A BILLION YEARS TO THE END OF CINEMA:
THE FILMS OF ALEXANDER SOKUROV
By Jaime N. Christley
PART ONE
"A director is like a cook in a restaurant who doesn't know the
stomachs of his guests: what he makes is sort of an ideal recipe. The viewer
comes into the theater and begins to eat time. Some of it he digests, some of it
he does not digest. That can make him sick or irritated. Painting knows no such
phenomenon, nor does literature. We could call it the curse of film, the
non-artistic component. Painting is therapy, film is still a kind of
surgery."
-- Alexander Sokurov
In one of those classic oversimplifications that self-taught experts like myself are trained to make, and cannot resist passing on to others, a British colleague of mine recently informed me that when Americans describe a film, they talk about the plot, what happens, the premise, and when Europeans describe a film, they talk about the look. Whether or not this is predominantly true isn't keeping me up at night, but since much of what we see at a film is often defined by what we want to see, I think it's crucial to our growth as a moviegoing culture to consider what baggage (preconceptions, requirements, rules, theories) we take with us when we see films in theatrical venues or on home video, especially those films that directly address and often fly in the face of all the bits of baggage we've been accumulating over a lifetime, and, especially, the ones of which we are most sure. The use of prejudgment is expected of anyone who breathes oxygen, of course, but as the spectrum of expressing ideas through the cinema is too broad and complex for anyone to digest completely, it seems only fair to the artists working within the medium to resist the temptation to apply the same restrictive set of standards to all films or, in the case of the exhilarating, baffling filmography of Russian master Alexander Sokurov, even one film.
It is because of the problems experienced by all but the most intrepid cinematheque and museum patrons in facing difficult works of film art that we, as a moviegoing collective, are constantly tempted by the idea of settling into an entropic, vegetative "system" of evaluating films (hard-line auteurism, entertainment value as a qualitative assessment-a dear friend of mine allows a movie fifteen minutes to "grab" her, or she'll abandon it-critics' star ratings, or an obsessive preoccupation with class struggle and political content), systems which may be the root of more essays and counter-essays than explorations of specific films, systems that usually begin as well-intentioned guides and introductions but somehow, through the vague mechanics of man's perpetual quest for a proxy through which to take in the world, become a constrictive, sacred text, a real paradigmatic crutch. The sad result is that many of us have reached the point where we deem any movie that even hints at having art-house ambitions to be phony, pretentious, and out of touch with the real world, and cast it aside in favor of sanctioned, "safe" works of foreign and independent (if a Sony, Universal, or Miramax purchase can be called that) cinema like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Billy Elliot and Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain-this process resembling less an embrace of what in previous cinematic epochs would be seen as daring, radical, or outré, as it is an expansion of the mainstream to absorb and neutralize what is on the fringes, and to market the exact same mass-market fare with artificial indie cinema scent, while those "artists who aren't afraid of making money" are only too happy to comply. The even sadder irony is that nothing changes except the packaging and the sale; cookie-cutter filmmaking remains prevalent, and if any movies are out of touch, phony, even pretentious, it's probably what's playing at the mall, or sitting on the shelf at Blockbuster Video.
But although Sokurov is categorically a "fringe" director, he's sustained a consistent presence, and while his latest features, Moloch and Taurus, have disappointed devotees expecting the magic of Mother and Son or Days of Eclipse, he's been neither absorbed nor neutralized, not by Cannes, not by the DVD market, and certainly not by the Miramax chiefs, who have so far neglected to work their buy-and-forget magic on any of his films or videos.
