A film review: "Zheleznaya doroga" [2007 Russia]

I'd been working backward through the filmography of Aleksey Fedorchenko, and was pleased to see that his Fellini-esque surreal comedy from 2007, "Zheleznaya doroga" [Eng. Title: The Railway] was as much an allegory as a visual feast.











The hilarious premise posits a school headmaster hatching a rather unusual plot to make up for a shortfall in the school's funding - by smuggling out coal from abandoned mines in the town's vicinity, on a disused railway line that was heading south into the vast Russian Steppes. Thanks to a mistaken belief that coal was in high demand in that region, he sets about laying his plans in secret so that others wouldn't catch wind.

He persuades a pal (Sergey Belyaev) with his kid Mishka (Daniil Shavkunov) to join the endeavour, and after dusting off a beast of a Soviet-era locomotive languishing in a museum, they enlist the services of an equally ancient driver (Pyotr Zaychenko) who'd apparently gone feral in the rusty overgrown railway yard. As the film progresses, the driver and his relationship with the locomotive become an important part of the narrative.

After stocking the lone wagon in the train with sacks of coal collected by the school children, the foursome set-off on a surreal journey passing through disappeared stations, abandoned towns and meet some extraordinary characters along the way, including the remnants of a circus troupe that had gone missing in the Steppes many years ago.

By the time they reach their destination, they'd used up and bartered away the coal that they were transporting for largely worthless bric-a-brac, exchanged by desperate locals still surviving in middle-of-nowhere towns. Perhaps they were waiting for the trains to return, or perhaps they'd given up all hope of making it elsewhere. Much of the narrative is from the viewpoint of Mishka who observes goings on armed with a creative license.

We meet giants, acrobats, and man-eating school children, and Luisa (Olga Degtyaryova), a sex-hungry redhead who boards the train after the headmaster proposes to her with a ring exchanged for coal by an old woman without fingers. Mishka listens to his father give varying accounts of his mother's (Elena Veshkurtseva) gruesome/heroic death, and imagines each time saving her in a miraculous manner. Their journey, it turns out, is in fact a yearning for love...

Almost every aspect of the characterisation can be seen in an allegorical or literal sense, depending on your frame of mind. But they're equally absurd, delightful, and moving either way, thanks to Fedorchenko's genius and sense of humour. Steeped in irony and loaded with dry wit, the film is a prime example of Russian cinema at its creative best. Needless to say, this little gem is Highly Recommended Viewing..!

 

The Nudity: Olga Degtyaryova, Elena Veshkurtseva, and others
Olga Degtyaryova, as the redhead, appears nude in a couple of scenes, and there is brief nudity from other actors during the rest of the film.



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A film review: "Angely revolyutsii" [2014 Russia]

There's now plenty of proof that Aleksey Fedorchenko has a deep reverence and fascination for the customs of ethnic tribes that cohabit his motherland. While his moving Silent Souls (2010) touched on the funerary rituals of the Merya, and his richly exotic anthology Celestial Wives of Meadow Mari (2012) boisterously celebrated Mari womanhood, his more recent "Angely revolyutsii" [Eng. Title: Angels of Revolution] is an unfettered re-imagining of a factual Soviet suppression of the Siberian Nentsy and Khanty people during the Kazym Rebellion.













But Fedorchenko, being who he is, doesn't present the film with a conventional historical narrative, but rather like a poetic retelling of a myth; exercising generous artistic license while presenting his facts. There are true-life characters nevertheless in the film, like Polina (Darya Ekamasova), a noted revolutionary and performance artist, who is assigned the task of 'civilising' the aforementioned tribes; by encouraging them to embrace Soviet ideology, join mainstream society, and give up their pastoral lifestyle and move into permanent homes in their newly built town.

To this effect, she enlists the help of four fellow avant-gardists; film maker Pyotr (Pavel Basov), photographer and sculptor Zakhar (Georghi Iobadze), architect and coffin-maker Nikolay (Konstantin Balakirev), and theatre director Smirnov (Aleksey Solonchev). Together, they set off to the Taiga on a mission that Polina hopes would intellectually enlighten the tribes and make them appreciate modern art.

But the Khanty are aloof to this enforced 'meeting of civilisations', and at times barely tolerate their uninvited presence. While they might have been mildly bemused watching their works and antics at the beginning, they soon grow tired of them and refuse to 'join the collective', and events take an inevitably tragic turn once their respective irreconcilable positions are established, and the State decides to have the last say...

There is more to the film than meets the casual eye - be it artistic, political, or philosophical. Federchenko doesn't make it any easier for us by refusing to feed us the historical pretext for the conflict. In my case, one had to score through festival interviews and the wiki to get acquainted with collectivisation during the early days of Soviet Union. It is ironic that the avant-garde artists, themselves a minority who'll soon to be 'collectivised' by the state, were press-ganged into persuading other minorities. It is also worrying to see that states; red, blue, or whatever their hue, have found it irresistible to homogenise their entire population to control them better - it shows how incredibly fragile human civilisation has always been.

Fedorchenko's film provokes debate on ethics, ideology, and humanism itself. And after the final scene in an apartment in present-day Kazym, in which we see an elderly Khanty woman singing a tribal song while looking into the camera, we are left wondering who the angels of revolution indeed were - were they the avant-garde artists who were sacrificed for a now defunct Soviet state, or are they the disparate tribal cultures that still survive, albeit by the skin of their teeth, a quarter of a century after the revolution itself has ended.

