YOUNG FILMMAKER BRINGS BREATH of FRESH AIR to RUSSIAN CINEMA Reviewed by Susan Welsh
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SLAVFILMS BEANPOLE: YOUNG FILMMAKER BRINGS BREATH OF FRESH AIR TO RUSSIAN CINEMA Reviewed by Susan Welsh Beanpole (Дылда), 2019. In Russian with English subtitles, 137 minutes. Playing in U.S. theaters. Director: Kantemir Balagov. Producer: Alexander Rodnyansky. The Russian Federation’s sub- mission to the 2020 Oscars; included on the shortlist for Best International Feature Film. Balagov won Un Certain Regard’s Best Director prize at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival. What was it like to live in Leningrad after the ‘Beanpole’ with Kantemir Balagov in Attendance Ends 872-day siege that left an estimated 1.5 million people in Scandal.” It seems that a pensioner in the audience dead from starvation and German bombing? What vociferously objected to the two heroines’ passionate would it have been like for a woman who had served kiss, although she could not bring herself to actually as an anti-artillery gunner and survived the war with articulate what the “filth” was that so distressed her.) battlefield wounds that left her unable to bear chil- The film is receiving rave reviews from leading U.S. dren? Or one with a concussion that gave her seizures newspapers and news websites as it begins screening and blackouts? Everyone in their families is dead. in this country; The Daily Beast called it “stunning” Beanpole’s young director, Kantemir Balagov, tells and headlined its coverage, “Is ‘Beanpole’ the First why he found the story so compelling: “It is very Great Movie of 2020?” The Wall Street Journal wrote, important to me that my story takes place in 1945. My “The film is an improbably thrilling work of art by heroes, like the city they live in, are mangled by a virtue of its physical beauty and its relentless intensity horrible war. They live in a city that has endured one of feeling about people.” I refer readers to such publi- of the worst sieges in the history of warfare. This is a cations for more about the plot and other details. story about them and about people they meet in I focus instead on the fascinating young director. Leningrad, the obstacles that they have to overcome, Balagov, age 28, was born in the North Caucasus and the way they are treated by society. They are republic of Kabardino-Balkaria three weeks after the psychologically crippled by the war and it will take August 1991 coup attempt that prefaced the dissolu- time for them to learn to live their normal lives.” tion of the USSR later that year. His is the first genera- This beautiful and disturbing film was Russia’s tion of Russian youth that does not remember life in submission to the 2020 Oscars, winning a place on the Soviet Union. This generation was traumatized by the shortlist for Best International Feature Film. The the poverty, corruption, war, and socioeconomic two heroines, Iya (nicknamed “Beanpole,” played by collapse of the 1990s. Living standards have Viktoria Miroshnichenko) and Masha (played by improved, especially in Moscow and St. Petersburg, Vasilisa Perelygina), are powerfully acted by young but social stratification has worsened and, in many women who made their feature film debuts in this regions, poverty prevails. movie. In Kabardino-Balkaria (present population Of the Russian press coverage, an interview by 860,000), where Balagov grew up, unemployment journalist Yury Dud’ with Balagov, producer reached as high as 90% in the aftermath of the col- Alexander Rodnyansky, and filmmaker Viktor Bitikov lapse of the Soviet Union. As the economy tanked with is especially noteworthy and can be found here: the post-Soviet decline of tourism, separatist move- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glbSMlBhY30. ments and Islamist insurgencies took off in the North (Then there was Komsomolskaya Pravda, which, as Caucasus. Wars raged in nearby Chechnya, Dagestan, far as I know, is read mainly by people who were in Ingushetia, and Georgia. An Islamist rebellion began the Komsomol while Brezhnev was still General in Kabardino-Balkaria in the early 2000s, including Secretary of the CPSU. They ran an article under the an attack on the capital city of Nalchik (Balagov’s headline “‘How Can You Film Such Filth?!’ Premier of hometown) in 2005 that left at least 80 people dead; violence flared up again in 2010. SlavFile Page 22 Spring 2020 That was when internationally acclaimed film- A Voice of His Generation maker Alexander Sokurov (Russian Ark, Faust, Balagov believes that trauma is essential to cinema. Francofonia) accepted the invitation of Kabardino- It is what differentiates a “mass product” from a Balkarian State University to come and give a film- movie that is “one of a kind.” When casting his films, making workshop, in a region that had never had a he always looks for actors who have experience with film industry. Balagov, who was one of the 12 gradu- trauma. As he himself does. ates of the extremely rigorous five-year program (“no Rodnyansky points out that the young director, in weekends off, no holidays,” said one graduate), his meticulous preparation for writing and directing described his work with Sokurov as crucial to his Beanpole, reading through archives and diaries from artistic and personal development. the time, learned that in Leningrad “an enormous So what did Sokurov teach? number of people, survivors of the blockade, commit- The Calvert Journal asked Balagov in its Aug. 9, ted suicide. They just ran out of hope and the desire to 2017 online issue, after the director’s first feature film, live” (Dud’ interview). Closeness (Теснота), won high honors at the Cannes Balagov told Novaya Gazeta: “In one of the diaries, Festival. Interviewer Andrei Kartashov wrote that I read something that amazed me: ‘During war, you Sokurov, in addition to teaching practical skills, have only one goal—to survive [выжить]. But after- loaded the curriculum with classes in literature and wards, you have to go on living [выживать]. That is a history of the arts and cinema, and let the students lot harder than war.’” choose their subjects freely, asking them to refrain So why do I call this grim story and its director’s only from excessive violence and religion, two obvi- perspective a “breath of fresh air”? Because unlike the ously sensitive topics in the North Caucasus. “Sokurov usual fare of World War II patriotic adventure films, always encouraged us to tell stories of ourselves,” said horror flicks, and endless morbid probes of dysfunc- Balagov. “He would say: ‘Tell us about your life here.’” tional families in a corrupt and blood-soaked society When journalist Yury Dud’ asked Balagov why Sokurov is not appreciated in Russia as much as he is internationally, Balagov replied that he is a compli- cated person, both as an artist and as a citizen: “First of all, he is responsible.” Dud’: “What does it mean to be responsible? That the person is an activist?” Balagov: [pause] “It is someone from St. Petersburg who comes to Nalchik to open a workshop to fight back against cultural poverty. Nobody made him come to Nalchik. He’s not from there, it’s not his home. So why?” Beanpole producer Rodnyansky added that Sokurov’s influence is that of “an uncompromising artist, a person defending culture’s right to exist to save humanity.... He has a strong moral core.... Without being in political opposition to the govern- ment, he is a true Intelligent, in the classical sense that was established in 19th-century Russian culture. An Intelligent is a person who is not indifferent, who cannot tolerate injustice.” Sokurov intervened unsuc- cessfully with President Vladimir Putin in 2016 on behalf of imprisoned Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov (Sentsov was released in September 2019 in a prisoner swap). Used with permission SlavFile Page 23 Spring 2020 (The Stoker, Leviathan, Elena, Loveless, Bury Me part in the film. It was vital for me to feel this space Behind the Baseboard), Beanpole’s heroines are and background in the film, and you can feel it even trying to find a way to heal themselves, to find a path now, in today’s Leningrad (Saint Petersburg). We feel forward. the consequences of war in the space where the action In a statement to the press on the release of takes place, and in the color palette of the film. But Beanpole, Rodnyansky wrote that “Kantemir has a most importantly it’s in the fates of our heroes. It was huge advantage over some—if not most—contempo- important for me to show the consequences of war rary directors: He combines true knowledge of the through people’s faces, eyes, physiques, bodies, not classical cultural tradition with the fact he is a voice of just through abandoned or destroyed buildings.” his generation. Even though he knows and appreciates Balagov’s friend and fellow graduate from the filmmaking masterpieces of the past, he trans- Sokurov’s workshop, Viktor Bitikov, told Dud’ about forms them through his own unique experience and his personal transformation through Sokurov’s men- makes them part of his style and message, which are torship. He had been successful, making decent very much contemporary and urgent.” money as a “showman,” playing in comic variety Rodnyansky (b. 1961) told Dud’ that Balagov has “a shows and performing at corporate get-togethers. “I special talent. He is uncompromising! Look, I belong wasn’t realizing myself as a person,” he said. “It was to a generation of people with a lot of apprehensions. just awful, plain impotence. I couldn’t care less. ‘Yeah, We are constantly looking at internal zones of so some old lady in Ryazan had a tragedy, so what? self-censorship, for some inner comfort.