, the world rests on them.” But I want to talk decisively not about this, nothing significantly new here to say, alas, failed, and is it necessary? This is not a self-sufficient statement, but rather a reminder of what has already been voiced more than once, a kind of reference.
Much more interesting is the philosophical layer of the picture, stunning the imagination with its problems and the scale of abstraction, which is under the sight of the author’s view. Joseph Brodsky wrote that great artists always dissect space or time. And while Kafka, with his sharpened pen, cold-bloodedly opens the surface of a confined space, Marcel Proust wanders in the pages of seven novels in search of lost time. For Joseph Alexandrovich himself, time was embodied in a liquid substance: “I have always been of the opinion that God, or at least His spirit, is time ... I have always believed that since the Spirit of God hovered over water, water must reflect it.” Hence my weakness for water, for its folds, wrinkles, ripples.” Alexei Herman Jr. takes another step forward: he synergizes time and space and studies them as antipodes in one team.
The true anthropological tragedy is the existence of a “temporary” man in an indifferent, “timeless” space to human passions. All of our past is written in a dull pencil in our memory: memories are destroyed in sync with brain cells; the objective cannot be separated from its interpretation; fantasy fills a meaningless form, imitating truth and thus forming a delusion, and the subjectivity of perception rewrites our own history. In the same plane lives our future, which is essentially our past, because the rosy ideas about it have long coexisted in our dreams with childhood memories. Beautiful far away is a long-awaited guest who never knocks on your door, does not enter the apartment, does not sit down at the table and does not drink tea made by you from your own cup. And you set her on the table every day. The true future is the present, extremely close, therefore terribly loud; violating your personal space, causing inevitable irritation, trumpeting your exhausted eye with its obvious flaws. What is the real thing? The point of transformation of the future into the past is so minimal that one involuntarily recalls Vvedensky’s statement: “The flicker will begin.” The mouse will start to twinkle. Look around: the world flickers (like a mouse). The mouse pulsates, but at such a high speed that the eye does not register this pulsation and can only capture a continuous series of periods of time of absence of the mouse in space. Our eye is like a camera lens or a ray of light snatching a certain space out of the darkness at a specific time interval. But this perfect device captures not only what is present in it (sofa, wall, painting, carpet on the floor), but also what is missing (the late mother on the couch, the beloved dog on the carpet), causing certain feelings that have no obvious reasons for us. So with the present moment: we do not have time to overtake and fix it, do not see, but acutely feel. The effect of the 25th frame of questionable content. All you have left is a feeling of anxiety.
Each hero of the picture independently struggles with the anxiety of the present moment, and with the phantom pains of the past, which was a dazzling future. And all this against the background of a completely impartial space, which by its immense size absorbs time through pressure on the person-carrier of this time. It's useless to resist. Any cry of silence drowns in outstanding spaces.
The visual component is post-apocalyptic, although the apocalypse in the plot is only coming - a world on the brink of war. But it looks like a deception, a false move. The war is over and we see its consequences. Human culture has lost the elements of nature forever. This is especially striking in the image of a kind of abandoned open-air museum. Both the monument to Lenin and the parodies of ancient sculptures are blown by all the winds and washed by all the rains. The man who, not out of a good life, has gone into a cave and then slowly but surely has all human history taken refuge behind walls in a furious attempt to separate himself from nature, is no longer willing or able to erect covered structures for the artifacts he has created. He can't even build a new bomb shelter for his own body - the developer dies, the project stops. The prodigal son, thirsting for self-assertion in complete autonomy, but who has failed, returns to his mother’s home, but both he and his mother are completely different people. The futurism of Hermann the Younger is equal to the devil, for, like the latter, it is contained in details. Light hatching here works much more efficiently juicy strokes, with which other artists from cinema paint us further prospects.
“Under Electric Clouds” is a meditation film. Unhurried, gradual, but thorough. Film-declaration, but without passion in voice. The film is dizzy with the beauty of the destruction of landscapes.
Seven years of silence by one of the most talented directors of our time ended with the release of an extremely difficult film. Over the years, Herman Jr. not only significantly enriched his artistic tools, but also became a more mature person, his view of the world became more complex. Growing up in the family of the great director, he absorbed from childhood a unique perception of his father’s historical past, however, despite his close connection with the cinema of Hermann Sr., the author of “Under Electric Clouds” always created a self-valued artistic world.
For the first time watching a picture of Herman Jr. in a cinema, I felt the long-forgotten hypnotic power of the screen, its length, height, depth, saw a rich frame, in a word, a movie that seeks to become picturesque, leaving the limits of narrative. Representing an almanac of seven novels, only conditionally united in the finale, this film, oddly enough, is a complete whole, a clear, albeit complex statement not only about the social realities of our time and their projections into the future, but also about the metaphysical catastrophe of tomorrow.
This picture is apocalyptic. By capturing human anticipation of the end times, it glorifies personal resistance to disintegration, intuitively seeking catholic wholeness. Those who claim that the film is dull are wrong, for there is no whining, self-pity in it, just as there is no black, angry Karamazov despair, murmur at God (remember Leviathan). There is honesty, sincere pain for time mutilated by human cruelty and greed, but there is no despondency, no despair.
When one of the heroes utters a heartfelt monologue about his desire to disappear from the world, about the stereotyping of the material, material life of entire generations, he wants to shout from the hall that there is a way out, that spiritual hunger can be satisfied in Christ and His Church, because so humanly understand the pain of a seeker, restless person who seeks meaning. Everyone who came to the church at a conscious age experienced the same. “Under the Electric Clouds” is a film about the torn time, about the unraveling of the past, present and future, existing separately and no longer forming a single whole.
I take the audacity to say that this is a film about the Church, about the desire to enter into Her and find a logical existence. The world is disintegrating because, being temporary, changeable, dynamic, rejecting God, it is not able to establish itself in anything else. For everything but Christ is changeable. The Church is one, precisely because its members are parts of the body, and everyone who is faithful to God remains unchanged, for God is always the same. The tragedy of the world is that it tries to realize itself outside of Catholic unity, outside of Christ, and therefore breaks down into smaller and smaller parts. What is a breakup? It's atomization, grinding. The Church remains unchanging in the midst of all the storms of the world, because she is one with God.
“Under Electric Clouds” like no other film by Herman Jr. demonstrates the thematic affinity of the director to the cinema of his father, and at the same time strong style differences with him. For Herman Sr., the main theme has always been the historical past that dominates the personality: the inexhaustible nightmares and unrepentant sins of entire generations, like ghosts, haunted in his films unfortunate heroes, and a detailed scrupulous reconstruction of the times was for the director a kind of way to remove the spell that the past imposed on the lives of today’s people.
The cinema of Herman Sr. is subjectocentric, a multi-level narrative is always built around the figures of the heroes: in My Friend Ivan Lapshin - inside the Lapshin-Khanin-Natasha triangle, in Twenty Days Without War - around the Lopatin-Nin pair, in the "Road Check" the nerve of narrative tension is stretched between Lokotkov and Lazarev, in the "Seventh Satellite" the narrative center becomes General Adamov.
The position of Herman Jr. is fundamentally different, his cinematic world is programmatically decentralized. Each film is a pluralistic space in which all the characters are equal. Having a creative dialogue with his father, he learned the main thing - the importance of the smallest detail, the smallest character for creating a common idea, because in his last picture the structure of the novel is recreated. In a sense, the film “Under Electric Clouds” is consonant with the paintings of Robert Altman, but not in content, because there is no satire in it, but in form, because we have a complex puzzle in which everything is equally important, but there is no narrative center.
Filming about the Silver Age, the Great Patriotic Age, the Soviet 60s, Herman Jr. always strives for a special type of story, which can be conditionally called pictographic: developing the artistic achievements of T. Angelopoulos and B. Tarr, he tries to express time by spatial means, within the complex mise-en-scene to combine the past, present and future. The cinematography of Herman Jr. is an innovative phenomenon precisely because, having minimized the editing, he creatively reworks the lessons of such outstanding films as I. Bergman’s “Transmith Polyana”, K. Saura’s “Cousin Angelica”, “Frecken Julie” A. Sheberg, using a technique more popular in the theater, starting with “The Death of a Salesman” by A. Miller – to represent the time layers in a single stage space.
Herman Jr. is an apocalyptic artist, for him the present is timelessness, it is the past in anticipation of the future. Here it is worth mentioning another fundamental difference between the German-directors is the different understanding of death, although for both it is closely related to time.
In Herman the Younger, time is deadly in itself, as a category of the fallen created world, as a disastrous result of the fall of the first people. The clarity of historical memory, which with a special force, unprecedented for the director, appears in "Under Electric Clouds" - the fruits of the work of time. According to Herman Jr., time is man’s greatest enemy, for it attempts to hypnotize us with the prospect of future death. The author of “Hard to be God” death is sudden, it is preceded by a wild carnival, the dance of the living dead, but a person always dies unexpectedly, unable to withstand their onslaught. Herman Jr. is more interested in dying as a duration, as the constraint of human existence by the category of temporality.
Herman Jr. shows the flow of time in the godless world as nonlinear, meaningless, illogical. The churched person, as on the ark, inexorably moves to eternity, the flow of time for him is linear, meaningful, with each day - closer to Christ.
At the beginning of the film “Under Electric Clouds” it is said that Russia is crucified between the past and the future, that is, the present represents for her and all of us a crucifix. The temporal conditions of existence, the temporal nature of being – this is our common cross, not only of Russia, but of the whole world, we are constantly forced to experience the deadly breath of time, painfully experiencing life as everyday dying.
“Under the Electric Clouds” is a film about a personal existential need in the Church, about the urgent need for man to be part of an organic, non-repressive whole, about the desire for unity in God on the basis of free will, about the desire to overcome the disintegration of a senseless and godless world.
“Line and modelling do not exist. A drawing is a ratio of contrasts or simply a ratio of two tones, black and white. In the words of the French painter Paul Cezanne, Russian film director Alexei German Jr. opens his film. The quote serves as an epigraph to the film of the director, who thereby emphasizes his desire for impressionism and claims reasonableness and meaning through the art-house genre. In this narrow direction, the director has a peculiar worldview, which is more inclined to a depressed and minor character than to the manifestation of art and its grace. The director depicts people from different generations, from the 90s to the near future, from a guest worker to an architect. The life lines of the main characters are not interconnected – a kind of free interpretation of the “Cloud Atlas”, but unlike the picture of Tykver and Vachovsky, Alexei German does not symbolically unite the past, present and future, but tells about each of them separately, telling about ordinary people, or as they are called in classical Russian literature “extra people”, who are not remarkable, but nevertheless they make an important contribution to creating the future.
