White Tiger.

Karen Shakhnazarov is allegedly one of Russia's top modern day filmmakers he is also the Director General of Mosfilm Film Studio, often described as the largest and oldest studio not just in Russia but also in Europe. Famously used during the Soviet era for films made by Tarkovsky and Eisenstein as well as by Japanese director Akira Kurosawa who worked there in 1975 on the must see Dersu Uzala.

Shakhnazarov's latest movie White Tiger (2012) was selected as the Russian entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the 85th Academy Awards but unfortunately did not make the final short list. Based on a novel by Ilya Boyashov entitled The Tank Crewman and featuring music by Richard Wagner, the film is set in WW2 in the summer of 1943 on the Russian Front.

In a burnt out tank a man is found on the brink of death with 90% burns. He is taken to a field hospital where in a remarkably short time he recovers completely. He can not remember his name or details but strangely has retained his skill as one of Russia's great tank drivers. Given the name Ivan Naydenov (from the Russian word for ‘found’) he is sent back to the front to re-join his tank squadron. Naydenov (Aleksey Vertkov) admits to his commanding officer that he now has the ability to communicate with tanks! At first his colleges humour him but they gradually come to believe that there is something in his claims. In the meantime rumours arise about a new, invincible German tank that appears seemingly out of nowhere and disappears just as quickly, destroying dozens of Soviet tanks in the process. This mysterious ghost tank is dubbed "White Tiger" by the Soviet forces.

A three man tank crew consisting of gunner, a loader and of course Naydenov has been set up to take control of a specially adapted tank to track down the Tiger.  Naydenov obsession with tanks has now got to the stage where he is praying to the God of tanks.  They finally catch up with this giant battle machine, after it has wiped out a whole squadron of Russian tanks, in a deserted township and the two tanks line up like an old-fashioned western gunfight. Naydenov and his crew have the upper hand until the gun barrel on their tank explodes and the Tiger makes it escape. Shortly after this incident we witness the German high command surrendering to the Russians, papers are signed and the war is virtually over but Ivan Naydenov informs his commanding officer that he will never rest until he has destroyed the White Tiger even if it takes him the rest of his life.

  

Ivan Naydenov played by the outstanding Aleksey Verkov.

                                                                                                                                           

Authentic acting from the cast with superb manipulation of the tanks, the movie is so believable and gritty you can almost smell the mud and taste the desolation. Without trying to inject a spoiler the ending is quite strange with Adolf Hitler making an appearance coupled with a speech about the inevitability of war! In fact both the final surrender and Hitler’s scene could almost have come from an entirely different movie! This is the director’s first war film and a jolly unusual one, but one that sits effectively between a fantasy and an authentic war movie. The White Tiger is said to represent a mystic incarnation of the German spirit and when Naydenov declares that the White Tiger will return he is obviously referring to the future rise of Fascism in Europe and as our hero says of the Tank "he’s waiting, he is, he will wait twenty years, fifty, maybe a hundred.”

The real stars of this film are the tanks.

Man With a Movie Camera.

Talking to a colleague this week about Russian cinema I realised that that other than the work of Andrei Tarkovsky, director of such films as Ivan's Childhood (1962) and Stalker (1979) I know very little about the subject. He did however recommend a silent 1929 black and white avant-garde documentary by Dziga Vertov entitled Man with a Movie Camera.

The director’s opening credits start with citizens filing into a cinema to watch the same film we are about to see and at its conclusion we view the same audience leaving the cinema spilling out on to the busy streets. The film records a day in the life of a ‘modern’ Soviet city, in fact it was filmed in several different places including Moscow, Kiev and Odessa. Beginning when the city is still, no traffic, no people, then as the city gradually awakens buses and trams appear, the empty streets fill with bustling people. We witness their lives and how they work, rest and play. Vertov packs all urban Russian life into his ‘day’, we see a baby born to an expectant mother, we observe children playing, and people shopping. We follow an accident victim as he is rushed to hospital for what appears to be life saving treatment.  You become an observer as couples marry, separate and divorce in a government office’s, you’re a bystander as industry transforms from labour intensive practices to modern labour saving devices like sewing machines and cash registers. With peoples newly found leisure time we discover them socialising in state subsidised clubs and beer halls; and taking part in sporting activities.

 

The star of this documentary; the camera, always seen, never hidden.

