putin’s people (catherine belton)

It’s hard to know what needs to be said about Catherine Belton’s book about the rise of Vladimir Putin and the way the former KGB has seized power in Russia and infiltrated the corridors of power far beyond. It’s one of those books which is essential reading for understanding the state of our modern world. Even if some of it were to be wide of the mark, enough of it surely hits the mark to mean that its central thesis cannot be too far off. Power is power and power always seeks to reinforce itself, but when you are British and you see the way in which the country has been manipulated and brought down, if even if a tenth of what Belton speculates is true, it makes for a profoundly depressing read. Essentially, the book argues, the establishment in Britain has allowed itself to be bought by foreign interests. As she frequently states, Putin understood that the establishment in ‘the West’ had been hollowed out of all moral value. So he could mercilessly steal, oppress and wage war, without any risk, so long as he kept their coffers full. In London, this establishment is represented by lawyers, accountants, property developers, politicians and who knows what else. Russian money has been a Trojan horse and Britain is not the only country to have been susceptible to it, but it might be we were the weakest.

This just one strand of modern Russia’s geo-political strategy. Belton’s book is also very informative about the development of tensions between Russia and Ukraine, outlining the steps since the break-up of the USSR that have lead to the current outrageous but predictable Russian aggression. The early part of the book which details how Putin and his cronies seized power first in St Petersburg and then Moscow, displacing Yeltsin and his chosen oligarchs, is told with meticulous and plausible detail. Whilst the Putin/ KGB playbook perhaps encounters more fertile ground in a society such as Russia, which has never known democracy, there seems little doubt that others in the West have watched and sought to emulate his methods and will continue to do so. 

the conquest of spain (mary pix)

 In a conversation about classic British theatre texts, C upbraided me for not being more disposed to include female writers in the conversation. Which seemed upon reflection, a completely reasonable complaint. Aside from Aphra Behn, there are no female writers in the British theatre cannon pre twentieth century (and precious few post.) And to mention Aphra Behn is something of a false lead, as we were never given Aphra Behn to study. All of which lead to some more investigation and the discovery that there have been far more female writers of theatre than we are given to realise. Amongst whom, the name Mary Pix and the title, The Conquest of Spain, stood out.

The Conquest of Spain, first performed in 1705, is a tragedy in five acts, which contrasts the fate of two female characters, Jacincta and Margaretta, both victims of duplicitous male behaviour. Jacincta, daughter of the noble warrior, Julianus, is raped by the King whilst his forces are waging a war against the invading Moors, his army lead by Julianus. Margaretta’s betrothed, Antonio, is part of that army,  but Antonio’s right hand man, Alvarez, has designs on her. Much of this feels, in story terms, quite conventional. There are plenty of Elizabethan and Jacobean plays where the female characters own the stage just as much as the male characters. Pix gives her characters agency, but they are passive characters and the play doesn’t feel as though it is breaking any feminist ground.

What is most curious about the play, relates to another element in the culture wars of today, which we can see spiralling out of the bedrock of history. The enemy the Spanish forces are confronting is the Moors, who they initially defeat. But because of the king’s moral decadence, Antonio and Jacincta’s former lover ally themselves with the defeated army to turn on the king. The Moorish leader, Mullymumen, joins them and together they prevail against the king’s forces. When Antonio asks him to return to North Africa, Mullymumen refuses, announcing the conquest of Spain. Jacincta and Julianus both die, but Margaretta and Antonio are permitted to flee and live out their lives. (“Fly you beauteous mourners”).

There is another moment when Jacincta appears disguised, wearing the veil. These cross-cultural allusions and representations feel surprising to the modern reader, accustomed to an inherited idea regarding racial and religious stereotypes from this era. Not only is Pix representing the Muslim Moors on stage, she is also portraying them as having greater moral integrity than a European king; and there is nothing in the denouement to suggest that Mullymumen will not make a far better ruler than the man he has vanquished. Our inherited understanding of how people saw the world pre twentieth century seems suspiciously limited, when one starts to scratch the surface. 

sexmission (w&d juliusz machulski, w. pavel hajný, jolanta hartwig)

Poland 1984. The country had recently emerged from Martial Law, under the rule of General Jaruzelski. In the shipyards of Gdansk, Lech Walesa was leading a social movement that would change the world. Great Polish directors like Wajda, Kieslowski, Agnieszka Holland, were more or less at the peak of their powers. And Juliusz Machulski released Sexmission, a satire so crude Jonathan Swift would have been proud. Two scientists, Maks and Albert, are cryogenically stored and wake up in the year 2044 to find that men have been abolished and women rule the world. Everyone lives underground because of a nuclear accident. Maks and Albert have emerged into this brave new world, and Maks, played by Jerzy Stuhr, the protagonist of Kieslowski’s Camera Buff, is determined to convince the women that they have been missing out on something. This leads to farcical scenes with the men eventually threatened with being ‘naturalised’, ie having their gender changed, before they finally escape. When they do, they discover that the world outside is far from what they, or any of the women living below, had been lead to believe. The point of the film is in this final sequence, which one imagines was conceived during Marital Law itself, as the film was released in 1984, and Martial Law only ended in 1983. The world outside (the world beyond the Communist block) is nothing like you have been lead to believe, the film boldly declares, dressed up as a sex romp to keep the old guard amused. Reminiscent to some extent of Brazil, and presumably made on a far smaller budget, IMDB informs that it is one of the most successful Polish movies ever made, and shows that subversive, political films don’t have to be po-faced. 

