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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
Film: Arsenal
Release date: 14th February 2011
Certificate: 15
Running time: 87 mins
Director: Alexander Dovzhenko
Starring: Semyon Svashenko , Amvrosi Buchma, Georgi Khorkov, Dmitri Erdman, Sergey Petrov
Genre: Drama/War
Studio: Mr. Bongo
Format: DVD
Country: Soviet Union/Ukraine
First released in 1929, Arsenal, one of Alexander Dovzhenko’s great masterpieces of silent soviet cinema, is being re-released on DVD. Also known as January Uprising in Kiev in 1929 when it was first released in the UK, it is the second movie of Dovzhenko’s Ukraine trilogy, sitting in between 1928s Zvenigora and 1930s Earth. Though originally criticized in Soviet Russia for being counter revolutionary, Arsenal was received better in the West for obvious reasons.
Beginning in 1917, Russia is suffering during the Great War, as Tsar Nicholas II sits in his office largely oblivious to the woes and circumstances of his fellow countrymen.
Returning from the frontline, are a number of defecting soldiers, one of which is the film’s hero Tymish Stoyan (Semyon Svashenko), who is heading back to his native Kiev where he intends to work in the Arsenal factory.
In the lead up to the Ukrainian Constituent Assembly elections, which are haphazardly arranged in the wake of the Ukraine/Soviet war, it soon transpires that the city’s Bolsheviks are not being very well represented. Allying themselves with the Soviet forces, the Bolsheviks soon become involved in an armed uprising in one of the city’s munition factories, the famous January Uprising, which gave rise to the Russian Revolution. Stoyan is obviously also involved in the armed uprising, becoming a ‘bulletproof’ revolutionary hero in the film’s famous closing scene...
The film’s narrative can be difficult to follow on first viewing but it is through the Dovzhenko’s montages and imagery that Arsenal is remembered as a compelling piece of Soviet propaganda film making.
The accompanying music throughout the film’s 70 minute duration is provided by a discordant string section which only adds to the malevolent air of revolutionary menace within this historical epic. There are times in which the melodies become sweeping, but generally Igor Belza’s score promotes a genuinely unsettling tone.
The imagery of the movie has similarly lost none of its potency, now faithfully remastered for its DVD release. Early sections when a woman beats her children and a man beats his horse whilst the Tsar writes letters in his cushy office do well to define the suffering of the people at the lower end of the social spectrum. Meanwhile, a following sequence set upon the frontlines where a soldier falls prey to German laughing gas is frantically disturbing. Importantly, as a movie that is supposed to glorify the armed uprising of a Bolshevik movement, Arsenal’s representation of war and violence is one of disdain. Accompanied with shots of smiling corpses, Arsenal presents you with an array of images that are guaranteed to stick within your imagination.
The film can also be appreciated allegorically, a sequence involving a runaway train implies the unstoppable movement towards revolution - its subsequent crash may perhaps represent the inherent danger of such great social transition. Yet, with Tymish Stoyan emerging undamaged from the wreckage, the film finds its heroic protagonist worthy of the Soviet Union.
Stoyan himself is a brooding presence, a distinguished brow accenting his unblinking steely eagle eyed gaze. For all the horrors that happen around him, all the executions, he remains an enigmatic hero. In the final scene, in which he comes to literally portray the undying Bolshevik spirit, his muted screams for death as he bares his chest to the barrels of several enemy rifles provides much food for thought that will linger long after the credits finish rolling.
For newcomers, Arsenal is a very difficult watch, an overpowering score, a series of imposing black-and-white faces and distorted facial expressions perhaps echo the socio-political purposes of the film. For fans of this specific genre, however, the re-release of Arsenal is worthy of experiencing all over again. For anyone else, history students or those who are just curious in silent cinema, Dovzhenko’s masterfully creates mesmerizing and often disturbing shots that are rife with complexity and are essentially timeless. CPH
Zvenigora stars Nikolai Nademsky (Earth), as the grandfather of Timoshka (Semyon Svashenko), whom he alerts to secret treasure buried in the mountains, which the boy spends the rest of his life trying to find.
The film wonderfully blends both lyricism and politics, and uses its central construct to build a montage praising Ukrainian industrialisation, attacking the European bourgeoisie, celebrating the beauty of the Ukrainian steppe and re-telling ancient folklore.
Zvenigora is a most remarkable avant-garde film, which has a unique style in its approach, and disregards the more traditional storytelling devices.
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
From trailblazing Soviet director Alexander Dovzhenko’s comes the first film of his loose trilogy, Arsenal (1929).
Arsenal is the remarkable, action-packed film based on the real life events of the Ukrainian Civil War, and stars Semyon Svashenko in the lead role.
Set in the bleak aftermath and devastation of World War One, a recently demobbed soldier, Timosh, returns to his hometown Kiev, after having survived a train wreck. His arrival coincides with a national celebration of Ukrainian freedom, but the festivities are not to last as a disenchanted Timosh soon begins to clash with the city’s authorities when he starts to agitate for the adoption of the Soviet system.
Arsenal is an emotionally wrenching film.
Film: Arsenal
Release date: 14th February 2011
Certificate: 15
Running time: 87 mins
Director: Alexander Dovzhenko
Starring: Semyon Svashenko , Amvrosi Buchma, Georgi Khorkov, Dmitri Erdman, Sergey Petrov
Genre: Drama/War
Studio: Mr. Bongo
Format: DVD
Country: Soviet Union/Ukraine
