DRIVE ON!
A film review by Felix Kreisel
Copyright 1996 Iskra Research
Montreal 1996 The recently concluded Montreal World Film Festival is one of the better known venues of the cinema world. It attempts to promote a wide range of filmmakers from many countries by requiring as little as possible in promotion expenditures. This year the Festival organizers paid special attention to current Russian films and even gave a special prize in the category of the Russian Cinema of Today. This writer was able to view a number of the more significant films presented at the Festival. Preceding my impressions I have included the official descriptions provided by the Festival organizers.
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Yekhai!
* * * * * * * Official information * * * * * * *
Director: Georgy Shengelia. Script: Alexei Timm. Based on the play "Yekhai!" by Nina Sadur. Photography: Ilia Diomin. Editor: Edward Gimpel. Music: Roman Zagorodniuk. Sound: Yuliia Yegorova. Cast: Vladimir Il'yin, Tatiana Kravchenko, Larisa Shakhvorostova. Producer: Konstantin Slobodchikov, Roman Burimov, Oldmore Image.
One long winter evening, Piotr Gavrilin, a rural bulldozer operator, suffers a fit of depression. He feels that his life is senseless. He has a good wife, some savings for his retirement and his children are all grown up and living on their own. But one thing appears to have gone missing from his life: love. For other people this may just seem like the onset of middle age: for Piotr it is a full-blown crisis. His wife won't give him any money for drink, his boss doesn't appreciate him and among his old friends only the goat has remained faithful. The only way out for Piotr seems suicide. He lays down on the railway track and waits for the next train. But fate would have it that the locomotive is driven by a former actor from the local drama group and he manages to stop the train in time. Act Two is about to begin.
* * * * * ) Iskra Research; by F. Kreisel * * * * *
This movie was the gem of this Festival. It was funny, sad, wise, insightful. Gavrilin, played by Il'in, lost more than love, he lost a sense of purpose. Yes, his wife is very different from the thin, shy adorable girl he married. She snores in bed, watches Mexican soaps and only seems to care about money, and more money. But it is his whole neighborhood, his village and his country which have changed drastically, and for the worse. He walks out of the house onto the evening street after a quarrel with his wife, and realizes that he is completely alone, except for his pet goat. All his neighbors have their TVs on and are watching some idiotic foreign (or foreign inspired) shows. His workmates release themselves through weekend drunken binges. The former factory head, who has now become the president of the production association in which Gavrilin holds a share, is screwing the workers out of their stock in the enterprise while at the same time he is also screwing his private secretary right there in the office (this scene is reminiscent of the hilarious portrayal of the state governor, played by Mel Brooks, in the movie "Blazing Saddles"). The acting by Il'in is superb, he has a fantastic screen presence. When in the middle of the night he pulls out an old photo of his wife and tries to find with a magnifying glass the lost beauty on the face of the snoring woman lying in bed next to him, we feel the full weight of years and bad experiences which had stunted her personality, just as they ravaged her body. When his wife's TV turns out to be more important than their relationship, Gavrilin hacks up the Sony with an axe. When life loses meaning, Gavrilin decides that it will take a whole train to separate his head from his body, lesser methods of suicide won't do. The driver of the oncoming train is also a real character. He was formerly an actor in a workers' club and has a real love for the theater, for words and their effect on a person. He turns to Goethe's "Faust" to find a way to convince Gavrilin that life has its own reason, that knowledge, even knowledge of one's frailties and mortality, is precious. To see these workers' hunger for reason, for truth, their appreciation of Goethe's poetry is truly optimistic. When the bulldozer driver and the train driver discuss their lives and loves we see ourselves in them, we too search for happiness. This adventure ends when a woman track inspector finds the stopped train and takes the fellow philosophers to her house for dinner. Gavrilin's wife and goat also turn up in the end. The director, alas, finds happiness in a retreat from society, in a turn of a lonely woman track inspector to God. Religion has for many Russians become their last desperate hope. What a pessimistic outlook this is. -- Iskra Research -- Historical research and publication of Marxist classics in the Russian language. Address: PO Box 397142, Cambridge, MA 02139-7142; e-mail: fjk@mit.edu http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/fjk/iskra.html
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