diva (w&d jean-jacques beineix, w. jean van hamme)

Diva is another in the vein of eclectic French cinema which embraced a discordant, vaguely operatic structure, foregoing character development in the name of spectacle and provocation. It sits alongside the films of Carax and Jeunet, to name but two. Where this strand emerges from in French culture is an intriguing question. Perhaps all the way back to Rabelais, or Huysmans. Definitely in the arch tomes of Blaise Cendrars, even Jules Verne. This nearest equivalent I can think of in the British canon is Greenaway. The makers of these stories create fantastical fables, which paint unlikely stories with a broad palette. There’s no particular reason why anyone would make a film about a postman who is obsessed with opera and finds himself caught up in a subplot of a vice ring run by a corrupt police inspector, but it’s precisely this melange which makes Diva such a bracing, unlikely watch, catapulting it to cult status. The kernel at the heart of this weird fruit is the opera singer herself, who radically refuses to have her voice recorded, insisting in only existing in the real. Wilhelmenia Fernandez as Cynthia Hawkins, the US singer, lends the film gravitas. Her presence cuts through the slightly hackneyed world of the French policier, and lends a poetic dimension to the journey of Jules, the postman who is obsessed by her voice. This journey is in no way conventional in story terms: we are given little insight into the protagonist’s evolution as a result of his misadventures. Rather, he glides like a note through the film which is in many ways an exercise in mise en scene, with the set piece sequences and locations knitted together into an unlikely collage. If there is a subtext to the movie, it is that meaning should remain as ephemeral as the singer’s voice. As an audience we want to capture meaning, possess it, but just as Cynthia Hawkins resists being recorded, so the real meaning of Jules’ adventure escapes us. The subplot of the vice ring is nothing more than a motor to keep the film ticking, to arrive at the point where the singer is confronted by the beauty of her own voice for the very first time.

Ps it is lovely to see a still distressed Bouffes du Nord theatre make an appearance, and the use of this theatre as a magical space is another key element in the film. At one point we see Hawkins singing from the point of view of Jules, and the back of a few heads seem to interrupt our vision. For a tiny moment, it feels as though those heads might be in our theatre, or cinema: we are placed in Jules’ seat, present for the sound of a miracle. 

el otro tom (w&d rodrigo plá & laura santullo)

The title of the film is derived from the eponymous protagonist’s dual personality. Tom is a nine year old with ADHD. His Mexican mum, Elena, is raising him on her own in a small town in the USA, where she has to work long hours in order to pay the bills. Tom is an impossible child. Restless, destructive, getting into fights at school. Elena, at her wits’ end, seeks medical help and Tom is given a whole array of pills to control his behaviour. But the pills seem, if anything, to be counter productive. Tom doesn’t get any better, he actually gets worse and ends up making a suicide attempt. Elena is informed by a kindly neighbour that this is a possible side effect of the medication Tom is taking. Together, she and Tom decide to stop him taking the pills, but when this gets out to the school, she is told that this is abusive behaviour and could lead to Tom being taken out of her custody.

The film ends with a trip to Mexico, as Elena comes to the conclusion that what her son needs, more than anything else, is a reunion with his father, the kindly but feckless Julian, and his patria. As this narrative development unfolds, we realise that the Other Tom also refers to the bipolar experience of being a Latino/a in the USA. Tom seems like another person in Mexico, as indeed does his mother. The film concludes with a dreamy, hypnotic shot as Elena’s cares seem to be literally washed away. Tom’s ADHD, which never quite takes centre stage, ends up feeling like a metaphor for the immigrant experience. Switching constantly between Spanish and English and highly reminiscent of Samuel Kishi’s Los Lobos, El Otro Tom is one of those films that speak to the little known other in the USA, the barely visible Latino diaspora. 

el empleado y el patron. (w&d manolo nieto)