I was certainly tempted to assemble a picture of Alexander Sokurov's filmmaking in a manner that could be understood by moviegoers of a wide range of tastes and palates, and particularly those who haven't seen more than a still photograph from his work (the position I was in until February of this year). But that might prove to be an uphill battle, considering the following: Sokurov films are absurdly difficult to find (only Mother and Son (1997) is available on DVD, while there are VHS copies, of varying degrees of quality, of Second Circle (1990), Taurus (2001), and Whispering Pages (1993) circulating through the more esoteric, urban video stores in the U.S., while enthusiasts, fans, and otherwise obscurantist collectors boast copies of the remainder of the director's work), especially in theatrical venues, where they should be seen (James Quandt of the Cinamatheque Ontario has been the key figure in orchestrating retrospectives of Sokurov's work throughout North America). Also, due to the fact that my encounter with a series of his films, as dense as it was expansive, forced me to pare down my excess baggage until all that remained was my fundamental physiological and psychical responses to what patterns he'd arranged for me (at least, that's what I hoped), I can't make the assumption that your experience with his work will even remotely approximate my own. So the goal of writing about Sokurov is not necessarily to provide an introduction or guide to his work for others so much as to provide an introduction to his work for myself, with the hope that you will take something useful from it. Just as I've benefited from commentary that illuminates the nature of the paintings of Robert Ryman, the dance choreography of Merce Cunningham, and the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen, perhaps you will indulge my attempt to identify what I find so exciting about Sokurov's art.
Although I've seen only about half of his finished works (twenty-one features, documentaries and videos, out of, according to his official website, thirty-nine), and although a number of patterns and distinct traits can be culled from any two or three or five of them, his catalog is as diverse, idiosyncratic, and (in a sense) experimental as the fictional one of James O. Incandenza in David Foster Wallace's 1995 novel, Infinite Jest. While Sokurov made no live exhibition of his audience being filmed, nor a political satire acted out by finger puppets, nor a B-grade recidivism picture about a vigilante nun, nor did he find the time to put together a highly volatile samizdat video that drives mad whoever watches it, his work has consistently thwarted expectations regarding not only narrative and art cinema, but also what comes to mind when his name is brought up. To plug one of his films into a predefined genre or category-documentary, adaptation, experimental-is problematic, not really because his work so often defies genre (it does, but sometimes it doesn't--Save and Protect, with all its stylization, is firmly rooted in Flaubert) but because it's the films that should be argued for, not the category restrictions.
With that preface comfortably made and understood, please allow me to present a brief, hopelessly inadequate introduction to the cinema of Alexander Sokurov. (Inadequate for many reasons, not the least of which is that I will neglect to discuss many of the contrasting elements of his filmmaking: video versus celluloid, for example.) I may elect to talk about "the story," as long as it is understood that the traditional narrative is rarely found in the director's work, and usually only in trace form, and I may talk about "the look." Regardless of either, what makes Sokurov's films worth seeing - and they are all worth seeing, even the ones I disliked, is "the cinema."
The English title and the year (according to available sources) come first, followed by the original title in brackets. Dating these films can be problematic, given that, between 1978 and 1987, a hellish interval in Sokurov's career that Kirill Galetski fittingly described as being "Sisyphean," his projects were approved, financed, shot, completed, and then denied public exhibition. If two years are presented, one is the year it was completed and ready for exhibition, the second is the year it actually made its premiere.
Finally, a few frequent collaborators should be named, given how frequently they appear in credits - writer Yuri Arabov, with whom Sokurov collaborated on practically every fiction project, cinematographers Aleksandr Burov, Sergei Yurizditsky, and Aleksei Fyodorov, and the actors Leonid Mozgovoy and Aleksei Ananishnov. I would name composers, but that would only serve to enumerate a dozen or so of the most famous classical composers.
PART TWO
The Lonely Voice of Man (1978-1987); [Odinokij golos cheloveka] – the director’s first feature, made in 1978 but not released until 1987, is the most melancholy (some might say actively depressive) love story since the one in Ermanno Olmi’s Il Posto, and although the film’s narrative loses tension at about the two-thirds mark, this is still an impressive debut – you aren’t likely to guess the year in which it was made unless you’re told beforehand, and it’s highly watchable. It’s also, if you need an interpretation, an allegory about the futility of love between classes – the hero is a poor worker, the girl he marries and abandons is of the educated class.