Speaking about ordinary people, the director initially contradicts himself, because he calls them philosophers and thinkers of the time in which they are; as if the best minds of the era gathered in one place, since almost any character can boast of this endowed with “deep” quality. Behind a complicated veil, the director is desperately trying to find and uncover something important and significant, even where it does not exist and cannot be. It is likely that Hermann Jr. adheres to the judgment of the superman, an image introduced by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, to denote a creature that in its power surpasses modern man as much as the latter surpassed the ape. This is clearly revealed in almost every segment of the picture and is presented so pathetically that everything that is happening seems unnatural and false.
Winter landscapes and flashing lights of the far city together with lonely people and monuments give the picture aesthetic and subtle features, creating a gloomy and at the same time expressive atmosphere. Operators best capture the most remarkable and exquisite views. In the artistic context, the tape manifests itself perfectly, but only with picturesque sophistication can not achieve success, and Alexei Herman has nothing more to prove himself, except that only with the misfortune and grief of people, which is fully reflected in the picture, whether it is death, crisis, chaos or sorrow. It seems that there was never any radiance and iridescence, there were only beautiful views and wasted words. The hromadas of architecture shown in the picture illustrate the ideas of Nietzschean superiority, but lead to their inevitable collapse: the same monument in the eternal fog or an unfinished skyscraper, while the people in the picture, endowed with the imaginary seal of their greatness and significance, are only dissolved in this architectural monolith. They disappear and get lost in this hopeless atmosphere.
Attempts to search for the meaning of life turn into futility, veiled behind the excesses of everyday life. This is not a relationship of two tones, black and white. It's only black. It is obvious that Alexei German revels in doom, hopelessness and sadness, the good does not whip vodka, unlike his compatriot Andrei Zvyagintsev, but borrows from that sorrow and hardship sometimes without any good reason. In this regard, the director develops some abstract thinking, and he naively believes that this situation leads to the inevitable identification of depth and meaning. But it's just an illusion, a self-deception. At least the same Zvyagintsev showed perseverance and temperament, and Herman Jr. just gives up, preferring abstruse dialogues thrown into the void. They are artificial and carry nothing but pretentiousness for the sake of pretentiousness. A sign of formalism: chic on the outside but empty on the inside. This is not the case when two look into a puddle, one sees only mud and the other stars reflected in it. Here the director looks into the wasteland and sees in it something more than the usual fuss, thus making the viewer close his eyes and admire, as if convincingly whispering to him: Shh, this is an art house - art.
In 2008, I went to the store and bought a can of canned food. The label on the bank read: 'Sardina'. Returning home, I armed myself with a tin key and opened the can. Instead of the promised sardine, seaweed floated in the jar. My confusion was shared by all of Europe. What do I mean by that?
That’s if I was one such sloppy who likes to read before watching a film and review, and the description, and think many times whether the picture is worth the time spent. But I'm not alone. Well, they told me, and my brothers in mind, they say, a film about the unrecognized intelligentsia, about ' superfluous people', about the struggle. Not just from third-hand, but from the beginning of the film. What did I see in the painting? Nothing.
We have 7 stories that are connected by one unfinished building. Now I am writing this text and I understand that there is no desire to return to the plot and try to analyze it from the point of view of common sense. No, I'm not saying there's no idea in the movie. It's there. But hell, besides the idea itself, there is a realization. The view of each individual person on the surrounding reality is completely different. And for this we appreciate all the beautiful and amazing that gives us cinema / literature / fine art. For the opportunity to look at the world from the eyes of another person, to experience those emotions that we have not yet experienced when looking at familiar things. But this is not the case at all. It seems that you are wandering blindfolded through the foul-smelling slums, and Alexei German Jr. whispers to you in your right ear: 'Look how beautiful everything is! This is what I invented '.
On the question of ' superfluous people'. Being a little familiar with Russian classical literature, after watching the film, I was not lazy to open Wikipedia, in order to make sure that I correctly understand the very concept '. And once again I was convinced that the director, apparently, very much liked this phrase. The main thing is that it sounds beautiful and a bit decadent. With the stylistic orientation of the picture coincides, and the demon with him. Who's Chatsky? Who's Onegin? Who's Pechorin? The viewer is not meant to understand this. But in my opinion, Herman should have turned to Gorky. ' Former people' is also a good expression, its coverage will be wider, and it is suitable for this creation as well. It was the former people I saw here. They just don’t care what’s going on around them. They're indifferent. There's no struggle here. Around the unfinished house, which, probably in the director’s view, is Russia, the stories of completely amorphous people develop. Humans, that's right, I visually identified belonging to a biological species, there is nothing human in them. They just exist. More than two hours of screen time. And we're invited to watch it. And only in the seventh final part 'Mistress' which, by the way, is shorter than the rest, we see at least something remotely similar to that description of the film, which is full of all printed and non-print editions. Is it worth the time spent? It's your decision.
I can honestly and frankly say that I failed. I am very much looking forward to the films of some Russian directors, whose names give me at least some hope for the future of Russian cinema in general. And that makes it even more painful. If ' Paper Soldier' was quite a worthy film in which Herman really well managed to show the tragedy of an individual against the backdrop of the triumph of the nation, then ' Under the electric clouds' is a complete failure. The visual series is good, but it does not save the lack of the necessary message for this kind of cinema. Lots of claims, but that's it. No questions asked or answers received.
But if you suddenly decide to go into a new life, then do not forget to take the Light and the horse with you.
4 out of 10
For me, the film is good for its rich atmosphere, which attracts and absorbs. I think it’s a metaphysical realism where people try to break out of the mental gloom that they put on them. At the beginning of the film, a voice-over speaks about “extra” people who are in all eras and times, and the whole film, in fact, about how these “extra” do not fit into the general mass.
If earlier in Russian literature there were renegade heroes, now there are no heroes in it, and in Herman’s film they are also only characters.
Looking at their detached faces, you understand that they are weak, confused, but still from the last forces do not want to put up with the “soul” reality. It seemed to me that each of them has a key phrase that accurately reveals their inner experiences:
Heir of the state: “I will build a shelter, I do not know for whom, for someone unhappy”
Museum employee: "I don't know where north is, I only know where south is"
Architect: "I'm an architect, very fashionable, but meaningless"
Girl of Light: “People are so crazy, I’m looking for a new life.”
No wonder they end up in one place. How people looking for light in the dark end up approaching the fire.
Under Electric Clouds is a prayer film about humanity. All these people seem to want salvation, and they lack the Moses who will lead them to liberation, so they try to seek it within themselves, but they do it instinctively rather than consciously. But watching them, you begin to see in them and around them some other reality, a glimpse of something else.
And in this — the whole value of their existence, I think — in the glimmer of hope in the lost faces.
The film has a lot similar to the “Melody for the Sharman” by Kira Muratova. In the film, Herman sees the same leitmotif – homelessness of people, shown through ridiculous, somewhere tragic, somewhere absurd, situations. In Herman, absurdity is conveyed mainly through dialogue. But here and there, the background characters least resemble real people, they are rather puppets, against which the main characters seem a little more alive. After the second viewing, there was a feeling that watching “Under Electric Clouds” is falling inside yourself, like in a rabbit hole.
Great movie.
Is it possible, by means of a thing, sensation, or zeal, to suddenly acquire a face without it from birth, or a lead-drenched indifference, by voluntarily joining the frivolous carnival of mechanical souls? Doubtful. With the acquisition of the face, even for a moment, a burning lump of intolerable, all-embracing emptiness comes to the throat. And why? After all, there are only troubles with the true face: stupid reflections, unnecessary concern, useless clashes with superfluous people, burps of the past and relying on an unreliable future, pathetic (clearly: Russians rarely do otherwise) languishing in tortured reflections.
Among other things, recorded personally, Hermann Jr. meditatively analyzes the devastation in the closets, organized by the destruction of the head. In the days before the “attempts of revival” nothing fundamentally better happened. The consumer society only felt freedom in speech and action, for, for example, in the era of the brain syphilitic leaders, a timid person became himself only at home in the kitchen, while in the chronicles he meekly dissected under banners, caressing with admiring glances portraits of the guru of his country. The same generation, raised in the period of “visibility of moral appearance”, with great zeal destroyed the country in the 90s, dealing with the denouement of local conflicts, stratifying society from the inside. The form has changed, the content is at the same level. There remains a belief in miracles, unshakable from the outside, flashing a bright light at the end of the tunnel, through which it is still long to move, before making sure that the light bulb burned out from the climax of tension.
The author’s vision of most Russian existentialist directors is based on form rather than content. The inevitability of negativity from the average onlooker increases significantly. Who would think for you if not you? Tragically-metaphorical and gloomy-odious look through the dim glass distorted by anomalous conditions of topicality. Ambitious dances on the bones of its essence, reinforced by the shock of Russian civilization, epochal breakdown and imaginary future changes, the anticipation of which magnetically involves in the atmosphere of oppressive greatness.
The fragile chain of the foggy future, each link of which is not humiliated, insulted or inconsiderate, it is a flock, lost in another dimension, wandering in the pre-sunset haze of a new life, caught in the wrong world, in the wrong society, in the wrong life. Smoldering every time, resisting "today," surviving again, touching "yesterday." Their open wounds with a drop of pus are squeezed out of prosaic routine. Someone shows a superficial sensitivity to his neighbor, someone with bohemian ease nurtures infantile dreams of fantastic freedom, someone changes her skeletal priorities, someone begs a colleague for money for a new device, at the same time annoying with unfair lack of demand. They are united by one thing - the search for a cozy world, a new life, towards which everyone solitarily seeds through the thick haze of frustration anachrenchry.
First of all, I want to say that watching this film caused me much more aesthetic pleasure than emotional. The film is cold, as well as almost non-stop snow in it, but hypnotic, like a fog in which, like the plot of the picture, a barely distinguishable house hides - the cornerstone of almost all chapters of the story.
This film-mosaic, immersion in which is achieved thanks to the amazing work of the entire camera group (absolutely deserved "Silver Bear" of the Berlin Film Festival), the art department and the fascinating directorial skill of mise-staging. Plus the incredible Merab Ninidze and the most interesting Victoria Korotkov. I want to see them again and again.