This stunning montage with its non linear narrative works extremely well keeping your concentration for the its full 68 minute running time thanks to the director (real name Denis Kaufman), his brother the cameraman Mikhall Kaufman and Vertov’s wife Elizaveta Svilova who was responsible for the editing with all its imaginative cuts and splices, these three made up a group called Kino-Okis (Cinema–eyes). However the real star of the show is the camera, never hidden from its subjects, always prodding and prying to grand effect. The film forms a textbook of cinematic techniques using slow motion, animation, multiple images, split screen, zoom and reverse zoom, blurry focus and freeze frame and clever visual puns including a piano twined with a type writer’s keyboard. Obviously all-standard techniques today but this movie was made in 1929! This historical document is weirdly fascinating showing the Russian metropolis with its well-stocked shops and an active happy populace with ‘what could then be seen as a bright future’[1] unleashed by the Russian revolution.

 

Technical inovations like split screen. 

The BFI DVD features a choice of three soundtracks; the Alloy Orchestra, who has closely followed Vertov’s notes on the music to accompany the film, composed the first. Secondly we have a new score from In the Nursery that deploys the latest music technology to create a soundtrack that deliberately reflects the director’s progressive filmmaking techniques. The final choice is a commentary by Yuri Tsivian, a leading historian of Russia’s silent cinema.  This is an absolute must see for all lovers of world cinema.

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[1] BFI DVD Notes by Philip Kemp.

The Mirror

Tarkovsky's mother reflects on her life.

‘Tarkovsky’s body of work establishes that the Hollywood mode of narrative is not the only way in which film can create an emotional response from an audience’.[1]  In-between Solaris (1972) and Stalker (1979) he made The Mirror (1975) “A film which does not impose, doesn’t suggest anything, it just tries to arouse in you the most beautiful feelings and thoughts. A film for imaginative people.” Each of us can see, or ponder, our own life through this movie; The Mirror is our own reflection! Are some of you afraid to dream?

The Mirror's Russian Poster.

The film is said to be personal, blending childhood memories including the director’s evacuation to the countryside from his home in Moscow during the war, his relationship with his troubled father and mother, using contemporary footage, archive newsreel and actual poetry written by his father. The film covers three different time frames: pre-war, wartime and the 1960’s.

A clip from the film showing the beautiful Soviet military balloon from the Spanish Civil War.

The Mirror is typical of Andrei Tarkovsky’s directing style, long takes where time seems to stand still, and beautiful dreamy poetic imagery. It maybe hard to summarise but this is cinematic poetry that will titillate you’re visual senses. Another of Tarkovsky’s film's that deserves more than one viewing.

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[1] Review of film from Michael Zeigerman.

Ivan’s Childhood.

Ivan as played by Nikolay Burlyaev.

Andrei Tarkovsky is an original and unique artist who can never be accused of making films purely for entertainment. The Soviet directors debut full-length feature film was also my initial experience of this filmmaker, Ivan’s Childhood (1962) was the first film shown by Darren Conner at the RBC Film Club when it moved from Gracefield to the cinema proper. Contrasting a bright world of childhood reminiscences and the cruel, sombre reality of war, it caused a real sensation in World Cinema at the time of its release.  Ingmar Bergman said of the film: "My discovery of Tarkovsky's first film was like a miracle. Suddenly, I found myself standing at the door of a room the keys of which had, until then, never been given to me. It was a room I had always wanted to enter and where he was moving freely and fully at ease.

Russia at war!

It was quite normal in wartime Russia for very young children to help out the war effort, not all children were sent away to the safety of the countryside like young evacuees in the UK, and many of those who survived where honored for their efforts. The film starts with a young boy, Ivan played by Nikolay Burlyaev, dreaming of peacetime and his mother, (Irma Raush, Tarkovsky wife) when the 12 year old awakes from his fantasies we find him in the middle of a war zone, crossing a vast swamp, carrying vital information for the Russian high command. Because of his size he is able to pass freely between enemy lines. The story unfolds highlighting the respect that the soldiers have for the young hero and how he is offered the chance to be sent away to military school but he insists on continuing his clandestine operations.

Ivan is respected and excepted by his colleagues.

Ivan’s Childhood is a good place to start Tarkovsky’s small but important oeuvre, it comprises a more or less standard narrative plus flash backs and dream sequences. Tarkovsky’s was the second attempt to film Vladimir Bogomolov’s 1957 short story, originally it was directed by Eduard Abalov but was aborted because the Russian Arts Council deemed the work ‘unsatisfactory and unusable’. Offered to Tarkovsky in June 1961, with half the budget spent and a revamped script, he readily accepted. With this film he breathed new life into the conventional genre of World War 2 punctuating his young hero’s last days with dreams and dark premonitions, a film that say’s more about the hardships of war than a great many other movies with much larger budgets and technical gimmickry.  An authentic and classic piece of work from this great director.