Maria (1978-1988); [Mariya] – One of my favorite films of the series, and one of a number of titles for which I wasn’t unable to get much background information. This two-part essay/documentary/portrait first presents us with the wonderfully earthy, wonderfully banal peasant woman Maria Semionovna Voinova as she sets about her work growing flax, spends time with her family, and enjoys a vacation at a Crimean resort. This features some of Sokurov’s most breathtaking color photography, and the sprightly, fly-on-the-wall camerawork (he served as his own cinematographer) makes for an interesting contrast with the rest of his work. There’s definitely a Sokurov presence, with difficult-to-decipher long takes such as the one that opens up the second segment; it is many years later, and Maria has died. In a heart-breaking scene, her friends and family are among the very first to view the footage from the first segment – it’s already nostalgia, a record of a lost time and place. One might also contrast Sokurov’s tendencies toward realism with Maria, the footage from the first segment bearing a closer relationship to Agnès Varda’s The Gleaners and I than any Stalin-era propaganda peasant musical. The first segment is also conceivably a glaring anomaly in Sokurov’s filmography (but not, perhaps, in the context of his nonfiction work); it is a celebration of a fight against decay rather than a gloomy depiction of it, a struggle to live and work, and it’s just plain optimistic.
Sonata for Hitler (1979-1989); [Sonata diya Gitlera] – A curiosity that mixes newsreel and archival footage of Hitler to represent (mostly from the end of the war), as Alexandra Tuchinskaya describes, the "psychological aspect" of the German dictator. This eleven-minute film is set to Bach and Penderecki, and the frame is marked with the dates of Stalin and Hitler’s death.
And Nothing More (1982-1987); [Inichego bolshe]– A deceptively straightforward documentary on the Second World War and its aftermath from a Soviet perspective, with a "History Channel" texture, And Nothing More was frowned upon for its bleak, cynical take on post-war events. Sokurov’s creative manipulation of newsreel footage comes close to rivaling Chris Marker’s (the memorable image of the soldier peeking out from behind a wall and ducking back again is one that recurs in his other works; he also splices in color footage from Maria). Documentary filmmaking with this kind of under-the-breath pessimism would be like a blast of fresh air in the United States; an intelligent and educational piece of journalism.
Mournful Indifference (1983-1987); [Skorbnoye beschuvstviye] – The only one of Sokurov’s films I’d dare describe as "wacky," this loose and skittish adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s Heartbreak House has been called Sokurov’s most accessible work, although I’d also grant that to Maria, And Nothing More, Moloch and Taurus (unless "accessible" is intended to imply a close approximation to conventional Hollywood narrative, in which case Sokurov’s entire catalog would be discounted). Mournful Indifference is roughly what would happen if Jacques Rivette’s Celine and Julie characters were unable to leave their acid-trip dream mansion, and their kookiness was assimilated into the household – archive footage of Shaw is meshed with scenes of an actor playing him, as well as documentary footage of starving Africans and tribal ceremonies. Entertaining, with great music and priceless, absurd moments, Mournful Indifference unfortunately seems like nothing more than a "zany" stage comedy in which a bunch of rich twits get drunk and everything ends badly and somebody gets shot.
Evening Sacrifice (1984-1987); [Zhertva vechernyaya] – Other writers have detected an attitude of ennui on the part of the May Day celebrants in Sokurov’s chiaroscuro-tinted documentary/short, an attitude that didn’t seem apparent to me – but that same apathy may be manifest in the youth who shouts and wails into the passing crowd for no apparent reason, and an overall, intangible sense of anxiety. Despite Sokurov’s never-uninteresting facility for creating poetry out of seemingly ordinary, "on the street" scenes, this may not be completely satisfying as something to take time out of your day to sit down and watch, but it could prove interesting as part of a program. Like an Alexander Sokurov retrospective.
Days of Eclipse (1988); [Dni zatmeniya] – Adapted from the sci-fi novel A Billion Years to the End of the World (sometimes referred to as A Million Years before the End of the World) by the same Strugatsky brothers, Boris and Arkadi, who wrote Roadside Picnic, which Andrei Tarkovsky would use for his 1979 masterpiece, Stalker, Days of Eclipse was the first film I saw in the 2002 Museum of Modern Art retrospective, and out of the whole series, it has remained most clearly in my memory. Choked on heat and dust, Sokurov’s breathtaking widescreen imagery of a blasted Central Asian shithole, with its bleached-out yellows and grays and greens, makes Eclipse in atmosphere, mood, and composition closer to a Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West, or the first part of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Wages of Fear, than what we might ordinarily expect from a Soviet film, but its pictures of rot and despair register as another clear link to Stalker, besides the Strugatsky one. Aleksei Ananishnov, a dead ringer for Val Kilmer, plays a bleach-blonde, sculpted young doctor whose impossible good looks stand in stark contrast to the inhabitants of the wasteland at which he’s stationed (it’s unclear whether he’s there as a punishment, by choice, in exile, or on a Peace Corps-type "character building" mission), some of whom are repulsive freaks from a Mad Max sequel, all of whom are destitute. My favorite fiction film of the retrospective (using genre terms in relation to Sokurov and playing with fire being one and the same), any chance to be had of seeing it in 35-millimeter should be seized without hesitation.