Further instructive quote by Herman: "This picture is made in spite of". Including, contrary to the format in which we have cinema, it is not so important, author or commercial. We wanted to make an impressionist film. When the Impressionists were reproached that their hand did not resemble their hand, they did not understand that it was not the resemblance that mattered, but the feeling of this hand, whether it was transmitted or not. We wanted to talk about how life breaks through the ice. It was important to shoot about people who do not walk in formation. No formation. We have a lot of them now: a large column, a small column, a fifth, sixth, tenth column. And we filmed about people who live their own heads and organically choose not bad from the actions of bad and not bad. Not because they're heroes. That's just how it works. Such people are always a little superfluous – for all sides.
For a long time, Russian critics pinned serious hopes on Alexei German Jr., considering him worthy of representing Russian cinema on European screens. Since the last full-length experience of the director, however, it has been seven years. This is due to a creative crisis or the search for investors willing to invest in a deliberately unprofitable enterprise, it is difficult to say. However, in February 2015, the long-term "Under Electric Clouds" gets into the main competition at the Berlin Film Festival and receives the Silver Bear "for outstanding artistic achievements." Is it time to talk about a triumphant return?
It is reasonable to start the discussion about the film with a voiceover text explaining the mood and set of characters chosen by Herman as a support for such a shaky cinematic design. At all times there were and there are people who were once called “superfluous people”. They are often disliked, united on one or another basis, but somehow it is so arranged that nothing happens in the world without these “extra people”. Without them there can be no picture of the world, country and time.” There is no illusion about the director’s ability to fill the narrative vacuum with the true heroes of our time. Herman describes the circle of the elect as an “incredibly fashionable but meaningless” architect, an ambitious tour guide in a hussar costume, a phlegmatic young heir to the billionaire empire and other even less noticeable figures. Herman’s fixation on hypochondriacs is obviously a symptom of his personal history of a painful relationship with the world. Characters are only endless variations of self-portrait, behind which it is difficult to see the contours of a mature personality. The author guides the viewer by the hand through loosely bound chapters in an attempt to evoke sympathy and sympathy for the reflective intelligentsia. “They are so different, so interesting and special,” the director gently but persistently broadcasts, wandering the eye of the film lens through flashing masks, behind which there is no hint of individuality. Casual moviegoers, unlike Russian-speaking professional critics, do not need to hide awkwardness behind a forced smile, stumbling from stage to stage on flat, inexpressive and, worst of all, indistinguishable characters. Skeptics, whose opinion is not conditioned by the fact of personal acquaintance with the director, are ready to put a disappointing diagnosis: “Under the electric clouds” is nothing more than an exalted empty space.
The technical findings only mask the thematic inconsistency of the film and the inability of the author of the project to give a piece of the depth to which, for example, outstanding writers of the XIX century were capable. Nevertheless, the carefully worked out visual range deserves praise: it is thanks to the combination of autumn images of the “soviet” Russia with acid paints creates the effect of a painfully hopeless future. A shamefully stupid script, on the contrary, is too literal and straightforward, it does not fill the screen universe with life. Hermann Sr., in his last two works, acted as the architect of eccentric, gloomy and frighteningly detailed worlds. The son follows his father in a pale shadow, but he lacks the talent to get out of the influence of the unshakable authorities of Soviet cinema, while maintaining a steady interest in himself from the festival audience. Manipulating the aesthetics of mild insanity is a sign of zero effectiveness of the protracted search for new artistic techniques. Under the electric clouds there is no room for original finds, but here it is easy to stumble upon an ingenious attempt to copy the odd harmony of random phrases from the legacy of Kira Georgievna and Alexei Yurievich, or the atmosphere inherent in the parables of Andrei Arsenyevich. The figure of Alexei Alekseevich Herman begins to lose its outlines, slowly turning into the shaky ghost of a tired movie shaman who performs his rites more by inertia than from a sense of inner insurmountable need. The director harasses himself with senseless and strained frankness, despairing of trying to impress. The poetic tear does not hide the obvious: it is important not only the idea, it would be nice to have a unique view of reality and the ability to express thoughts through the language of cinema.
Russia of the near future, which has experienced the process of globalization and is stuck in the era of postmodernism; advertising is displayed in the sky, specially covered with clouds; in the yard, it seems to be late autumn all year round; young people spend time reconstructing elven battles from fantasy, read the books of a philosopher who claims that under Stalin it was more good than bad, and Hitler was not such a monster, and believes that he can “build a new world instead of the old, you only need to get rid of everything from the ballast”; the country in another big hair.
Against the background of an alarming uncertainty of society, we are shown the outskirts of a metropolis on the seafront, in the center of the plot – an unfinished house and everyone who is somehow connected with it. In the opening remark it is reported that the film will be about people who are no better or worse than others, but without whom nothing ever happens.
The film consists of seven chapters, each of which tells about a specific person (or people) involved in the general adventure of building a house that turned out to be useless to anyone: an abandoned guest worker who does not know the Russian language; the children of a rich man, pulled out of a careless life and faced with Shakespeare’s cruel world; a lawyer, tormented by memories of a friend of his youth; a demigodny art critic; an architect who lost an ambitious project and is tormented by the sense of meaninglessness of life; and again the children of a rich father, in an untimely hour of the deceased, who treat their inheritance, better say, differently. And only this very father in the film is not shown: it is repeatedly said that he was “almost God”, that’s why the image of God is bypassed in silence in the film, as is customary in world culture. This film simply highlights a certain period of people’s lives, shows their fears and doubts, their struggles, their, after all, ordinary existence. At the same time, it makes a slice of modern Russian society. The author sends us to the period of the collapse of the USSR, then to the very recent past and shows that in fact, by 2017 nothing has changed in social terms.
If you pick up the author’s remark about “superfluous people”, then you should ask yourself: who, in fact, Herman Jr. calls such? Any Soviet and Russian person from school knows about Onegin, Pechorin, Chatsky, Oblomov, Bazarov, and finally Stavrogin – they are an encyclopedic example of “extra people”. School teachers usually cling to the word “superfluous”, with savor talk about why the heroes are called so, and in the end say that they were all born as if not in their time, society is simply not ready to accept them. But for the author of the film, the tragedy lies precisely in the fact that superfluous people would not have been saved if they had been born a century later or earlier, at any time they would not have been understood by contemporaries and it would turn out, as here: “Everyone laughs at you.” The context of this remark seems to hold the key to Herman Jr.’s understanding of the superfluous: it is “the inner impossibility of living differently.” And by this criterion, not all the characters of the film are “extra”.
The plot of the picture is simple, linear, diluted with a few flashbacks. The action is usually leisurely, the manner of shooting is also, everything that happens is presented as impartially as possible, as if just for reflection. Music in the film is minimal, just to emphasize the flavor of Russian reality and give the actions and words of the characters a drop of nostalgic brooding. The impact on the viewer is achieved mainly due to a unique visual range: matte, slightly clouded with beautifully spread over the screen colors, of which there are many. And, it is worth noting, such a visual series is quite consistent with the plot, paints it, on the one hand, in a light shade of retro, and on the other hand, does not let you forget that the action takes place in the near, but future.
All actors play well, cope with their roles, reveal the characters and show where necessary, the whole range of feelings. In one of the interviews about the film, A. Herman Jr. said that it was very important for him to choose the appropriate caste, find interesting faces. Well, he did it. New for the Russian viewer Luis Frank with an expressive spot on the face and playing a man Chulpan Khamatova - at a height. I would also like to note Karim Pakachakova: almost without words, with one facial expression, he touchingly portrayed a disoriented, and later found hopeful immigrant.
“Under Electric Clouds” will be of interest to all fans of Russian classical literature, there are many arguments about Russian history, about a Russian man “crucified between an equal past and future”, there are few actions, and the plot, characters and ideas are revealed through the dialogues of the characters. It is such a movie can rightfully be called Art, and it is with a capital letter!
10 out of 10
“Beauty is among the fleeing. There are no first ones, and there are no laggards, running on the spot is conciliatory! ?
The light wind subsides,
It's a gray evening.
The crow sank on the pine,
Touched the sleeping string.
(Alexander Block)
The near future on the eve of the centenary of the October Revolution with the inseparable prophetic retro voices of Gorbachev and Shevchuk. A ghostly territory with anemic inhabitants, deafly resonating with their literary brethren and "neighbors." Germanale with the “Silver Bear” to operators Yevgeny Privin and Sergey Mikhalchuk. The polyphony of the contents of “Under Electric Clouds” continues to spew storms after leaving the screen, and the echo of distant bad weather does not let go for a long time.
A resident of the year 2017, depicted by Anastasia Fomina, a noble gesture of Mrs. Ranevskaya instead of a gold coin, presents a casual guest worker-tramp coat, which immediately dissolves in a misty haze of pinkish-gray tones along with the happiest. In aesthetically subdued color and light, the entire video installation lasting more than two hours is organized. The common core of the seven novels will be an unfinished architectural creation, the symbolic Tower of Babel, whose skeleton, similar to the remains of a huge prehistoric animal in Zvyagintsev’s Leviathan, will intrigue and aestheticize the artistic and semantic space of the film. His heroes are full of good intentions (to save the house, the museum, the past, the present, the future, the state, man, animal) and helpless, like small children. “Extra” people, what will you take from them!
Alexei German Jr. enlightened foreigners: Russia is a country dissolved in time. It's like circles on the water. We tried to penetrate through the poetic form into the essence of where our country is going, to show the world in an impressionistic way, to capture a snowflake on the monument to Lenin. Russia is covered in the shadow of misunderstanding of itself and misunderstanding of its world. There are many good and bad things in our country. Russia is trying to find its way. Our film is about her inner crucifixion. Only poems can be fully described.
Scientists have found that some people have a genetic predisposition to a complex view of reality.
“Under Electric Clouds” is another paradox of modern Russian cinema. The most beautiful and at the same time not adapted to life cinema, exactly like the heirs of the second novel; like ridiculous monuments scattered in the middle of a cold winter space on the shores of the Gulf of Finland. Now upside down on the head of stone Lenin makes a gymnastic stand girl Sasha, and after some time another idol puts on his head Ukrainian boy Valka. Here in the frame a horse dies under the inconsolable sobs of his mistress, but very soon the latter, like a Hedgehog in the fog, cheerfully walks on a rope 280-pound metal openwork mare.
