SIDEBURNS
A film review by Thomas E. Billings
Copyright 1991 Thomas E. Billings
Synopsis: A medium-sized Soviet city is plagued by a youth gang that resembles Western punks. A traditionalist organizes another group, the Alexander Pushkin Appreciation Society, to combat the punks. A satire of Soviet society and the effects of Perestroika; this film resembles a movie version of a Monty Python historical sketch. Outrageously funny!
U.S.S.R. (English subtitles), color, 1990, 100 minutes. Director: Yuri Mamin.
The time is the present. A medium-sized Soviet city is plagued by a gang of college-aged youth, the Capellas. They look and act like Western punks; they hold wild parties in a disco, their women expose their bare breasts in public, and they engage in other types of openly decadent behavior. They are opposed by another gang, the Bashers, who are rednecks and body builders.
Into this social turmoil come two young men, dressed in rather formal clothes: black dress pants, white shirts, black capes, hats, and canes. They worship Alexander Pushkin, a Russian literary figure who lived around 1800. They despise the decadence of the Capellas, and organize the Bashers into a Pushkin gang, dressing them in the "uniform" they wear, i.e. they all dress like Pushkin. They train in the use of the cane as a martial art, in a hilarious scene reminiscent of those group calisthenics scenes that are obligatory in a kung fu movie.
One night the Pushkin gang attacks the Capellas and runs them out of town. This pleases the city's residents very much. The story continues as the gang is certified as an official youth organization. They grow in membership and power, and evolve into a para-military organization....
This film is a nice satire of current trends in Soviet society. The Pushkin cult is clearly a cult of personality, similar to the personality cults the Soviet government has forced on its citizens in the past. This point is underscored when the cult members go around town, taking down the large, red government banners (with their stupid socialist slogans), replacing them with large white banners with quotations from Pushkin.
As the Pushkin cult grows, from a small gang, to an official youth organization, to a large organization with a merchandising wing, it becomes increasingly more militaristic and totalitarian. The growth of the cult is an example of one of the dangers of increasing freedom in the USSR, namely that new forms of totalitarianism may arise to take the place of the old totalitarianism of Communism. Indeed, by presenting a totalitarian organization based on an 1800's literary figure, the film suggests that the roots of totalitarianism are old and firmly established in Soviet society and the Soviet psyche. Reportedly, the film has had only limited screenings in the USSR, probably as a result of the fact that it links personality cults with the emergence of new forms of totalitarianism.
Although the work has clear political overtones and an important message, you do not need to appreciate that to enjoy the movie. The idea that literary figures form the basis for large, totalitarian personality cults is so silly that the film is really very funny. Also, the film doesn't take itself very seriously, as it is intended to be a satire. The silliness makes the film resemble a movie-length version of a Monty Python style historical sketch.
Because of the great humor in the film, I recommend it to a general audience; strongly recommended to fans of satire and Monty-Python-style humor.
Print Source: Lenfilm/Golos; 10 Kirovsky Prospekt; Leningrad, USSR.
Reviewer contact: teb@stat.Berkeley.EDU
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