Tag Archives: Russian

Capsules

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: THE GREEN ELEPHANT (1999)

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Beware

DIRECTED BY: Svetlana Baskova

FEATURING: Sergey Pakhomov, Vladimir Epifantsev, Aleksandr Maslaev

PLOT: Two ex-military officers are thrown into a prison cell.

Still from The Green Elephant (1999)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Not only does it contain extreme grotesqueries, but it is in essence a comedy of the absurd, and a highly disturbing one.

COMMENTS: Let’s start with a bit of context. A “parallel cinema” emerged In the late Soviet Union of the 80s 1. Within this cinematic landscape an even smaller underground movement was formed, known as necrorealism. With a name parodying the dominant social realism of its country, this alternative cinema showcased decomposition as a metaphor for social decay. Yevgeny Yufit is considered its main representative. Necrorealism’s aesthetic legacy continued into succeeding years through the works of two deeply subversive auteurs: Svetlana Bascova and Oleg Mavromatti2.This work is pivotal for a comprehensive understanding of their style, as Bascova and Mavromati’s  worldviews and creative talent merge: Svetlana directs and Oleg produces. Let’s examine the monster they have created.

The plot revolves around two unnamed ex-military officers thrown into prison for indeterminate reasons. The first act observes them in their claustrophobic cell, as the more loquacious annoys the other with his constant blabber. The stories become increasingly disgusting, hinting at what it may come.

Their prison reveals itself as a hellscape where bodily fluids, excrement, and secretions subvert our characters’ dignity until their total mental and physical annihilation. The deteriorating walls of their cell, the broken pipes, and a dirty toilet bowl mirror their decline. the depravities begin, as in a comedy of the absurd, without a clear reason. The first forty minutes aren’t disturbing in terms of graphic content (yet), but scenes of coprophilia and coprophagia will trigger more than a few gag reflexes.

The second act leaves the dirty cell behind for a similarly dimly- lit room with a sewer-like open trapdoor in the middle. The supervisors bring in the trapdoor to humiliate the prisoners even further. But nobody is really in control here. The dynamic shifts unexpectedly, chaos ensues (violence, gore, rape, necrophilia) and everyone is exposed as equally doomed as this tragic fable comes to its conclusion. If the first half disgusts, the second half is dizzying. This is visceral cinema at its wildest.

This movie doesn’t just attack our senses; it also to deconstructs ideals regarding the military complex and the people that service it. it becomes clear later on that we are in the Soviet Union of the 80s, a few years before its collapse. However, even if the sociopoitical background is specific, the commentary extends to a wider critique against militarism.

From a technical standpoint, this work is amateurish, albeit expressive. The snuff film quality of the shots, along with realistic—for the most part—special effects are discomforting. The extensive use of enclosed spaces creates a certain theatricality.

Of course, despite its political undertones, this movie is not for everyone. If you are a fan of extreme cinema, though, able to stomach ‘s cinema of sepsis, then perhaps it is for you. This bizarre movie has become a cult phenomenon in Russia, inspiring a talk of a sequel, a video game adaptation, and memes. Perhaps it speaks to the Russian psyche.

  1. You can learn more about parallel cinema and necrorealism through the informative essay by Eugene Vasiliev on this site. ↩︎
  2. Mavromatti directs weird movies till today by the way, having  released a hilarious series of vlog-spoofs (in Russian, of course) throughout the last decade. ↩︎
Capsules

CAPSULE: VISIONS OF SUFFERING (FINAL DIRECTOR’S CUT) (2006/2016)

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Visions of Suffering is available to watch on video-on-demand in either it’s original 2006 version or the 2016 “Final Director’s Cut.”

BewareWeirdest!

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: , Anastasia Asafova, Andrey Iskanov

PLOT: A necrophilia-obsessed man is haunted by demons.

Still from Visions of Suffering (Final Director's Cut) (2016)

COMMENTS: Ominously titled, as if to warn potential viewers, Andrey Iskanov’s Visions of Suffering is available both in an original 2006 cut and in a shorter 2016 “Final Director’s Cut.” Given the option of watching both, it seems obvious that 90 minutes of Suffering is preferable to 120 minutes of Suffering. Without having seen the original, I feel confident in saying Iskanov made the right decision to cut out 30 minutes of Suffering.