Save and Protect (1989); [Spasi i sokhrani] – I overheard more than a few patrons of the retrospective singing the praises of this 167-minute adaptation of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary; one woman very sincerely and firmly declared that it was one of the best films of the last quarter century. Others, like Kirill Galetski, have called it "deadly dull." I’m with Galetski, although if you stay awake for the entire thing, you’re not likely to forget it; many of Sokurov’s films and videos are difficult to follow, but none is as downright eccentric as Save and Protect. Although it has neither the mesmerizing imagery of Mother and Son, Whispering Pages, or a half dozen other works, nor the tension and symphonic extravagance of Days of Eclipse, or the simple, unadorned lyricism of Maria, Oriental Elegy, or dolce…, it’s the only item in Sokurov’s catalog that I would readily describe as, in the traditional sense, novelistic. (For example, Whispering Pages is novelistic, as well as Taurus, but radically, strangely so.) For all its eccentricity, it’s got the most conventional plot – a synopsis of the Flaubert story wouldn’t have to be altered significantly to describe Save and Protect. (Midway through, I began to fantasize that Sokurov undertook the project due to a contractual obligation, or perhaps a desire to court the mainstream – a Soviet counterpart to Steven Soderbergh – but could not rein in his contempt for mainstream moviemaking. I have since then found no evidence to support this notion.)
Soviet Elegy (1989); [Sovetskaya elegiya] – Possibly an avant-garde take on "Meet Your President," possibly an intimate (or impersonal?) portrait that doesn’t exist in the same manner for any other 20th-century leader, Soviet Elegy is dated to 1989, nearly two years before Boris Yeltsin, the film’s subject, became the first democratically elected head of the Russian state. Sokurov’s camera follows Yeltsin as he departs his office for the night, goes down the elevator, gets in his car, and leaves. There’s a montage of past Soviet leaders and figureheads (I could recognize only about five percent of the names – it seemed as if anyone who was ever a member of the Politburo was being listed), and Sokurov joins the future president in his home. Towards the end, there’s a very, very long take of Yeltsin sitting at his kitchen table in silence; it’s difficult to tell if Sokurov is obsessed with the image of the stalwart, aging figure of power, or is simply examining him like a scientist examines an insect. The answer may or may not be found in Moloch and Taurus.
The Second Circle (1990); [Krug vtoroj] – A precursor to his most acclaimed film, Mother and Son, The Second Circle tells of a young man of about eighteen or twenty (or thirty-five) and his efforts to give his father – whom he finds upon visiting has frozen to death in his sleep – a proper funeral. The woman who comes to arrange the burial discovers that the youth is low on spirit and initiative, but quickly runs out of sympathy for his bereaved state when he can hardly collect himself to do anything without constant prodding. This is not a fun film in the vein of, say, Gold Diggers of 1933, and many writers have written it off as a minor, yet admirable, example of Sokurov’s distinctive filmmaking. While it has been, in a number of ways, surpassed by Mother and Son, on its own it’s a lyrical, evocative tale, and not to be missed.
An Example of Intonation (1991); [Primer intonacil] – If you’re watching a film in which the characters or subjects speak in a language you’re not familiar with, and there are no subtitles, you might pass the time by studying the shape of their words, their tone, their inflection…in fact, their intonation. In the case of this forty-eight minute document of Sokurov’s meetings with then-future-Russian-president Boris Yeltsin, that’s precisely the point. It was at this point in the retrospective (this was the last film I saw) that my goodwill towards Sokurov had instilled in me an attitude of being willing to watch anything, really, anything he might have put together, but I’d be lying if I told you I was able to make topsy or turvy from this bona fide head-scratcher, except to label it as a very, very extended specimen of cinematic portraiture. Still, the final scene, showing Yeltsin’s limo cruising down a stretch of country highway, while a police car wards off stray pedestrians, is curiously fascinating.
