Gurevich, Mikhail. "‘. The Film Is Not About That’: Notes on (Re)Reading Tale of Tales." Global Animation Theory: International Perspectives at Animafest Zagreb. Ed. Franziska Bruckner, Nikica Gili#, Holger Lang, Daniel Šulji# and Hrvoje Turkovi#. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019. 143–162. Bloomsbury Collections. Web. 27 Sep. 2021. <http:// dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781501337161.ch-009>. Downloaded from Bloomsbury Collections, www.bloomsburycollections.com, 27 September 2021, 16:15 UTC. Copyright © Franziska Bruckner, Nikica Gili#, Holger Lang, Daniel Šulji#, Hrvoje Turkovi#, and Contributors and Cover image Zlatka Salopek 2019. You may share this work for non-commercial purposes only, provided you give attribution to the copyright holder and the publisher, and provide a link to the Creative Commons licence. 9 ‘. The Film Is Not About That’ 1 Notes on (Re)Reading Tale of Tales Mikhail Gurevich Preface My attempts at interpretative writing on Tale of Tales have a rather long history. The fi rst lengthy essay on the fi lm I wrote around 1987; it was published, in Russian, in a preprint- type collection of articles Multiplicatsiya, Animatograph, Fantomatika under the auspices of First All-Union Animation Festival Krok–89 (held in Kiev, not yet in fl oating- on-the- ship format). In the following years, I had a chance to discuss this topic in different forms at a couple of SAS conferences. In the 1990s, Jayne Pilling tried to prepare my text for publication in her Reader in Animation Studies and even commissioned a third- party translation to assist in my then uneasy English writing; those rather laborious efforts, however, did not result in publication in the end (I was using certain wording from that translation and joint editing in subsequent work). Much later, at Giannalberto Bendazzi’s 1 The recurrent phrase in proposal and script treatment for the fi lm; published in English translation in Kitson ( 2005 : 123–130) (though this particular phrase, as well as a few others, quoted further, are, in translation, different from mine). Unless indicated otherwise, all other translations of Russian- language sources are mine. 143 144 GLOBAL ANIMATION THEORY suggestion, I wrote a new and different version for his Animation: A World History (among numerous other contributions). While this book was underway and hanging in publishing limbo, I delivered the paper, in a sketchy abridged form, at the fi rst Animafest Scanner conference in 2014. The fuller version, thoroughly edited, was fi nally published in 2016 in Volume 2 of the Animation: A World History , under the title ‘Dream of Eternity, Lullaby of Re- birth: Notes on Re- reading Tale of Tales ’. Here I’m submitting yet another, largely expanded and reworked version, incorporating elements of the previous ones (also, at the special request of Animafest in 2014, I wrote for the festival programme book a short, more general essay, ‘Breathing a Soul into the Things Existent: Animation According to Norstein’ – from which I’m borrowing here a few formulations as well). The text offered here presents a combination of different critical perspectives and styles; being aware of the risks involved, I nevertheless hope that this kind of deliberate inconsistency in method and take might still be of some merit, if it can possibly spark a light of understanding. Of expectations and frustrations When it was shown for the fi rst time as a fi nished product at the ‘artistic council’ of Soyuzmultfi lm studio, in the summer of 1979, the recorded reactions of sympathizing (and trying to help, no doubt) colleagues ranged from ‘contemplation on a future of our country and of humanity as a whole’ to ‘a summation of the experience of Soviet poetry’, and to ‘a new form of animation expression’ (Kitson 2005 : 107). With all the considerations of place and time, and undercurrents involved, this range and tone of response remains, in retrospect, quite characteristic and telling – both in degree of recognition and in its vague generalized nature. Giannalberto Bendazzi recalls the reaction at the Zagreb selection committee screening in March 1980: ‘We viewed the fi lm almost without breathing, hypnotised. From then on, we never referred to it by title, but only by the masterpiece.’ And writing about that twenty- fi ve years later, he still holds: ‘Tale of Tales is the ultimately enigmatic, cryptic fi lm. You don’t doubt its great art. You just hardly understand what it is all about’ (Bendazzi 2005 ). Clare Kitson also testifi es: What sort of animal was it, then, living in that abandoned house, and roasting potatoes, burning its fi ngers (paws?) as it ate them? And who was that old woman, suddenly popping up in the middle of the abandoned house to stoke the fi re? What is all that about? These were the kinds of not very profound questions that exercised audiences at the 1980 Zagreb International Animation Festival, as they tried to get to grips with Tale of ‘. THE FILM IS NOT ABOUT THAT’ 145 Tales . [. .] Despite its mysteries, everyone sensed that this poetic, wistful work, full of idiosyncratic humour, was a masterpiece. KITSON 2005 : 1–2 She goes on to note a quite unique overall effect and ‘frisson of expectations’ at the award ceremony (Kitson 2005 : 3). Years later, in the introduction to her book on this fi lm she admits, once again, the sense of puzzlement as the major reception point. Kitson sympathetically refers to the fi lm’s scriptwriter, Lyudmila Petrushevskaya, who also confesses in a letter to Norstein: ‘Only when you had fi nished shooting the fi lm did I begin to grasp your idea. I have seen Tale of Tales no less than fi fty times. But the mystery never goes away’ ( Kitson 2005 : 4). And that kind of admission- reservation would become common place in the entire discourse on and around the fi lm, up to regular media journalism or the newest fi lm buffs’ blogs. For sure, that can also be seen outside Russia or the orbit of its native language. However, within the domestic cultural realm that would be noticeable too, if only being gradually substituted rather with some kind of shy matter- of-course acceptance and satisfaction with safe- to-apply vague generalities, which is probably the sign of the same perplexity. Well, I myself can attest to more or less the same, recalling the moment, clear in memory, when I watched it for fi rst time, around 1981, in the only place available – our fi rst and the only multiplex of that time, the movie- house Rossiya in the very cultural centre of Moscow, and at a short strike from Soyuzmultfi lm studio’s main facility; there was apparently a special arrangement to screen some new releases here in the smallest theatre, with just a few dozen seats in capacity. This purl of images was hard to decipher clearly; yet, the mere fact that they are ‘pregnant’ with (certain) meaning was tangibly obvious. The image ligature did not seem clear- cut, but still felt needful, bounden, which only pushed even more to the duty and labour of understanding – and at the same time not promising easy ways, if any at all. I suspect that today, almost forty years after its creation, Tale of Tales , having been repeatedly recognized as the greatest animated fi lm of all time, still remains an enigmatic masterpiece, its ‘cryptic’ meaning or message not fully deciphered. The fi lm’s charm and power are (still, I believe) indisputable and irresistible; and yet, the sense of or hope for complete and concrete understanding still escapes us somehow. When I fi rst attempted a critical reading of this fi lm back in the mid 1980s, not much of the (recorded) discourse around it had been yet generated. By now, however, it is probably one of the most refl ected upon, or at least talked about, animated fi lms in history. Especially, and mostly, through the self- refl ection of the director himself, in his numerous lectures, talks, interviews (eventually collected/re-edited into several books). Virtually every move and image is described and attributed, in terms of origins and connotations, and put tightly within a fi lm(making) context. 146 GLOBAL ANIMATION THEORY And yet, one would hardly fi nd there anything close to a wholesome, explicit articulation of the message or meaning of the fi lm. Partly, perhaps, due to the fact that practically the entire body of this most extensive self- commentary was recorded after Norstein, by different people and under different conditions, not actually written by him. And besides, while having extreme riches in creative practice and observations to share and being quite a deep artistic personality, capable of insights and paradoxes, and uncanny sensual memory, Norstein is not really a creature of refl ection in a strictly intellectual sense, rather he is more for a meditation of sorts, which might provoke a lot on a receiving side – but might need yet another effort in deciphering and contextualizing. That became, for the most part, a task in the book, which fi nally appeared in English, by Clare Kitson, to justifi ed acclaim, inevitably becoming a primary reference source: a quite detailed, close to exhaustive, account of the work process, surrounding circumstances, real- life context and such, immersed in direct or indirect dialogue with the creator(s). With all due credit, Kitson does try along the way to give meaning to certain details, to trace motives, to hint at parallels; yet, the book culminated in merely a descriptive record of the fi lm material in the fi nal cut, presented in its entirety and attempting to include every minor move – but with no real inclination to an interpretive reading per se, it seems.