Film: Zvenigora
Release date: 14th February 2011
Certificate: 12
Running time: 70 mins
Director: Alexander Dovzhenko
Starring: Georgi Astafyev, Nikolai Nademsky, Vladimir Uralsky, Les Podorozhnij, Semyon Svashenko
Genre: Drama/Fantasy
Studio: Mr. Bongo
Format: DVD
Country: Soviet Union
Ukrainian director Alexander Dovzhenko is widely regarded as being one of the most important figures in Eastern European cinema. When his silent film Zvenigora (the first in his ‘Ukraine Trilogy’, along with Arsenal and Earth) was released in 1928, it provoked an animated, antagonised response from the viewing public. Branded “incomprehensible” by some critics, but lauded as a masterpiece by others, the film has been praised for its use of cinematic flair to mix lyricism, mysticism and beauty with Dovzhenko’s own political ideals. Despite the controversy - or perhaps because of it - Zvenigora remains one of the most important works of its genre.
An old man guides a party of riders to the mountain Zvenigora, where he tells them a buried treasure lays hidden. While searching, they discover a trapdoor buried in the earth, and from it rises a spectral monk who haunts and guards the mountain, and chases them away.
We flash forward a thousand years, where the old man (seemingly unchanged), now has two grandsons, the lazy Pavlo and the diligent Timosh, who embodies the brave, hard-working ideals of the new Bolshevik ideals. World War I breaks out, and Timosh heads to the front to fight. His brother stays behind, and returns with the old man to the mountain to again search for the treasure. After a political realisation, Pavlo also joins the war, but on the side of the revolution, and ends up facing his brother in conflict.
While the war rages on, the Ukraine grows and advances from a traditional, agricultural world under the unstoppable advance of modernisation. We see how the old man, Pavlo and Timosh all respond to the changes in their own, very different ways…
The visual beauty of Zvenigora is breathtaking. With haunting imagery, lingering shots of stark, withered landscapes and silhouetted dead trees reaching fingers into empty skies, Dovzhenko’s vision of the old Ukraine looks ravaged, and burnt. Entire passages are presented in slow motion, like the opening shot of riders thundering past the screen in surreal slow motion, and give a frightening, dream-like quality to the film. Other technical achievements include the spectre looming ominously out of the forest as an overlay to the fleeing soldiers, and scenes of soldiers in conflict, which still hold up remarkably well, and have lost none of their impact. The other star of the piece is the score. In any silent film the music must be as much a character as any on the screen, and here it is layed out in an ominous, tonal soundscape for the mythical images to float upon.
That Zvenigora is a propaganda piece is incontestable, Dovzhenko himself even called it: “A party membership card.” However, there is more at play here than just a standard party political, and those viewing Zvenigora merely as a political message will miss out on much. Dovzhenko plays with myth, folklore, and superstition to create a world of traditionalist Ukrainian values and lifestyles, in union with the beauty of nature, and at odds with the impending swell of political conflict. The modernisation of the country – while at the time intended to show the brave might of revolutionary spirit and the force of human muscle - seems now unstoppable and terrifying, and the single-mindedness of the military forces appears often more like wild-eyed, blinkered madness. Crucially, while himself a strident Bolshevik, the director doesn’t merely preach, but involves us deeply in the debate by immersing us in the humanity of all angles; the old world, wrapped in tradition and mythology, quests for buried treasure, and the struggle of the Bolshevik front, and its own quest for modernising the Ukraine.
The problems with Zvenigora come largely from the ignorance of its audience. A little research into the period and the director reveals much about the themes of the film, the struggles of the time and the Ukrainian people’s attitude towards their country, and where it was heading. Armed with this knowledge, the whole thing makes a lot more sense, but without it viewers will doubtless be left dazed and bemused by the myriad stark and confusing imagery. Each line of dialogue will confuse further, as the frames of reference are so far removed from what we know of modern day cinema or indeed modern day philosophy or politics. As such, one is left simply to admire the stunning imagery on screen, and absorb a general essay on a country struggling with changes to long established traditions. Inevitably you might emerge feeling that you have missed the point, and it is somewhat heartening to learn that upon its release in 1928, audiences were just as confused. The film was branded over-ambitious and even incomprehensible. To these charges Dovzhenko replied: “Look for the reason for incomprehensibility in yourself.”
Technically rich and satisfying, but largely impenetrable to those unfamiliar with the period or its themes, Zvenigora is probably one for those already well versed on Eastern European cinema. For the rest of us, aside from its surface charms, it will remain largely a mystery. LOZ
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