Stone (1992); [Kamen] – Probably the most enigmatic piece in all of Sokurov’s filmography – and that’s saying something – Stone concerns a dreamlike rendering of the actual Chekhov museum, in which two unidentified men, one a youth, who may be a vagrant, and may be the night watchman (it’s that vague), the other an older, bearded man, who may also be a vagrant, the younger man’s father, or Anton Chekhov himself. Incidentally, pertaining to remarks made by critics, in so many words, and in a variety of languages, that still life doesn’t belong in a motion picture. (It’s a common criticism not just of Sokurov but also of many other "art" film directors.) But a static shot of a man at a piano, his thoughts an undisclosed secret, is quite different from a freeze-frame or snapshot of the same thing, and therein lies the misunderstanding that drives much of the hostility towards Sokurov and other directors who don’t fear stillness in their work. When the spectator also ceases to fear stillness in the cinema, films like Stone are no longer deliberate, infuriating exercises in mystification – they are invigorating, satisfying, exciting works of art.
Whispering Pages (1993); [Tikhiye stranitsy] – Defying familiar conventions of literary adaptation, Whispering Pages isn’t quite "based" on Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment so much as seems to be a film of someone’s memories of and ruminations on the author’s work, as well as, according to the film’s subtitle, a number of unnamed Russian writers from the 19th century. This pale gray, claustrophobic, nearly wordless period piece follows a scruffy Russian youth as he flails about in a nightmarish, but painterly, rendition of Dostoevsky’s urban purgatory. The unnamed central character is probably the most pitiful and helpless of Sokurov’s heroes, but he’s also the angriest, and possibly the most aware of his plight. This film represents one of the reasons that I value Sokurov – no more than a handful of directors can create an atmosphere and picture of a filth- and anxiety-ridden world without polishing it and "selling" it in the manner of David Fincher and Jean-Pierre Jeunet.
A Soldier’s Dream (1995) – Almost too ephemeral to be mentioned, A Soldier’s Dream, at twelve minutes, is the filmic equivalent of a meager sliver of chocolate, or a haiku, and is actually just a fragment in one of Sokurov’s more ambitious projects, the five-part, seven-hour Spritual Voices (1995). The evocative video imagery compensates for the quite understandable sense of is-that-all-there-is-ness; by Sokurov’s own word, "This smaller film was created as a kind of gift to the film critic and historian Dr. Hans Schlegel, who has done so much for me and for so many other Eastern European cinematographers."
Oriental Elegy (1996); [Vostochnaya elegiya] – The first of Sokurov’s Japan series, this forty-five piece was shot on video (the favored format of his "Elegy" series) and is usually projected from a BETACAM videocassette. It contains many recurring Sokurovian tropes, especially for the "Elegy" series – mist, a shadow figure on an unknown shore, broad vista shots of a sleeping village, heavy reliance on optical effects to achieve painterly, stylized tableaux – all of which are at the service of a haunting "journey" video that seems to call upon Dante’s and Japan’s notions of the afterlife with equal measure. A rich, moving, fascinating cinema experience.
Mother and Son (1997); [Mat i syn] – the Sokurov film you’re most likely to hear of, and, along with Days of Eclipse, the one Sokurov title that most frequently appears on lists of favorite films. (Coincidentally, they both star, so to speak, Aleksei Ananishnov.) It’s also, as mentioned before, the only one widely available on videocassette or DVD (it was released by Fox Lorber, which unfortunately for enthusiasts hasn’t got a spotless reputation for video transfer performance). Rather than repeat much of what has been said about the incredible imagery and heartrending story of a man caring for his dying mother, I would instead urge you – if you are in fact interested in reading about the film before going to see it – to refer to the reviews and articles already published. Particularly impressive to me are: the piece by Pascal Acquarello for his Strictly Film School journal, Scott Tobias’s review of the DVD for The Onion AV Club, Jonathan Rosenbaum’s capsule review for the Chicago Reader, J. Hoberman’s review in The Village Voice, and Nick Cave’s oft-cited essay, "I wept and wept, from start to finish," which he wrote for the British newspaper Independent on Sunday in 1998, and which has been copied to several online sites. Why do I leave you with strangers? A good excuse: my own response was one of inexpressible awe and joy.