“Do you know that everyone laughs at us?”
Although publicly denying the conceptualism of “Clouds”, the search for deep meanings Herman Jr. puzzles himself and the viewer intentionally. It seems as if he is eager to hear not from the screen, but in life addressed to himself, and not to his hero museum artist Nicholas:
You're a real person!
And, humbly shaking his head, answer:
I'm normal. What am I really like?
In practice, it comes out in a cinematic way, only from another scene:
I don't want to feel like a dwarf - I'm a titan! The wallet lost... How did I shoot? That's great, isn't it? (Goes under the bulldozer.)
Undoubtedly recognizing the scale of the preparatory work and the visual contribution to the project of the artist Elena Okopna and two operators, it is incredibly difficult to recognize the substantive value of the picture, not the perfection of its shell.
Rethinking the history of his homeland, according to the established customs for its creators, asking rhetorical questions, the director sends an open confession to the world:
"No, I don't know where the north is." I just know where the south is.
Long ringing earrings heroines, an exhibition of art objects in the open air, carried in the air electricity oversaturate off-season texture, but do not satisfy spiritual hunger.
And why, after watching the current Russian cinema, are the throwing on the coordinate system, the same aftertaste-afterthought? Good or bad? Deep or superficial? Momentum or inextinguishable? You repeatedly read Beckett’s play “Waiting for Godot”, where the actors have long forgotten the details of Godot himself and lost anticipation of his visit, but are unable to move. Or they take you to the Pushkin Museum to see Cezanne’s painting “Pierrot and Harlequin”, on which the feet of a walking couple are glued to the floor with super glue. Is this such a postmodern cross, to bear which, together with Zvyagintsev, Vyrypaev, Buslov, German Jr., Khlebnikov and other contemporary artists, their viewer is doomed? But the soul stretches towards carefully thought out beauty! Gratefully animates the furrows-gyrus starving mind, but is lost by a lonely sail in a densely poetic fog ...
"Full, let's go home!" Carthage is some kind of...
So what is really the last, fourth picture of Alexei German Jr. “Under Electric Clouds”? Rus, where are you going? give me the answer. Doesn't give an answer.
Well, so to God! Evening is near,
Fast flight orcas are low,
A storm is coming,
The night looks into your eyes.
Faces erased, paints dull,
Whether it's people or dolls.
The look is like the look,
A day for a day.
I'm tired and resting.
I would like to invite you to the buffet.
Where dolls look so human. Andrey Makarevich "Marionettes"
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Under the electric clouds - stretched Country which fell to the lot of trials, crucified on the rack of time, not finding rest. Herman Jr.’s film is an attempt to tell about this country through its inhabitants, to reflect on the fate and continuity of generations, to show the essence of epochs through their individual manifestations. The sad voiceover at the beginning of the picture says that the time of action is not far away, 2017, exactly one hundred years after the Russian revolution. Symbolic year. Sign.
How/b>
The cinema is visually very beautiful. Naked, open spaces, viewed for kilometers inland; the play of neon lights in the night; the sky before sunset; the detached sea; the veil of fog before your eyes; and in everything - almost the same color scheme, a mixture of rain and snow, white and gray, and you can not see where the earth ends and the sky begins.
On the seven novels and superfluous people.
When from the first dust, thrown at first by a handful in the eye, from the expectations of some deep and wise reasoning on the topic of Russian reality and a beautiful picture, you delve into the story itself, gradually, novella after novella, history after history, a general feeling of meaninglessness, falsehood and hollow talk is pumped up. All the characters presented in the film as “superfluous people”, the intelligentsia, the soul of society, are in fact the complete opposite, and the loud promise of their “overcoming and struggle” results in a staggering there and here on snowy expanses. Struggle is at least activity, activity, mental throwing; but in no way the dull passivity and disgusting infantility of Germanic characters, especially emphasized by the fact that good actors behave in the frame like dolls, unnaturally stretching words, uttering them absolutely without emotion and, moreover, as if deliberately vague and indistinct. A common phenomenon in the film is talking to yourself, such thoughts aloud that do not relate to either the interlocutor or the situation itself. Moreover, all the main characters are distinguished by nosebleeds and spitting, which apparently also should be a hidden higher meaning or personify a special mark of exclusivity, so that it was seen with absolute clarity - this person is exactly from the "superfluous".
Each of the seven novels is practically detached from reality, each of its characters is taken not from life, but perhaps from ideas about life, similar to the idea of the sun of a person who has never left the four walls of his room. Novels flow from one time to another, jumping from the collapse of the Union to the present, then to the future and back again. Here Gorbachev's speech alternates with DDT songs and the names of American science fiction writers. "Alien speech", the story of a migrant worker, ends with an unnatural and absurd situation on the beach, where he accidentally bumps into a murderer in broad daylight."Heirs", telling about the children of a large bandit who made a fortune in the "dashing 90s", but who tried to "cleanse" just as absurd in the scene where his daughter loads a machine gun found in the house and at the same time cries."Long times of the Soviet Union, perhaps, the most blind of the Soviets.> Perhaps the only non-false episode is “Place for construction”, in which construction should begin on the territory of the natural-architectural museum, all its employees quietly and meekly surrender, and only two go against it – here at least somehow the “struggle” of a person against circumstances for their values and ideals manifests itself.
As for the rest... Where are you, Father, looking at so many gloomy faces? Where are teenagers shot in the middle of the street? Where are the drug addicts with tablets and phones? Where have you seen such a cold, calm reaction to the incredibly bloody, horrific death of a man under a tractor? You want us to believe it? So that they can see themselves in this? Come on.
Stand on the head, made in turn on the head at the monument to Lenin.
Darkness.
- It is said that one of the architects of the building set himself on fire in protest.
Double darkness.
Unfinished skyscraper and grayness.
The skyscraper, appearing in each novella in the form of just a distant silhouette, then hanging near the hromada, most likely symbolizes the country. Designed in the form of a spiral, it is not completed, it does not fit into the landscape, no one likes it, and they can not decide whether to attach a dome to it or not. Herman sees Russia as a preposterously shaky structure, emphasizing its lost time by the constant presence in the frame of devastation, dirt, poverty and general dullness. Visually, the mood is emphasized by any means - in the film there is no other weather than the piercing cold, fog, snow; the eternal grayness of the picture and its increasing density penetrates into consciousness with inevitable thoughts about how bad everything is, how tired everything is, how gloomy everything is, it will never be better, no lumen, only grayness, grayness, grayness. “Under the electric clouds” is a very cloudy picture by its nature, and the soundtrack in it is a minor game on various musical instruments, as if inadvertently fallen into hands – saxophone, drums, harmonies.
Premise
Even if we accept all the hopelessness that has permeated this inanimate movie, even if we believe that everything is as gray on the screen whispers, what is the way out, what solution is offered to us? The final open-air exhibition and again the symbolic dragging of the figure of a horse through the sand simply and uncomplicatedly informs the song of Shevchuk performed by the dull singer - "This is all that will remain after me...": if pure souls unite and help each other - everything will be just wonderful!
Well, if that's all that's left, the crop is very small and melancholy.
The poetry of the picture, which has the features of arthouse cinema, sets up a different perception of art, filled with intertextual references and allusions. Perception at the level of sensations that awaken reflection. Therefore, what I have said, conditioned by my vision, is certainly subjective and is only a small puzzle of a large mosaic.
Events unfold in Russia a hundred years after the October revolution, which is in the expectation of a major war. In the permanent gray sky is aimed at the hromada of the unfinished building, with which the heroes of different chapters are somehow connected. In the center of the picture is “the superfluous man” & # 34; with his attempts to comprehend reality, time, himself in its coordinates. Time in general is one of the leading motifs of the picture. Alexei Herman, Jr., said that his film is about a country that is crucified between the past, present and future. Time is not linear at all in Russia, we are a paradoxical country in this respect, where the hands of the clock can move first forward, then be rewinded back, then forward again. In the minds of people there are interspersed epochs, whether it is the dreams of a lawyer on land issues, transporting us to the 9th, the novella “Place for construction”, which inspires the spirit of pre-revolutionary Russia or the arguments of heroes about small things, aimed at the future. The present seems rather ephemeral.
Another motive is the clash of art and reality. At the same time, the collision is sometimes quite tangible. For example, a bulldozer hits an architect and kills him. Non-acceptance of realities by “extra people” & # 34; sometimes it results in a senseless struggle with the “neon” world in the form of shooting at electric letters, billboards.
Actors speak somewhat theatrically, their communication is more of a set of monologues. Each of them speaks of his own, as if he did not hear the interlocutor, like the characters of Chekhov’s “Cherry Orchard”". The heroine of the novella “Heirs” & # 34; removes the hearing aid, not wanting to listen to her brother, someone completely plugs her ears. In all this there is a general infantilism, which is said when describing people of art: “I am not as infantile as you, I boldly look life in the face.” Heroes are somewhat repoetized, because of which not every viewer can identify with them.
Part of the cast is not the only thing that migrated from the previous film. Herman quotes himself, some of the words of the characters echo those of "Paper Soldier"". The lawyer is tormented by the question of why he has the same dreams, the architect dreams every night as if the sun is exploding, like the doctor of the paper soldier, who is haunted by a painful dream.
The film is designed in the style of Herman Jr., which is still being honed, but already shows the features of a worthy successor to his father.
At the beginning of the film, the words of the impressionist artist Paul Cezanne appear, which can serve as one of the keys to understanding the picture. The film can be called impressionistic. “When the Impressionists were reproached that their hand did not resemble their hand, they did not understand that it was not the resemblance that mattered, but the sensation of this hand, whether it was transmitted or not,” said Hermann, Jr. Therefore, such reproaches to the painting take place, but the main thing is that the feeling is transmitted. And the actors noted that in the film, in the detailed drawing of the frame more from painting than from cinema. Actor Louis Frank: It was a great pleasure to see how obsessed Alexei and Elena Okopnaya (artist-director of the picture, wife of Alexei German Jr.) are working on every frame - and every detail of it. Each small stone changed its position in the frame, although it seemed that no one would ever notice it on the screen. Whether the lights were changed, the lenses were changed - this cannot be explained in words, it is necessary to arrange next time some special tour to the set of Herman. This is no longer a movie, this is a painting. In such attention to detail, something from Tarkovsky is seen.