While the movie is extremely abstract and opaque in its details and methodology, playing like a feature length music video for an industrial noise/death metal crossover band, the basics of the thin plot are not especially difficult to comprehend. Sasha, our bespectacled protagonist, wanders through a misty yellow forest until he encounters a guy wearing a burlap sack on his head (the synopsis explains that this is a shaman and that Sasha interrupts an occult ceremony, perhaps thus bringing a curse on his head). Of course, it was all a dream, and Sasha wakes up and immediately screens a necrophilia porno flick before discovering that his phone is on the fritz. He leafs through books on Jack the Ripper and an anthology of murder scene photos while waiting for the repairman to arrive. While the repairman fixes the phone, they talk about dreams, and the guest casually drops some vampire lore. Phone fixed, Sasha calls his girlfriend (?) Vika, who’s busy shooting lesbian cutter porn. After hanging up, Sasha sees some vampires loitering about outside, and one of them stabs him in the earlobe through the keyhole. Then Sasha has some visions of suffering, and Vika’s car is possessed as she drives to his apartment while wearing iron cross sunglasses. Sasha has some more visions of suffering and calls an exorcist type (played by the director), who explains that Sasha has likely riled up some demons through his desecration of the dead. The director offers to fix the problem for 7000 euros, but that’s too steep for Sasha. So he has some more visions of suffering until the demon Golgatha shows up in his apartment with a sword and starts hacking up the furniture. Then he wakes up, and everything’s OK.

It’s a familiar old story, but Iskanov films it with some genuine style, if not taste or discipline. Much of the film is shot through hazy green/yellow filters that turn cheap costumes and effects that would probably look ridiculous in the full light of day into creepy nightmare fuel. (At times it’s like a less-effective Begotten, without the mythological resonances.) The sound mix is thick, dripping with ooze, spooky noises, and shrieks and moans off one of those atmospheric Halloween sound effect compilations. There is a lot of shock imagery: mutilation, autopsies, explicit sex, implied necrophilia. There are also a lot of superimposed image, especially in the fast-cut opening credits sequence that shows off Iskanov’s gift for montage. But all of this artistry is in service of a juvenile morbidity that seems to arise from listening to too many Marilyn Manson albums under the influence of too much hashish.

Suffering earns the rare and, in some quarters, coveted “” + “” tags. That’s not a recommendation for most folks. The Beware is for content—explicit sex, grotesque real autopsy footage, and some sick stuff that made even me cringe—but even excepting those, the film will prove a bit of a slog for most viewers because of its nonlinearity, tonal monotony, and humorlessness. Still, although it might have worked better chopped up into a series of easily digestible shorts, thanks to some memorably spooky imagery and resourcefulness in disguising his budgetary limitations Iskanov’s movie is not as much of a trial as it sounds like on paper. Fans of experimental extreme horror will eat it up. But please, don’t force me to watch the 2-hour version.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“The movie is really about an endless stream of colorful cinematography and visuals, head-trips, nightmares, atmosphere, bizarre creatures, etc… the plot and characters never really develop. In other words, too undisciplined.”–Zev Toledano, The Worldwide Celluloid Massacre

(This movie was nominated for review by “Josh.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: LILAC BALL (1987)

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Лиловый шар

Liloviy shar, AKA Purple Ball

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DIRECTED BY: Pavel Arsenov

FEATURING: Natalya Guseva, Vyacheslav Nevinnyy, Vyacheslav Baranov, Boris Shcherbakov

PLOT: In the year 2087, a research spacecraft discovers the wreck of “The Dark Wanderer,” a legendary doomed ship containing mysterious purple spheres.

COMMENTS: Enmity is nasty business, and were it not for one plucky little girl, the future of mankind would fall to self-destruction. So we learn in Arsenov’s science-fiction/fantasy outing, Lilac Ball. It covers a span in time from a century into mankind’s future—when computerized intelligence facilitates deep-space exploration—to the ancient past, the time of Legends, wherein man and myth coexisted (if not in harmony, then at least side by side). In those days, myriad dangers arose for the common peasant by way of the dark sorcery of Baba Yaga and her three sons.

Events kick off in grand future style. Captain Green, the commander of the Pegasus who speaks nearly as mechanically as the ship’s computer, is tasked with escorting Professor Seleznyov and his daughter Alice to a research vacation. All of a sudden, the ship’s sensors detect an anomaly: a craft too large and too strange to be found in the database. Behold, it is The Dark Wanderer, and its floating ruins contain dispiriting records of the crew’s fate, a fair number of vitreous spheres, and the lovable four-armed archaeologist, Gromozeka. The spheres contain a horrible doom, but little Alice knows just where on Earth to find the purple ball secreted—thousands of years in the past—by the Dark Wanderer’s crew to destroy humankind at just the right time.

This movie is not without its charm, and its seventy-odd-minutes breeze by on the winds of adventure and whimsy. The first act, very much typical science fiction, is well executed; the filmmakers push their skills and budget to the limit. The Pegasus’ interior design is refreshingly dissimilar from most outings of the genre, with an open-plan cockpit/convening area (tea is served often) featuring computer consoles, greenery, short staircases, and a central table for four. Zipping back thousands of years into the past—I had had no inkling of a time machine until Alice mentions it for the purposes of returning to the “Era of Legends”—is rather less satisfying, albeit involving some endearing puppetry. (The baby roc is cute—and wholly undeserving of its fate at the hands of the Wanderer’s evil crew.)