A Humble Life (1997) – Seventy-six minutes of an elderly Japanese woman cooking, cleaning, combing her hair, reciting haiku. I’ve spoken with a few colleagues who found this entrancing – I’ll have to take their word for it, as I was dead asleep after forty-five minutes. I’m willing to see it again, however, which is more than I can say for Save and Protect.
Moloch (1999); [Molokh] – The opening scenes of Eva Mattes, playing Eva Braun (frequently appearing in films by Werner Herzog and Rainer Werner Fassbinder, she’s no stranger to playing the wife of a monster – in 1978 she won an acting award at Cannes for playing Klaus Kinski’s two-timing wife in Herzog’s Woyzeck), are an eye-opener, as the sexy, sassy, nude Mattes/Braun frolics on the parapets of what looks to be Dracula’s castle or something out of Lord of the Rings; her very sexuality stands in defiance to the gloom – we watch her wave to a soldier looking through his viewfinder (he’s at least a kilometer away). She says goodbye to the peeping Tom by slapping her rump, and retreats into the majestic, deathly vacation home. Leonid Mozgovoy plays the Nazi dictator, with aplomb – his madness is a decay and an exhaustion that are recurrent motifs of Sokurov as rain and earth and fire are of Tarkovsky. Hitler as a character, however, is too massive, too well-known, and too problematic for any filmmaker to use him and avoid either reactionary or strained revisionist attitudes; the problem of what to do with "him" – how to be accurate but not anachronistic, definitive but not redundant – seems to pin down the coattails of any story he’s in, and in spite of Sokurov’s unorthodox approach to narrative filmmaking, and his Russian perspective, he doesn’t earn exemption. The title refers to the god of the Ammonites and Phoenicians to whom parents sacrificed their children, but it might as well be The Trouble With Adolf. Some amazing photography, as usual.
dolce… (1999) – The third "installment" in the filmmaker’s Japan series, which is said to be ongoing, once again demonstrates his affinity for Oriental aesthetics. Shot on video, like A Humble Life and Oriental Elegy, dolce… is a eulogy to the Japanese novelist Toshio Shimao. The first part is a montage of still photographs from Shimao’s life, accompanied by an explanatory voiceover, and the second is an intimate, un-narrated documentary that introduces his wife, who carries out her daily routine and grieves for her departed husband, and cares for her young daughter.
Taurus (2001); [Telets] – Whereas the first ten minutes of Moloch had a beauty and tautness that dissipated with the introduction of its cast, Taurus, about the last days of Vladimir Lenin, is a lugubrious chore that concludes with the most breathtaking and serene moments in all of Sokurov’s cinema, expressing a sensibility usually found in classic Japanese films of Yasujiro Ozu and Kenji Mizoguchi. Mozgovoy, in an amazing transformation, becomes the elderly Lenin, cursed with an official sainthood that has rendered him powerless in an attractive, funereal country veranda. Near the end, a moment worthy of Tati: Lenin concludes a restful contemplation by hollering like an animal into the woods – and who answers him? The bellowing cows, grazing in a nearby field.
Elegy of a Voyage (2001); [Elégie de la traversée] – Those disappointed by Taurus and Moloch were given the opportunity to experience a video piece that sees Sokurov truly in his element. More abstract than Chris Marker’s meditations on travel and dislocation, this Elegy is nevertheless imbued with a similar melancholy sense of longing and homesickness as that of Marker’s Sans soleil and La Jetée, as well as a childlike curiosity of new places. The traveler whom we met in Oriental Elegy, shrouded in darkness and probably played by Sokurov himself, flickers through barely identified places and events like Billy Pilgrim in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five. He finds himself at a baby’s baptism, a museum at night (there’s butcher paper on the floor), and at a rest stop with a fellow traveler, a young man who speaks a strange language and smiles sadly but makes him (and us) feel welcome. As usual with the director, Elegy is more concern with vagueness, themes, and emotions than with specific ideas and thoughts.