It is worth noting a good visual range, appreciated by the Berlin Film Festival, for which operators Yevgeny Privin and Sergey Mikhalchuk received a silver bear. Long shots, created the right atmosphere and tension. Almost the entire full-scale part of the picture was filmed after sunset and before dark. Due to this, we managed to achieve very subtle, very strange natural states, said Yevgeny Privin. Winter and off-season surroundings of St. Petersburg are ideal for creating a sad and hopeless picture.
There is a somewhat nonlinear structure, there is no clear storyline, the words of the characters sound like internal monologues overheard and voiced by someone, they are often not logically connected with what is happening. Sometimes it seems that the film is about everything and nothing, that the director's plan, the swing does not correspond to what is happening on the screen. This is true, I have faced a similar opinion of friends who love author’s films, but did not sit until the middle of the film because of the senselessness of what is happening. But, in my opinion, the method of author’s utterance is justified, since the goal of throwing questions or even hints at questions for reflection has been achieved, but it is a personal matter to accept them or not. In the chapter "The Architect", one of the episodic characters quotes Brodsky, as if justifying the validity of the chaotic replicas of the characters:
"I thought, yawn or note, "
But still about the small and the great,
If we find out, we will find out.
Of course, the director is free to choose the language of communication with the viewer, but sometimes you want the main semantic layer to be accessible to the wider masses, and less broad, in fact, too.
The final, sounding in the distance unobtrusively, like all the musical accompaniment of the film, the composition of DDT "This Is All"" suggests that the questions torturing people, whether a migrant or an architect, about time, the path of humanity, homeland and all their aspirations actually stem from one main question that worries a person at all times: "What will remain after me?"
And even if all material labor disappears: destroy the building, build up the land near the museum, there will be questions that have evoked a response in someone’s mind.
Boring, beautiful and pompous author's film with a claim, which still managed to convey the atmosphere of our days. Fictional dialogues, no script, a constant look at the style of Herman Sr. While watching, an ugly question arises - and if there was no father-director, his son would go to direct. And another question: how many talented people will not be given money in the Ministry of Culture while filming Herman Jr. For two things, thank you for nature and some of the actors. The nature in the film is Petersburg, as we almost do not know it and hardly love it. Herman finds eerie landscapes in the postcard city and forever leaves them in his film - because the wash on Vasilievsky Island will soon be built up and only Herman will be able to see it so terrible and cold.
St. Petersburg gives not only the atmosphere, but also our actors. Very interesting faces are selected for each episode. Debut in the cinema with the wonderful Victoria Korotkova, which we fell in love in the studio Kudashov for her theatrical work. Unfortunately, she left the theater. But I hope that the movie will acquire a new intelligent and deep actress. Our people's Irina Sokolova appears in the most interesting, in my opinion, chapter "Place for development". As soon as something relevant and social appears, without pretense of clever and incomprehensible phrases, the film immediately becomes curious - like a chapter about a museum that they want to build. Unfortunately, only in episodes flash Ekaterina Kleopina and Alexander Bykovsky from MDT.
I kind of like Herman's clever look at us today, trying to talk about the heroes of our time. The only and main complaint is his script. It is interesting for a short meter, but in a big movie the operator cannot lead the first violin, I want everyone to work together at once, and for now the script is the weakest link in an interesting attempt to sigh about modern Russia and look into the future with timid hope. I want to take a closer look and take a closer look.
A look at the near future, an attempt to predict and cast a glance at the coming. To make a temporary voyage through our history. Show how important the past is and how it can affect our present.
The new film by Alexei Herman Jr. "Under Electric Clouds" is a beautiful canvas on which you can see a thousand detailed elements that present you with a holistic picture of the world and time shown. But it is only necessary to look closer, as immediately becomes noticeable a large number of nuances and various shades not characteristic of the director. I’m not saying it’s terrible or Herman Jr.’s film doesn’t look like Herman Jr.’s, just using the same elements in a different clockwork, not the fact that your watch will show the exact and correct time or start at all.
2017. Lost and forgotten people who are everywhere and always. A lonely building standing in the middle of nothing. Fog, devastation, cold, infantile, loneliness of the soul. Completely diverse characters encompass more human differences. All this betrays an unforgettable atmosphere. But it does not feel the most important thing in this film - "The German Key". The subject, with the help of which both the senior and the younger (albeit to a slightly lesser extent), could open a person no worse than any excellent surgeon. In no way do I compare these two directors, each in its own impressive and strange as it may seem, they still have slightly different views on certain things. Herman Jr., from part, a more measured pace of narration, not particularly observed echoes of that Brownian movement of characters or devotion to one stylistic range.
The problem with the film may be that Herman Jr. missed the film’s release timeline a bit. The robot, as an element of the future, does not look so impressive and amazing, but is simply a particle that emphasizes time that does not coincide with the real. There is a constant feeling of squabbling.
Insanely beautiful, sometimes poetic, a drop of witty, but all this solyak does not give one final stunning result.
Alexei German Jr. began to talk about the coming great war when it was not yet a generally accepted “fashionable” trend, when aggressive rhetoric was just rhetoric, a terrible shake of electrified red/white air, and behind militant, but purely populist in spirit Words did not go marching cheerful gait. Conceived at the end of the first decade of saturated zeroes, long before the mass of tectonic-political (mainly) shifts in phase and simply in the philistine consciousness, the film “Under Electric Clouds” fell victim to Destiny and God of art, and the tape-warning, tape-prediction, looking into the purple distance of a deep historical and social perspective, became a film-constitution, a creation, even unnecessarily written, if judged by the first reaction after the premiere of the hyper-material of Berlin, a multifaceted filmmaker, in fact, from the current perspective, which is an extreme fear.
Someone by definition will not fail to say that “Clouds” is the same thing, only executed in a deliberately hyper-aestheticized form, as “It is difficult to be God” Strugatsky and Herman the Father; a pessimistic tragedy-dystopia, facing not the future (it is, however, in the “Clouds” is not so distant), but in the very present, in the very thick of ugly modernity, and talking about the inevitability of the revival of totalitarianism and the collapse of humanistic ideals against the background of a smold in its own frenzy Russia, which architecture is stressed out of its own frailty, but does not suppressing its own imagination and its own art. The leading symbols of the entire film, whose chronotopic space alternately jumps from one segment of history to another, because only the next 2017, the plot of the film is not limited, and seven novellas in the style of Rougon-Mackara, Dostoevsky, Chekhov and other classics, in the finale form a single portrait of the era, becomes as an unfinished multi-storey house, personifying total devastation and apathy not outside, but inside, a high-rise that literally strives upward, to the sky, but its land attracts more and overturns the film, which is always replaced by the heroism of the past, who is always replaced by the film, and the memory of the author of the hero, who is not replaced by the hero, who is always in the past, who is the scene and the hero, who is not replaced by chance. However, the premonition of trouble, the harbinger of a thunderstorm, the feeling of collapse is behind every frame of “Clouds”, behind each of the seven stories in which human weaknesses and joys, baseness and dignity, genuine love and disgusting betrayal are intertwined together in a tight knot. Although to the same extent in the film of Herman Jr. the motives of both the Predatory Things of the Century and the City of the Doomed One are read, for Herman Jr. with undisguised author’s mockery in Clouds shows the current Russian consumer society, stuck halfway in its own development, spiritually distorted and bodily perverted, forgetting that the Flesh and Spirit must be one and inseparable and forgotten their true essence against the background of the city of authoritarian, and therefore inevitably doomed. But that's just one voice out of many. The voice of social fiction, drowning in the bizarre contours of the non-world, the non-country, now existing at the intersection of realities, at the breaking of epochs, at the turning point of change.
Someone will say that “Under Electric Clouds” easily fits into the acutely satirical context of Kurt Vonnegut, for Herman Jr.’s view of the surrounding reality is in many ways consonant with “Sirens of Titan” and “Timeshake”, and the motives of the second are guessed most. It is such a time quake, a cataclysm of not so much an external as an internal order, occurred in one large country that lost the coordinates of its own evolution, entered a state of peak, and then a coma that turned all the characters of the film into puppets, and only a few are alive and sane, looking for ways out of this abyss, where the country is drawn by power, undermined by all existing vices (in this expected accusation Herman, alas, turned out to be not the first and not the last, and the film becomes inscribed in a row with Leviathan and Fool, true, against today’s background of our extreme reality, not concentrated, but today). Even though technological advances have advanced, people are the same. Few people want change, even though it is inevitable and tragic. The director, although he thinks in terms of obscuration and obfuscation, like Vonnegut, tries to find something optimistic, salvific in his many heroes, something that makes them alive in the blinding world of victorious constructivism and political expediency, in a world where disconnect and the impossibility of direct dialogue are elevated to the degree of absolutism.
But can “Under Electric Clouds” be called only satirical fiction, a kind of Vonnegut in Russian? Fortunately, the scale of the German film statement is much more extensive, and the film is characterized by a multi-factorial novel structure, and this novel will be read by each viewer in its own way, based on its own worldview and life experiences.
Someone, in the end, will say that “Under the electric clouds” too deliberately uses the typology of “superfluous people”, and here it is difficult not to recognize this truth. To squeeze the heroes of the film only within the framework of classical Russian literature, to make a new Sonya Marmeladova out of the yurodiy Vali, a new Rudin from Dani, a new Peter – a new Prince Myshkin or Chatsky, and from Nikolai – a new Stavrogin, for example (almost all the characters of the tape somehow fit almost all the types of Russian classics, which is a certain scenario trap formalized in essence by universalism, giving so many interpretations that there is a feeling of a deliberately created loop of Möbius or Chatsky, and a new one of the new Stavrogin, for example, to turn into a reality of the author’s, it seems to be only a political means of reality, that the author’s merely a radicalism. “Under the electric clouds” is actually the sum of the components of Herman Jr. himself, the totality of his cinematic ideas and philosophical views, and the same Valya performed by Khamatova rhymes with Anitsa from “Garpastum”, there is a theme of divided love and conflict between duty and feeling against the background of disaster, Peter and Nicholas are the same in their views as Nicholas and Andrei from the same “Garpastum”, and the modernized Paul Fischbachov of the XXI century is much more than one. Even the “precious” Soviet era, sung in “Paper Soldier”, in “Clouds” effectively plays its game. Even the names of all the heroes of “Clouds” are synonymous with the names of all the characters from the previous films of the younger Herman, who thus connects them into a single sea knot, paints a socialized gallery in oil, as the Demiurge creates his Universe, moving, however, to the Star-Wormwood in the purple fog of clouds sparkling with electricity, against the background of two-faced suns going to sunset, and no less duplicit moons dreaming of a different reality.
