Morphine‖: Cruel Romance with the Passing Epoch
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Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 284 2nd International Conference on Art Studies: Science, Experience, Education (ICASSEE 2018) The Soundtrack for Alexei Balabanov’s Movie ―Morphine‖: Cruel Romance with the Passing Epoch Daria Zhurkova Department of Mass media art’s studies State Institute for Art Studies Moscow, Russia E-mail: [email protected] Abstract—The article studies the specific features of internal differences of the re-created era. Thus, the director interaction between music, plot and a recreated epoch in Alexei for the first time in his practice overcomes the conflict Balabanov's movie "Morphine". The author analyzes in detail between "correct" and "false", genuine and "ostentatious" the meanings, which the old-time romances playing in the music, which in his previous films was most clearly background bring to the cine-narrative. Firstly, we can see manifested in contrasting rock and pop. In "Morphine", one direct plot parallels between cinematic and musical content, can hear pop of that time, the music which turns out to be not for example, the leitmotif of drug addiction of the protagonist. just a "true witness", but an anomaly continuum, simply Secondly, there are hidden reasons for the deliberate mismatch speaking — the air of that era. of the nature of music and the unfolding events in the film. The author comes to the conclusion that the refined, broken poetics In this article, I will first outline the conceptual parallels of cruel romances turns out to be consonant with both the pre- between the genre of urban romance, the era of the film, and revolutionary era in Russia and the fatal passion of the the character of its protagonist. Next, I will trace the protagonist for morphine. semantic intersections between the lyrics of theromances played and the fate of the main character of the film, through Keywords—music; cinema; Balabanov; Morphine; drug the theme of fatal passion in particular. After that, special addiction; Aleksander Vertinsky; cruel romance; lullaby; tango; attention will be paid to the issue of external mismatch of the convict song music nature and the events unfolding on the screen. Throughout the study, I will put emphasis on the following I. INTRODUCTION issues: 1) the nature of the music, 2) the lyrics of the Music, along with the motifs of the city, war and cinema, romances, 3) the atmosphere of the pre-revolutionary era, is one of the main components of Alexei Balabanov’s artistic and 4) the fate of the protagonist of the film. thinking, extremely authoritative and provocative. A special director's instinct for music, largely intuitive, based on his II. PECULIARITIES OF EPOCH, MUSIC AND PLOT own musical preferences and erudition, but always INTERACTION IN THE MOVIE accurately falling into the "picture" - a unique case for both In "Morphine", in addition to specific plot parallels domestic and world cinema. When it comes to between cinematic and musical content, which will be scrupulousness and meaningful use of music, Balabanov can discussed below, there are also conceptual parallels. The first be compared with Tarkovsky, as well ashis foreign one is the scope of the view. Just like the plot of the film colleagues Fellini, Kubrick and Tarantino. All these directors with great historical events given through the prism of the have music that is inseparable from the artistic conception, person, the romances playing in the movie concentrate on the music that is etched deep inside the viewers and serves inner experiences of their characters. The second conceptual meaning-creating rather than merely design purposes. parallel follows on from the first. Despite the fact that both In the movie "Morphine" (2008), the director does not the events described in the film and the romance scenes seem change his main principle and again takes popular music, to be a special case, the entire epoch can be seen through "cooked" by the era in which the film's events occur. them. It would seem that the music of urban romances with Another point is that the time distance played an interesting their stories about fatal love has no direct relation to the pre- role in the perception of the musical design of the film. On revolutionary atmosphere. However, it turns out that the the one hand, Balabanov took music which was really music, like nothing else, reflects its time - the time of total popular at the beginning of the twentieth century. On the breakdown, a sense of hopelessness and despair of a man other hand, that music had an extremely mixed reputation in who cannot overcome his terrible ordeal. Yet, the question of the era of its release, and even more afterwards. The genre of who is the root cause of the misfortunes — the person urban romance, especially "gypsy" and "cruel" romance was himself or the era he is bound to live in — remains open. often considered banal, vulgar and tasteless. Yet, Balabanov Thus, the genre of urban romance with its intimacy and uses this music as a finely tuned barometer, fixing the exaltation of senses at the same time is commensurate with Copyright © 2018, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). 746 Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 284 the story that is told in the film. However, there is one more it is used, as well as to the figurative and plot structure of the conceptual parallel that lies between urban romance as a entire film narration. genre and mute cinematography, also playing its role in Morphine " ". Both of the mare the creations of urban culture III. MUSIC LEITMOTIFS OF DRUG ADDICTION spontaneously is becoming mass phenomena at the beginning of the twentieth century. Silent cinema, as well as In the very first scene of the film, when Dr. Polyakov is cafe music, took their audience to the world of illusions, met at the district station to be taken to his new place of made it possible to disconnect from acute social problems, work, "Snow Lullaby" by Alexander Vertinsky is playing: helped "to drown out the anxiety hanging in the air, to get Sleep, my dear boy, for the window cold, distracted from the challenges posed by life" [4]. No wonder, these two kinds of art even met on the same platform. There drifts from our front porch. According to Vladimir Babenko, "in 1910-1914 in cinema I am a lover of my mom's, and she had a husband halls of large Russian cities, the intervals between the shows were filled with divertissements featuring performers of The old, white-haired thy father rhymes, gypsy romances, convict songs, various parodies, Neither the story of the romance - the confession of the and farcical scenes "[5]. Finally, it is important to mention mother’s lover to her young son, nor the gloomy nature of the piano music being an invariable attribute of both the music, with all its melodramatic intonations (turns, romance lyrics and the first cinema sessions. retardations, expressive cadence idioms) formally do not Meanwhile, the director remains true to his principle correspond to the situation of arrival, to the starting with a emphasizing the intrusive discrepancy between the events clean slate story, and to the sunny weather in the frame. This taking place in the film and the content of the songs. More is not an illustration of what is happening in the episode, but precisely, Balabanov draws a link between the visual-plot a song foreshadowing the whole story. series and music at a more subtle, deeper level. The character of the romance turns to the child as to the At first glance, broken, pampered, far from pressing most helpless and at the same time innocent observer of the problems music we hear in the film, is a striking contrast to love triangle. Such a technique helps to see the age-old story the unattractive, heavy and repulsive way of life that from a new angle, undoubtedly adding to its volume, surrounds the film's main character, Dr. Polyakov (Leonid originality and mystery. The listener, whether willingly or Bichevin). A vivid example here is a famous tango not, raises multiple questions that do not find answers in the "Magnolia" by Alexander Vertinsky, which plays for the first immediate story collision. Yet, due to the nature of the music, time when Polyakov and his medical assistant (Andrei Panin) a sense of doom, despair, and injustice prevails. walk in the hospital courtyard. In twilight, the characters In this romance, the priority of Balabanov is the image of make their way from one wooden house to another along a small, defenseless boy, who the protagonist of the film is narrow bridges, laid through dirty snowdrifts. It is when we apparently equated to. Moreover, if we draw symbolic can hear brisk chords and a languid melody going: "In parallels further, then the "boy’s" mother appears to be his banana-lemon Singapore, in storms ..." For the protagonist, life, and the "old man" - the historical time. The lover, on who now and then starts a gramophone with records that he whose behalf the song is performed, is morphine, and it is got from a previous doctor, this alternative musical reality not by accident that the words "Sleep, my dear boy, for the turns out to be akin to what he will later create with the help window cold" sound as the leitmotif. The comparison of cold of morphine. This way Balabanov directly conducts his 1 (external turbulent events) and home (a place where you can favorite comparison of music and drug. find peace and rest) begins to play a special role in this Even though most of the music playing in the film context.