To say that the cinematography and production design is exceptional would be stating the bleeding obvious - one can hold a photographic exhibition by simply blowing up some of the film's key frames and mounting them on a wall. They would need neither titles nor descriptions - quirky, surreal, humorous, and tragic, they'd be probing artworks on their own. Of course, good photography doesn't equate to good cinematography, but films with a master like Fedorchenko at the helm make a pleasant exception. A particularly mesmerising scene is still haunting - where Pyotr projects his film on a cloud of smoke bellowing from a wintry night's campfire. I could go on - but will end by stating that this gem is Highly Recommended Viewing..!

 

The Nudity: Polina Aug
Polina Aug plays Anna, Zakhar's model and muse, and briefly appears topless during one of the photo shoots.



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A review: "Celestial Wives of the Meadow Mari" [2013 Russia]

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After taking us on a metaphysical journey into the unique customs and traditions of a distinct northern Russian tribe with his 2010 Ovsyanki aka Silent Souls, Aleksey Fedorchenko revisits the region and its people to inform us of some of their more practical concerns, relating to sex and happy marriage - all seen from a female perspective. Fedorchenko believes "Nebesnye zheny lugovykh mari" [Eng. Title: Celestial Wives of the Meadow Mari] to be his Decameron to the Mari people.


Presented as an anthology of twenty three short stories - unrelated, save the fact that all the characters' names start with the letter 'O', they range from minute-long snippets to ten-minute segments featuring pagan customs that Mari people had absorbed into their Christian faith in pursuit of sex and love. They don't see conflict between the two belief systems - for them, life exists hand-in-hand with death, and change alongside continuity. And shame and virtue are not defined by the deeds themselves, but the time, place, and context within which they happen.


For a people in close connection with nature and its surroundings, even simple acts like bathing in a stream or kissing under a tree have a sanctity and decorum associated with it. It is a world cohabited by fairies and devils, dead and the living, and where the long departed 'prepare' young women just about to embark on a life of marriage. It is also a world where blessings and hexes are currencies used to trade favours. The film focuses on the varied ways in which women have taken advantage of these customs and beliefs to empower themselves.


The cinematography, by using formal compositions of the landscape and its seasons, the people and their costumes, may have given the film a documentary semblance, but nevertheless evoke a variety of emotions - it is bewildering, enchanting, scary, touching, wildly funny, and also erotic. That's the reason why the film deserves more than a passing reference to Decameron, and Pasolini - it carries an authenticity and storytelling-by-the-camp-fire charm that Pasolini would approve of, and like him, Fedorchenko approaches the unscientific using visual poetry and inference. The film is not necessarily an anthropological study even if it might interest those into it - it gloriously celebrates the Mari way of living without judging their idiosyncratic beliefs.


Some stories may be too short to give insight into the broader context within which they're placed, but they are also among the more beautiful ones in the anthology - a bit like an imaginative haiku. One of my favourites is the touching story of Olika (Yekaterina Sokolova), a young bride who dies after a snakebite - I must've seen it separately a dozen times, but have yet to grow tired of it.


However, there are also beliefs portrayed in the film that are as outrageous as could have been conceived by a Marina Abromovic for her Balkan Erotic Epic - its fixation with genitalia and their functions can be off-putting to a prudish audience, but is nevertheless presented in a tactful manner without resorting to explicit imagery. The film ought to be seen by every adult as it is a celebration of life itself in all its shades, from a Mari, but importantly female perspective. Highly Recommended Viewing..!


 

The Nudity: Olga Gilova, Anna Grachova, Yuliya Aug, Aleksandra Masko, Yana Troyanova, Olga Dobrina, and several others
Apart from two long scenes, nudity is generally brief where depicted.




Scene Guide:

• Odacha (Yaroslava Pulinovich) is worried being groped under the sacred birch.
• Onalcha (Polina Aug) - who people say is the daughter of wind, offers to cure a man of 'fear', provided he doesn't turn back to look. Well, he does. (No nudity)
• Ovrosi is unimpressed in being chatted up by a guy who's about to get married, especially since one of the girls bathing in the stream is also his bride.
• Oshanyak (Anna Grachova) still has a young girl's features, and aunt Okanai (Olga Gilova) sets about 'luring out her beauty' the traditional way to turn her into a desirable woman, which apparently involves a good bit of rubbing. :-)
• Oropti (Yulia Aug) just realises that a wicked hex placed by the giant forest woman had gone, as a result of which her husband can now touch her vagina again.
• Oshalyak (Olga Dobrina) is a music student getting some extra tutoring by her professor after college hours.
• Ormarche - she's only twelve, but begs to be allowed to join the older girls in their 'kissel' festival. A traditional Russian dish that has the consistency similar to that of semen, kissel is offered to invoke ghosts. They turn up to bless each of the girls with a good husband - the girl who picks up the thrown pig's hoof get to dance and impress the ghosts first. The dancer we get to see for the longest, in all her glory, is Pokavi, played by Aleksandra Masko. She's joined by others - Viktoriya Kozhurina, Galina Trofimova, Natalya Ni, Aleksandra Andreyeva, Yekaterina Orlova, Karina Tsvetkova, Veronika Leushina, and Anna Zoteyeva. By the time villagers arrive to chase away the ghosts, they'd already left, leaving them to get an eyeful of their fair and totally naked maidens splashed in kissel (inserted at the end of my compilation).
• Orika (Yana Troyanova) had picked up some bruises walking through the forest when returning from a party - her husband had stayed behind drinking. When he eventually stumbles home, she tells him that the bruises were caused by the ravine devil Vuvar, who raped her after seeing her travelling alone.
• Osylay (Veronika Aktanova), whilst getting ready for a party, trims her pubic hair in the hope of seducing a boy that she likes (implied nudity).

 



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