Domestic arthouse is usually praised - they say, this is a real movie, not that crafts "for the masses", which is better to watch in Hollywood performance. And I honestly try again and again to see in this “cinema is not for everyone” what critics attribute to it. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. And "Under the electric clouds" - unfortunately, the second case.
The plot, as it often happens, can be called at best incoherent, and it is quite difficult to follow it. Although this is not necessary, the atmosphere of the picture is more important, which, on the contrary, is very easy to feel. It literally permeates the viewer. In the creation of despondency and despair, Alexei German Jr., perhaps, has no competitors. And if you want to feel it, be sure to go to the movie.
"Under Electric Clouds" is very much praised for its visual component, and it's really unusual - you don't see that in a regular movie. You can even say that the decline and decomposition in the picture turned out to be stylish, sometimes intriguing. This is a bit of a wake-up call.
But as for the acting, I did not notice any special breakthroughs in it. The only thing that is remembered is the actor in his uniform – he brings additional dissonance to the whole picture. Chulpan Khamatova is almost invisible, although her role is amazing. Then I read that Herman also starred Anastasia Melnikova, known for “Streets of Broken Lanterns”, but she is also practically not visible in the film.
Unless you’re an arthouse fan, Under Electric Clouds isn’t the best choice to spend the evening. On the other hand, it is without a doubt unusual, talented and bright (brightly gray, at least) work.
The stories of the heroes revolve around a house architecturally shaped like a DNA spiral. And the fate of this spiral is not determined, however, as always - people.
Here immediately the wind blows with snow and you feel the skin - you have to guess. Such a world where single shots are finished with bursts of jackhammers is complex. You need to pick it up with a little bit of lateral vision. Herman created a real treat for those who eat with their eyes. Quote after quote against the background of absolutely cosmic scenery, as if not people, but the rebellious titans of the Russian land communicate with each other. Heroes half dead raised from the long-forgotten national bowels, embroidered in a new manner and still play, sons of bitches!
Excellent casting, which is worth one reincarnation of Sergei Bodrov. When you see him again, you understand the reasons for his popularity: a very close to the Russian charm guy. The man died, and the actor’s DNA lives, blooms like a type. Wonderful, guys.
This is all an eternal Russian transit, a series about life. That's all that's left of me, DNA and reinforced concrete houses. The search for a national idea is again in business, albeit constrained in places, crooked and crooked, but our cinema is buzzing, warming up. There is now room for hope.
Transit is the transportation of goods or passengers from one country to another through a third one lying on the way.
It is necessary to do this: to watch in a row "Letters of a Dead Man" (K. Lopushansky, 1886), and then "Under Electric Clouds" (A. Herman, Jr., 2014). Yes, I know it's different directors, contexts and eras. But the intellectuals are the same.
Is this typical postmodernism? The movie is full of quotes. “The Last Train” in the first novel, with a wordless guest worker instead of Dr. Bach, and “Paper Soldier”, and “Despicable Swans”, and “Stalker”, and “Sacrifice”, and “I also want” and “Alive”, and, indeed, the whole detachment of superfluous people of Soviet post-war cinema. How much we've seen-read smart-thin, slush-foggy.
You don't have to look. All right, Earthlings are on the line, it's already begun. The soul is tired of fear. Just don't Spengler, Fukuyama. Because there is a movie that is still amazing. Not agitation, not aesthetics. Uses the same arsenal: parable, hyperbole, image. Like what? At least "For Marx." The truth that takes your breath away is a much needed truth. And exquisitely foggy horror stories do not touch, that's all. Warning that we'll hang out? But it sounded in K. Lopushansky exhaustively realistic and was forgotten. Admitting that we forgot what we wanted in '91, and today we just want to disappear, wrestling with ourselves, me or titanium... Again, me, me, me. My self-awareness, my reflection, my choice. It is decent and noble to support in the highest sense the intelligent lady, director of the museum being destroyed in essence, this grin of Oleg Yankovsky from the 80s. But it is not for nothing that young people with wooden swords hang out nearby. All history became a sham, and the USSR is the same fantasy as Tolkien’s Middle-earth and Herman the elder Arcanar.
The fabric of the film, it seems, is saturated with meanings, milestones, signs of the times, just details-bindings. I didn’t get to hear or remember Gorbachev’s resignation in ‘91, and here, please. And therein was tragedy and nobility—of the same nature, sixties, intellectuals, and of the same magnitude as neglecting to receive a grant. But nothing crystallizes from this weakly salted Baltic water. And there's no way out, no way out, no way out, no way out, no way out. There is a hint, but those who understand it, it is superfluous, they know. Abandoned, deceived people, who are always apart, like behind glass, dumb, taught the wrong words. This theme in the film is cross-cutting - incompatible language environments, unwillingness to listen, futility of translation. So imitate communication brother and sister, guide, investors, drug addicts. The most human is a fragmentary and seemingly nothing about the dialogue of teenagers of the 90s, they read the subtexts, understand each other from half a word.
And the boy’s family, “killed in Ukraine by one shell”, does not shake, but drowns in the stream of signature German fragmentary phrases. And this one won't be forgiven. There is still only growing, and there is no hope for an early end to the criminal nightmare, and then already reflected and built as a detail in the artistic fabric. Perhaps, the authors were pushed by a sick conscience and a great human responsibility, but the film itself worked the diagnosed problem of language: this is a statement about their own and for their own. And everyone will die.
Such a movie would have been an event in the leisurely, lavish 80s when history stopped. “Shelves” is completely stylistic, but would go to GlavAPU or Domjour for semi-closed shows. And when the avalanche fell, and the time machine rushes in reverse, gaining speed, directly into fascism, it is late, meaningless, and disgusting to talk about yourself again. It must be a shame, and if it is just scary and pathetic - again like a stratum - then why do you need those who have free time to look around and understand the course of history, who have many languages to say?
Russia 2017: snow, fog, abandoned construction, people flee from somewhere, somewhere in the distance you can see an unfinished house that united a group of people by the circumstances of construction: someone invented, someone's land, someone's relatives, someone's memory, someone's attempts to survive. All this - under the sky, eternally reminding of its own electricity with lights in the smoke: the plane lanes are not very similar, there is nowhere to land. All these connections of fate, place and time seem to be reduced to a simple but exponentially increasing movement.
United by unfinished stories are divided into chapters, and people walk, walk on the street, almost never somewhere inside, and meet something completely immovable (sculptures), then not stopping the same as themselves. As we move along the chapters, then turning to the Soviet Union and dreams, then to the future, which becomes the past for people from past chapters, people slowly crowd and gather to all together, in apotheosis, merge in the coastal turmoil. Here between them flashes visible cloud space, saving fog, dispersing them not only on the ground, but also in time, because the last century easily falls into the frame of the present - here inevitably remember Herman the elder, in whose long-term buildings, on the contrary, everything is crowded, dark, all the air is taken away and will never cleave dirt, snot and moans.
The sequence from "Gaspartum" and "Paper Soldier" led, of course, to the largest foggy-dirty observatory of bodies (silver bear for outstanding artistic achievements in Berlin 2015) - if earlier there was a voiceover, separate stories-chapters, restless and lost, then there are even more, even more advanced: the characters unbearably talk as if everyone talks to themselves, do not evolve, just stay on the screen, like cameras nailed to the glass - among them Chulpan Khamatov in the roles of a silently blond boy, and half-s in the plot. Herman as a prophet of history, where war and before and now, where constantly someone dies - and before, and now, someone loses wallets (some people out of sight), someone sets himself on fire, someone laughs.
The themes of language, memory, history, fatherhood, purpose and meaning in general are as transparent as possible in the transitions from dark to glowing gray, so that blinds the eyes: this is what Herman sought, judging by the very first title with Cezanne’s quotation. Although in this constant appeal to quotes, then to Malevich, then Brodsky, then to his previous films, there is some fooling: the chapter ends with standing on the head and on the head of the monument, or walking on a rope, or playing a horse. The film animates the past (sitting on a bus you can hear the country falling apart), immediately collects the present in an attempt to resist, crushes the heroes with deaths, scores under film, swamps with snow, all the details are too large, it is impossible to recognize the places, so strange, frightening, swampy two and a half hours pass. All this is rather conditional - the future is still somewhere there and at the same time here: through the fog, blood on the snow, desert lands filled with destroyed monuments - all one under electric clouds. However, there are no clouds, only fog.
In Russia in 2017, 100 years after the revolution, it seems that the historical cycle has once again reached the same starting point. Everyone lives in anticipation of the end. Not stories, but world order. Life is sluggish, but it seems that the sky itself is electrified. Everyone seems to be waiting for something that will never happen. Seeing the future through a foggy veil is not easy.
This is not to say that Herman Jr.’s new film was definitely a success. For the first time turning to the future, albeit with a hint of modernity, the director sometimes begins to lose the essence of time, so deftly grasped in previous films. Especially, “surprising” the initial novel “Alien speech”, which could be filmed by anyone, but not the author of “The Last train” and “Paper soldier”. Unexpected artificial far-fetchedness and emasculation, coupled with unnatural dialogue, set in a negative mood. But the cinema grows above itself from chapter to chapter, until the sixth chapter unexpectedly breaks through the life, albeit of the architect-hipster, and in the final, seventh chapter of The Mistress does not follow a piercing finale, which gives a rare sense of purification by cinema.
Interestingly, the fourth full-length picture by Alexei German Jr. Under Electric Clouds organizes a trilogy along with the previous two films Garpastum and Paper Soldier. If you try to put it verbally, this is a trilogy of films about the Dream: its search, attempt to achieve and loss. What can people dream of? Of course, a bright future covered in fog. The heroes of Garpastum are young footballers, trying to buy their own football field, no matter how much they notice the rapid change in the world around them. When you think about it, they are the creators of the new world. Yesterday’s “owners of life” are forced to save money by playing with workers, students, peasants, in fact finding themselves on a par with those who until recently seemed to them the lower class. Willingly or involuntarily, sailing along the river of life, they themselves without knowing it, generate a Dream. This in turn leads to a revolution.