Arsenov appears to aim for an all-the-young-adult-adventure-tropes experience, but his reach, alas, exceeds his grasp. Still, it is impossible to feel hostile toward such winsome narrative meanderings of future and past.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Curious mash-up of fantasy and science-fiction from the Soviet Union…  a strange mixture of mythologies, to be sure; part Sinbad, part fairytale, part Wizard of Oz. All in a film whose first act was straight science-fiction! There’s nothing wrong with blending genres, of course, but it’s a tricky business, and the disconnect between the two aspects of the story here is a little jarring, to say the least.” — Mark David Welsh

(This movie was nominated for review by Morgan after seeing some clips and remarking that they “resemble something that AI watched in its early stages and picked up on.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

The Purple Ball / Lilac Ball / Liloviy shar (English Subtitles)

The Purple Ball / Lilac Ball / Liloviy shar (English Subtitles)
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Capsules

CAPSULE: QUEENDOM (2023)

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Queendom is currently available for VOD purchase or rental.

Recommended

DIRECTED BY: Agniia Galdanova

FEATURING: Jenna Marvin

PLOT: A queer Russian performance artist fears for her freedom as she clashes with the law.

Still from Queendom (2023)

COMMENTS:  wrote that the responsibility of the artist is to “keep an essential margin of non-conformity alive. Thanks to them the powerful can never affirm that everyone agrees with their acts. That small difference is important.” It’s difficult to imagine anyone embodying this principle more explicitly than “drag” artist Jenna (sometimes spelled “Gena”) Marvin.

I put “drag” in quotes, because, although her act is drag-inspired and drag-adjacent, that term hardly describes Marvin’s bizarre performance art. The locals who are discomfited by her appearance clearly recognize that she is challenging gender norms—she is frequently met with the Russian word for “fag”—but her costumes are so otherworldly and alien that they don’t meet a strict definition of cross-dressing. Tall, lithe (almost a ballerina body), and completely hairless, Jenna adorns herself with elaborate makeup and an assortment of bizarre sartorial choices including ruffs, duct tape, giant pipe cleaners, tentacle fingers, surreal latticed headgear, and so on. The only consistently feminine element are the high heels that accessorize every outlandish outfit.  She ventures out in public to, at best, stares, and at worst verbal abuse and harassment. She also makes short films for Tik Tok and Instagram—often set in amazing Siberian wilderness locations—where she takes out her frustrations by thrashing around in the mud in wild interpretative dances. Most dangerously, she attends protests against the Putin regime. In one, she dresses in a stilleto-heeled mockery of the Russian flag, which gets her thrown out of college; when the Ukrainian invasion comes, she walks down a Moscow street nearly nude wrapped in homemade barbed wire, which earns her a citation from the police and the threat of a court date.

With no narration and only a tiny bit of direct questioning from the documentarian, Queendom is almost entirely a fly-on-the-wall affair. It conveys enough information to keep you grounded in the developing story, although some knowledge of recent developments in Putin’s Russia is helpful. Anti-LGTBQ sentiment is encoded into the law there; faces of protestors or Jenna ‘s artistic collaborators are often blurred or carefully kept out of frame out of a sense of caution. But the social ostracism Jenna faces is perhaps even more telling. (“We have fear and subservience in our DNA,” Jenna’s friend tells her, referencing the country’s Soviet legacy.) Jenna’s contentious relationship with her grandfather—who, we gather, raised her—takes up a large portion of the story. Grandpa supports her, in his way, but does not pretend to understand either her sexuality or her creativity. His main concern is that, if she’s going to continue dressing as a freak, she better figure out how to make some money at it.

In the end—mild spoiler alert—Jenna does not go to prison or (worse) succumb to conscription, but is able to flee Russia to a European capital where she feels at home in a far more tolerant society. She has more courage than most of us, but does not, like Alexei Navalny (whose protest she attended dressed as the flag) have the ultimate courage to become a martyr. And who among us would? If I were in her heels, I would have fled far faster. She may have a duty to keep a margin of nonconformity alive—but she also has a responsibility to keep herself alive.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…more than a mere cabaret act, Marvin’s myriad outfits are a thrilling combination of theatricality, circus craft, avant-garde performance art, high camp, and something more otherworldly besides — as if H.R. Giger and Derek Jarman had a grotesque, unsettling baby… as well as the straight documentarian footage, there are surreal vignettes, Marvin creating visual art with her outfits and her emotions.”–John Nugent, Empire (contemporaneous)