Leviathan

Northern Russia looks bleak. A treeless, windswept, rocky waste land, fringed by a restless sea. Unpainted wooden or cracked concrete buildings look like they have seen no maintenance since Brezhnev was in charge. A fitting stage for a Russian tragedy. When faced with a powerful adversary: do you stand up for your rights and fight back or lick your wounds and accept your losses? That is the question at the heart of Andrey Zvyagintsev's Leviathan.

Kolia runs an auto-repair shop from his home on the outskirts of a coast village. The local government has claimed the land and offered a fraction of what Kolia thinks it is worth. Kolia brings in a old army friend, now a Moscow lawyer, to help in the case. Like traditional tragedy, early success is followed by set-back and suffering. Aristotle's theory is that in tragedy the suffering must be as a result of a mistake, but in Leviathan we are left to decide if Kolia and his family made mistakes or if failure is inevitable if you take on "the system" (in this case the Russian government). More than one character says that taking on the government is a mistake.

The Film Festival program links the film's title to Thomas Hobbes book on government: Leviathan and the film's theme to the most famous quote from the book "the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short". But this miss-uses the quote which refers to life in a world without society and government. A priest in the film quotes from Job 41: "Can you pull in the leviathan with a fish hook or tie down his tongue with a rope?" and then goes onto use the story of Job to illustrate the futility of fighting something more powerful than yourself.

The answer to every problem in Russia is vodka (it is also the way to celebrate success). The ability to act as if drunk was a requirement of almost all the actors in Leviathan.

Ian's rating 3.5/5

Paper Soldier

The Russians certainly know how to do depressing. Paper Soldier starts off confusing and bleak, and goes down hill from there. The ramshackle buildings of the cosomodrome in Kazakhstan exist in endless vistas of mud, snow and ice and look almost indistinguishable from the gulag that is being burnt down not far away. Soldiers, cosmonauts, medical staff, Kazaks, ex-gulag inmates, ex-guard dogs, trucks and a camel wander aimlessly around. People prefer to carry bicycles rather than ride them. Conversations seem almost equally aimless, as no-one seems to be listening to what anyone else is saying.

Paper Soldier is not about the cosmonauts or the space program; they are the backdrop to the disintegration of Daniel, a doctor working with the cosmonauts. Daniel is haunted by the fear that, given the number failures in the unmanned test flights, the cosmonauts may die in space. He shuttles back and forth between his wife, Nina, in Moscow and Vera in at the cosmodrome, being rude and inconsiderate to both of them and his friends and colleagues (and to a third woman who unbelievably is also besotted with him). He doubles up in psychosomatic pain from time to time. Why can't he just drink himself into oblivion like any good Russian? I didn't warm to Daniel.

Just watching this film makes you want to put on a scarf and gloves ... and reach for the Valium.

As a foot note to cheer you up, 10 years after Daniel has gone Nina and Vera share a flat in Moscow.

Apparently any "true lover of the giant screen poetics" will find this film mesmerising -- be warned.

Ian's rating 0/5

Cargo 200

If you are too young to remember what it was like in the USSR when Russians thought that Ladas were flash cars, or if you think you do remember what it was like, perhaps you need to see Cargo 200 to disabuse you of any idea that 1984 was a golden year back in the USSR.

A Colonel's daughter's boyfriend earns more than he does. No-one respects the Professor of Atheism from Leningrad University. Rock bands are playing at ad hoc clubs. An illegal vodka still and bottling plant operates alongside a major road. The army has to try to co-opt the local police to bury a "Cargo 200" due to a man-power shortage. "Cargo 200" is a code word for dead soldiers flown back from Afghanistan. Society seems to be on the verge of crumbling.

But wait there's more. A local police chief, who lives with his senile mother is a violent psychopath with extremely perverted sexual tastes and, according to his mother, performance issues.

The humour here is as dry and black, as the police chief is vile and perverted. What else would you expect from a film chosen by Ant Timpson?

Ian's rating 3/5