While "Paper Soldier" is about trying to implement it. Heroes try to reach for the stars. Breaking out of the reality. But while some cling to philistine life and “smart” conversations without action, others sacrifice themselves. But the time of idealists is passing and the dream of a bright future, which until recently seemed as close as the first flight of man into space, becomes ghostly.
Under Electric Clouds is dedicated to a world where the Dream has been taken, trampled and destroyed. 25 years before the events of the film was destroyed by a world agonizing, but still had some ideals. When the ideals were gone, and the heroes of 2017 were born. In the text, they are called “extra people”. For many viewers, this was a reason to call them intellectuals. However, this is a clear simplification and limitation of the viewer. After all, neither an immigrant from Central Asia, nor teenage drug addicts, nor the heirs of nouveau riche, who made a fortune by criminal means during the “shock” changes, but instantly overthrown after death, can not be called intellectuals. Still, people are superfluous.
The question of falling out of the channel is much broader than banal thoughts about the future. After all, even in the “Paper Soldier” inactive lovers of chat, and remained those who are, without changing the surrounding background. But those who aspired like a doctor played by Merab Ninidze, who tried to escape from the shadow of his father, he gives himself only to the altar of the future. Unfortunately, he remains a lonely man of action in a world where no one wants to act. But in Under the Electric Clouds, inaction becomes almost the only meaning of life for a generation. Talk, talk, talk. Artificial, living, about life problems, about art, about anything. But action? Nope. It seems that the whole world has stopped.
And everyone is infected with the infantilism virus. Gastarbeiter doesn't know the language. Newly born orphans who have returned from abroad, but their only desire is to escape from problems immediately. Anywhere. At least in the room, but not here. And not now. A lawyer who has an eternal nightmare about the day the Apocalypse happened. A fashionable architect who hates post-modernism but builds a gaggy skyscraper that is itself a symbol of post-modernism. A museum worker writing a dissertation but stuck in his own fixation on repeating historical cycles. A guy who lost all his relatives in the war and went into drug oblivion.
Everyone is waiting for a war tomorrow. But the future is foggy. And the "war" seems to be just a memory of the missed end of the world, which happened exactly 25 years ago. Like a staged battle between elves and orcs, which the people of a generation without the Idea revel in. After a quarter of a century, it’s time to grow up. Centuries later, there will be nothing left but monuments showing that people once lived here. But for them to stay, it’s time to start building them. Sooner or later, the sun will rise and bring with it the long-awaited spring, dispelling the fog.
A person who does not care about the country in which he lives will always care about the fate of his homeland. We are used to the idea that only the top dictate power to the state, but we do not think that we ourselves sometimes make a mess. It is important to remember that only human actions, or rather their totality, can lead to different consequences. And it's important to remember that sometimes ordinary people, who we often marginalize, make history. I think that this idea was laid in the basis of the drama novel by Alexei German Jr. "Under the electric clouds."
Synopsis 2017. Several people, so-called unnecessary people, whose destinies inadvertently intersect with each other, are connected through the construction of a mysterious house. Each of the heroes is trying to improve their lives, build the future, but greed, envy and misunderstanding of the people “necessary” only destroy their hopes.
Game of actors To be honest, the film makes a specific impression in all respects, including the actors. On the one hand, I would like to say that the actors played naturally, and their characters literally live on the screen. But, unfortunately, it is worth noting that among the entire cast I was able to recognize only Chulpan Khamatova and Anastasia Melnikov, since the rest of the actors I saw for the first time in my life, so it is difficult to judge how convincing they played. I was struck by the fact that Chulpan Khamatova in this film generally played the silent male role of a character who dies as a result of his failed attempt to save a person. If I singled out anyone, then the actress who played the role of the daughter of a millionaire, who returned to Russia to deal with the inheritance and with a high raised head to accept what her father had done.
Directorship In terms of directing, I have no complaints about Alexei German Jr. The film was shot in his classic style, i.e. in the film a lot of conversations, long takes, the characters sometimes talk about high themes. However, perhaps the most distinctive feature of the film is that the action almost entirely takes place somewhere in the countryside, in a cold, fog-covered wilderness, against the background of old, dilapidated buildings. This approach is somewhat reminiscent of Leviathan, but the director does not show the characters as poor and unhappy. It seems to me that he wanted to show different generations against the background of modern Russia, some of which are ready to rebuild the country, while others are just waiting for everything to be cooked.
Scenario Unfortunately, the film has problems with the plot. In general, the plot of the film consists of seven chapters, each of which illuminates the fate of the characters who are forced to fight in their own way for survival or establish order. We know that the main theme is a strange unfinished multi-storey house. They cannot finish it, because there is not enough money, then because they cannot come to an agreement on what kind of appearance it should acquire. It is clear that this house is a metaphor for our country, which was built on the ruins of another country and is still being rebuilt, but the change of generations with different interests constantly undermines this construction. The main characters are representatives of these different generations, some of whom in their values rely on the heroes of famous Russian novels, and others on applications from Vkontakte and Apple products. The writers hint that there will be those who will build a decent future. The main thing is not to despair. At first glance, it might seem that everything is clear. But personally, I came to those conclusions a long time later, because Under Electric Clouds is the kind of movie that you'll be digesting for a few more days to understand what you just saw on screen. And in the end, you may have a pretty good picture, but there are pitfalls that can hardly be knocked out of your head. First, sometimes in their dialogues or monologues, the characters carried such nonsense that it just knocks you off the perception of what is happening. Secondly, in my opinion, some storylines should not be inserted in principle. I, for example, did not understand why the story with drug addicts, including Chulpan Khamatova in a male image, was introduced into the script. What did the authors want to convey? What was the idea behind this move? Stupid and nasty. Finally, too much of a movie. In my opinion, it was worth shortening the script, and not sculpting unnecessary events that looked on the screen, as if to place.
Total I can say with confidence that Under Electric Clouds is not a movie for the average viewer. Those who do not understand art houses at all should not even try to see and, most importantly, understand the picture, because you will digest what you see for a very long time. However, I want to say that the film is not bad in principle, it has its own wisdom. But excessive tightness, cold and gray atmosphere, actors who are sometimes like zombies can spoil the impression. That is why I believe that this picture is exclusively for the amateur.
There is a taste of the “nineties” in the picture. Have you seen Balabanov's movies? From there, this parallel universe of infinite space, with deliberately theatrical dialogues and sharply defined characters, as if gills behind your ear are cut with a sharp and thin blade; and then you do not notice: in a parallel world there is no need for air, for lungs. The son left his father. Or not? And I do not know what the greatness of man depends on: material, moral, social. I only know, for myself, that it is not necessary to reproach, to be ashamed of being a small person who fits on the palm of your hand. Being a molecule can do great things.
How do you assess the past 25 years? Perhaps big people are wrong to speak of the first decade as chaos, will and freedom, and the next as a missed opportunity to build something just beyond the mountains with oil and gas.
Now I'm in trouble again. Relapse of a terrible, terrible disease. And some powerlessness is felt in this otherworldly magical world of the artist. People are completely confused and lost, their hands are lowered, blindly deluded and fooled with broken souls and extinguished eyes.
But this can not be told from the screen – the venerable masters who gave money will not understand.
Is it really important to remember a previous life when eternity is ahead?
The world of the film “Under Electric Clouds” directed by Alexei German (Jr.) is so vague that in the search for landmarks in the space of the film, I drew attention to the names of the quoted and discussed. Cezanne, Brodsky, Malevich, Pascal. The coast of the Gulf of Finland is recognizable, but does the setting of the scenario imply recognition of St. Petersburg?
Could it be just a city of N. existing in an electronic cloud space?
I will take the advice of Merab Ninidze, or rather the words of his “hussar”, and penetrate into the ghostly world of the film through Malevich’s Black Square. Exactly a hundred years ago, a canvas was painted. In the tunnel hidden behind the canvas, tons of quotes were piled up. The ruins of three revolutions and two world wars prevent us from going further. I stumble over their fragments and suddenly I see ahead, in the narrow space of the tunnel, the flickering of electronic words.
Is this the future? I listen to character lines. Characters pronounce dialogues with such intonation as if someone, sitting behind a computer screen, is hastily reading the script, the characters echo the reader. The eyes of the reader are constantly distracted by pop-up alerts. The snow comes and goes.
And so, listening to the buzzing voice of the long-dead heroes of the future, I slowly walk along the frozen bay and stumble upon the framework of the structure. The skeleton rises above the ghostly space and almost pierces the eternal clouds. If I were in the real world, I would immediately remember the Gazprom building under construction in St. Petersburg. But here time flows in different directions with each careless step.
Is this a building? Each of the seven parts of the film is populated by characters embodied by real performers. Ghosts coexist with people so that you can not immediately distinguish the real hero and his ghostly accompaniment. But the incarnation of the billionaire is missing. Maybe this frame is his embodiment? Or a symbol of his life? Or an unfinished monument of unlived life. Why was his daughter tormented by the question of how to crown the unfinished – a dome or a spire, while rolling on the sand of the bay the embodiment of a dead horse?
My journey, the journey of an amateur, into the non-existent but embodied world of Herman’s film, ends with many unanswered questions. Arthouse films I am amateurishly distinguish by taste. And Under Electric Clouds reminds me of a bitter pill. And the bitter taste is not because in the hundred years since the revolution we have not learned to live in peace with ourselves. Because they never learned to truly appreciate their past.
7 out of 10
"Under Electric Clouds": The Short-circuit of the Mind.
The trailer of the film “Under Electric Clouds”, consisting of several surreal and glamorous frames of the near future and significant replicas, is not only stylishly executed, but also completely solves the task that all promotional materials serve – to interest the viewer, promising him an interesting story, something new and unknown. However, in fact, it turns out that the video is deceptive and has nothing to do with what is happening directly in the picture. Trailers of blockbusters are criticized for the fact that they often contain the most spectacular moments, but the editor of the video of this picture acted even more boldly, collecting the most poetic phrases and the most beautiful shots, thereby turning the oppressive, illogical history of marginals into a sublime drama.
The film begins director Alexei German Jr. with a voiceover speech, from which the viewer learns that the action takes place in Russia in 2017, when the situation in the world is obviously close to crisis. The object of consideration of the author declares those whom he himself calls “superfluous people”. Without going over to criticism, we can say that such straightforwardness surpasses even the abuse of voiceover text and means clumsiness of performance and a lack of understanding that cinema is a field of art (as, indeed, any other), in which metaphors and complexity serve as the main tools. Herman acts without resorting to effort, without generating meanings, without conducting a dialogue with the viewer - he simply talks about what, about whom and what the goals of the film are, as if reading a abstract work.
Having stated that in the center of the plot there will be “extra people”, by whom it is customary to understand aristocrats by blood (or in a more modern version – spirit), who do not have the opportunity for productive / progressive / free activity as self-realization and for the benefit of society, because of the suffocating framework of the existing socio-political system (this looks especially ironic in light of the fact that the film received funding including from the state bodies of the Russian Federation). But whether the director is superficially familiar with literature, although the names of Pechorin and Chatsky will sound in the picture, or believes that the viewer is completely illiterate, since of the seven chapters into which the film is divided, only the heroes of “Places for Buildings” and “Architect” can be summed up under the definition of an extra person, and the rest are either declassed elements or ordinary members of society that are not related to the catalysts of social development.
Claiming to be comprehensive, as the classics of Russian literature did, not often separating literature and philosophy, Herman, nevertheless, not only does not approach the reference samples, but shows a complete failure in the disclosure of the stated topic. The speech of the characters is incoherent fragments, not just incomprehensible because of any hidden meanings and allusions (as it happens in works of art, which causes a multivariance of interpretation), but because of the banal disregard by the author of the script of Aristotelian logic. "Let's play cards?" And where do we have bed linen? – without pauses and transitions, say all the characters and at the same time no one. Obviously, this is the author’s claim to the originality of the view, the consideration of society in its comprehensiveness. But Herman takes artistic techniques literally, which causes laughter from the schizophrenic delirium, which looks like a dialog array and, at the same time, the horror of the fact that this received screen time and most importantly – the viewer spent time and money watching “Under Electric Clouds”, waiting for the beautiful, and getting something that lies outside the evaluation criteria.
With professionally executed, praiseworthy work of the operator and color correction, which turned the world of the characters of the film into an eternal off-season with a leaden sky, what happens on the screen is filled with physiology in the form of how it is perceived and broadcast by the directors, who imagine themselves incredible aesthetes, capable of seeing beauty in abomination. The torment of the flesh can be alluring and exhilarating, resulting in something almost sexy, for example in Funny Games. Or, becoming the object of aestheticization, as in "Hannibal" by Brian Fuller or "Tita Andronica". And physiology, in all its unsightly frailty, eventually becomes beautiful when viewed from the right angle, as James Franco did in Interior: Sado-maso Gay Bar. But "Under Electric Clouds" shows only dirt and abomination, insisting that this is realism. Nasal bleeding, mucus, dirty hair, heroin injections, garbage and unkempt clothes (not to mention the fact that the appearance of most of the characters leaves much to be desired), cruel murders and dead animals - German likes this human pus, he revels in it (strangely, vomiting was not shown, which would complement the picture), the moment of orgasm should be considered a sketch in which a person grinds a construction machine.
The actors of the film, as mentioned above, look extremely unattractive and show disgusting play, throwing scattered faceless lines, often possessing terrible diction. Against this background, only Merab Ninidze, Anastasia Melnikova and Louis Frank stand out (the latter, it must be assumed, was chosen by the director solely because of the features of facial pigmentation). First, they are professional and noblely beautiful. And secondly, only novels with their participation deserve attention. Ninidze and Melnikova appear in a story about a crumbling museum that will soon be demolished or built up, and the story itself in the image of a guide in a hussar costume leaves this place, leaving it to the discretion of insignificant people living today. Frank’s story is a good character – an architect whom everyone praises, but no one hears; a man who thinks, seeks and does not find. There is also a good moment in Under Electric Clouds, where the role and significance of metaphysics is briefly understood. “I don’t dream of anyone but you,” the pretty black-eyed boy will say, but the passage takes seconds, and the film takes two and a half hours.
Construction garbage, Gorbachev’s speech, endless rain, refrains towards racial intolerance and actress Chulpan Khamatova for some reason playing a male role, but not solving any acting tasks (perhaps these are peculiarities of the sexotype and the corresponding preferences of the director, which he wanted to show in a wide format) – chaos, everything and nothing. Quoting in the epigraph of Paul Cézanne, Herman pretends to be sublime and meaningful, at the same time shamelessly insisting on his genius, allowing himself not to think at all about form, since the content fits into the phrase “about the great”. It is difficult to say who may be interested in this picture except the director and his acquaintances, because “Under Electric Clouds” is not just a secondary feature, but a secondary one is cheap and primitive, which carries neither meaning nor beauty. Geniuses, people who are ahead of their time, are often persecuted and misunderstood, but "Under the Electric Clouds" is not about geniuses, but about marginals living in the garbage. Denying the age-old history of art and culture, the director Herman tries to repeat what was said before him, pretending to be an innovator, but even this director, cultivating spectator shock as the main method of his work, does not work out, only a scanty story about freaks dragging their ridiculous, dirty existence.
In the new picture Alexei Herman Jr. the action takes place in the near future (2017), saturated with decadence and the expectation of a major war. The main story is divided into seven chapters, connected, one way or another, with one unfinished house, which directly or indirectly influenced the fate of the heroes who were on the sidelines of life.
On the one hand, Herman Jr. can be called an absolute egoist, who seems to have made a film about life, about people and their fates, but in general invested something of his own, personal experiences, thoughts, views and meanings, understandable mainly to him alone, without caring about the audience and what they think. It’s like he says, “I said it, and the rest doesn’t matter.” Understand me as you wish.” On the other hand, this can be perceived as the self-sufficiency of the director, shooting as he likes and who does not have to prove anything. Approaching this issue from the third side, we will see that the director does not impose his opinion, which is like a cry of the soul about the painful, although it would be more accurate to call it a monotonous conversation, but gives the viewer complete freedom to understand, interpret and invest their own meanings.
"Under Electric Clouds" is a movie about nothing and everything at once: about the cyclicity of time, i.e., the wrapper changes, and the filling remains the same, the difference of generations, each of which has its own values and experiences, about Russia, people, the foggy future, general decline and life in general. The main message here, as in Leviathan, is that everything is bad and life is hard. Of course, in the creation of Hermann Jr., there is no such blackness, but at the same time pessimism is much more and it is more graphically expressed. Despite this, the picture Zvyagintsev is still better perceived and much clearer.
Watching the picture is difficult and tiring because of the grayness of colors, depressing atmosphere and viscous, sluggish plotlessness. In general, immediately after watching it, it seems that everything is really very bad and life does not make any sense. So the film is contraindicated for people prone to suicide. Soon, having “sickened” with this condition, you begin to reflect on what you saw, analyze, find meanings, something personal and close. This is the paradox of the picture. It is not so much interesting to watch as to think about it afterward and come to understand what you have seen. Thus, "Under the electric clouds" can be called a time bomb.
In the film there are quite curious thoughts associated with the fact that the world has turned into a global construction, and the natural and spiritual has given way to the technical so that even advertising is projected in the sky. In such a world, injustice reigns, people are lonely and unnecessary, and this can apply to both an ordinary unremarkable person and a candidate of sciences working as a guide. It also touched the idea that you can live life, and in the end, after death, you will not even be remembered, as if you were not there. The only way not to completely disappear into oblivion is to hope that you dream of a childhood friend.
As for the actors, according to the director, he was looking for them for a long time, because he wanted to find interesting, unusual faces and objectively speaking, he succeeded. Thanks to the actors, the characters turned out to be alive and reflective, but at the same time filled with universal sadness, longing and hopelessness, as the context required. It is a pity that Chulpan Khamatova was given very little screen time, although it was enough for her to fully reveal her character, and even without a single word. She appeared in the image of a strange, silent boy, deciding to do a good deed, which is obviously doomed.
As a result, we can say that the film is quite specific, original, ambiguous, with meaning in context and visual range. In principle, this has not yet happened, but it is not put in the best way, in terms of perception. Viewing turns into a challenge, as the picture is mostly conversational, viscous, monotonous and depressing. As mentioned above, it is more interesting to think about than to look at it. It is necessary to understand that "Under the electric clouds" is a festival, arthouse film in the retro style, which indicates its elitism.
P.S. In the end, Alexei Herman Jr. still gives hope for the best, but on condition that people become more responsive and help each other.
Post-Impressionist retro-futuristic drama about modern Russia
Under Electric Clouds is a retro-futuristic drama directed by Alexei Herman Jr. The film is an almanac consisting of seven novels, the action of which unfolds around one unfinished house.
And although at the beginning of the film there is a clear indication that the events take place in Russia in 2017, there is still a feeling of retro, transferring to the era of the collapse of the USSR, in the 90s of the 20th century. The country is destroyed (an unfinished house, as one of the heroes of the film - a symbol of decline, death). Vultures flock to him like prey, each of whom wants to grab his piece, morals are shaken, crime reigns on the streets, people go abroad, the spirit of the approaching war hovers in the air.
The sky covered with clouds and the fog constantly present in the frame as if electrified by all-consuming anxiety, the coming unknown, apathy and despair. And flashing in focus in the background, the lights are either glimpses of the dying ruins of a collapsed country, or faint sparks of hope, barely breaking through the wall of despondency and despair. Perhaps the first option.
The film contains many references to the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union (dreams of one of the heroes, dilapidated sculptures of famous Soviet figures, etc.), but there are certain characters belonging to the future (a robot in the house of an oligarch, an advertising projected directly in the sky). Perhaps the retro-futuristic nature of the tape is chosen deliberately to emphasize the cyclical nature of events (one of the characters in his monologue says that people are born, learn, then go to work, start families, give birth to children and they repeat the life of parents in the same sequence).
However, in addition to the problem of decadence of modern civilization as a whole, the film tells the stories of individual heroes - a deceased oligarch, a homeless guest worker who does not speak Russian, young and rich heirs, teenage drug addicts, etc. All of them are superfluous people who were not needed by anyone in the era of globalization. They wander the streets as restless, seek the meaning of life, and ask questions about morality, honor, and true values. This is a film about the intelligentsia and for the intelligentsia.
“Under Electric Clouds” is a film-feeling filled with images, thoughts and emotions, made in the style of post-impressionism. No wonder in the first frames there is a quote from one of the brightest representatives of this direction - Paul Cezanne.
8 out of 10