Manolo Nieto uses similar tropes to his previous film, El Lugar del Hijo, pushing a neo-realist use of location and event. The film concludes with a Raid, a rural horse race on the Uruguay Brazil border, in which Carlos, the empleado of the title, participates. This geographical zone is also one where El Lugar del Hijo was set, and Arauco Hernandez Holz’s vivid cinematography is another echo. Against this backdrop, the film tackles issues of class and land. Carlos, the empleado, is drafted in by Rodrigo when there is a labour shortage. He’s the son of a man who worked for Rodrigo’s father. Both these families have their own relationship with the land, and both inhabit it in a different fashion. One of the most striking scenes is when Carlos’ family appear on horseback whilst he is driving a tractor. They loom up on the horizon like something out of a John Ford film. Carlos’ family belongs to the Wild West, with its gaucho values, whereas Rodrigo’s capitalist family have adopted a life of easy luxury, selling soy to Europe. Rodrigo buys off the cops when he’s busted with marijuana on the wrong side of the border and he has even been converted to vegetarianism by his pretty, brittle wife, Federica. This contrast leads to inevitable conflict, even if it’s a conflict both men seem reluctant to embrace, wary warriors unwilling to lay their cards on the table. This reluctance makes for a slow burner of a movie, one which simmers and never quite comes to the boil. There is even the sense the denouement, where Carlos participates in the raid, perhaps seeks to overcompensate, as the sequence extends itself towards a dramatic resolution that feels telegraphed. Nevertheless, El Empleado y el Patron is a movie which succeeds in representing the twin poles of a country still caught in a timewarp, where gaucho values are celebrated, but struggle to sustain their place in a globalised world. 

deserto particular (w&d aly muritiba, w henrique dos santos)

Muritiba’s film is a febrile tale set in Brazil’s North East. The set up is simple. Daniel, a jaundiced cop who is going through a midlife crisis, has fallen for Sara, an on-line crush. Suspended from work and exhausted by having to look after his elderly father, Daniel flips and sets off to find Sara, who has lately gone off-line and abandoned him. Hunting down Sara in a small town proves harder than he expected, until he gets a call from a friend of hers and they finally hook up. Only for Daniel to discover, a la Lola, that she was a he. The film then becomes about Daniel seeking to come to terms with his attraction to a bloke, and Robson/ Sara struggling to keep his/her life together as it looks as though his secret is about to get out. Deserto Particular is a film that is constantly on the point of coming to a climax that it constantly puts off. Gender identity has become one of the dominant themes of twenty first century culture. It’s an issue that crosses geographical boundaries and as such offers a film employing this thematic a universal appeal, however, it is also becoming something of a cliché, and it’s not hard to guess where Deserto Particular is headed long before it gets there.  What makes the film hold up are the performances. Antonio Saboia as Daniel retains a convincing macho aura, even as his infatuation with Sara threatens to overwhelm him. But stealing the show is Pedro Fasanaro as Sara/Robson. Fasanaro gives a beautifully restrained performance, as convincing as Robson hanging out with his workmates as he is as a femme fatale. It’s a beguiling performance which helps to steer the film beyond melodrama. 

victims of the aurora (thomas keneally)

Keneally’s short novel reminded me a little of an early Sergio Blanco play I saw last year. (Was it last year? Time seems to have succumbed to snowblindness of late.) The play was about a group of people stranded on the Arctic ice, who gradually pick each other off. The premise of a murder mystery in a snowbound wasteland, where every track is a clue, where just to go outside means to risk your life, has allure, but is very hard to pull off. In part because of the restrictions of this world. Keneally’s high Edwardian tale is set on the expedition of Captain Sir Eugene Stewart to the South Pole, as narrated by the expedition painter, Anthony Piers, who in a framing device is recounting the story from his Californian nursing home, sixty years later. The expedition journalist is murdered and Piers is tasked by Stewart to find out who did it. The ingredients, which include forays into the scientific and artistic goals of the expedition, as well as premonitions of the Great War, make for a rich blend. Yet this is a slight book, over almost before it has begun, and the shards of brilliance which sometimes penetrate the text also have the effect of illuminating the way in which the novel is, to a certain extent, coasting, drifting over its material without ever seeking to explore what it all means. At one point the narrator notes that in the Antarctic, seven million cubic miles of ice lie on top of the six million square miles of the continent. What lies beneath the surface is as vast and important as that which lies above, but no matter how entertaining, the novel rarely succeeds in sending a plumb line below, to explore those hidden depths.  

benedetta (w&d paul verhoeven, w david birke)

The other day, talking about The Norseman, a film I have yet to see, I asked if there was anything more to it than the trailer suggests. I say this because, whilst in that instance, the jury would appear to be mixed, in the case of Benedetta, there is undoubtedly more to it than what it says on the tin. The publicity for the movie, another period piece, makes hay with the film’s salacious angle. Lesbian nuns always seems to be a selling point. Verhoeven’s film lives up to these elements and more, with plenty of tremulous sex and fantasy scenes. What run of the mill girl growing up in the shadow of the Black Death didn’t want to get it on with Jesus, the movie would appear to suggest. And if you can’t have Jesus, a shapely fellow nun is the next best thing. All of this is indeed over-the-top, ribald fun. However, there’s a hint of a more intellectual verve at play, particularly given the Covid context this film has emerged into. Supposedly based on a true story, the film closes with the revelation that the town which the more humanist Benedetta became abbess of, was one of the few places to survive the Black Death unscathed. Is there a correlation between sin and the damnation of plague? Did the plague come to us because we have lost touch with our raw feelings and emotions, our base humanity, in this material world? Benedetta doesn’t answer any of these questions, but they do float around in the background. The director himself seems to be testing the limits, deliberately presenting images which to some might be as shocking as Benedetta’s actions were to her contemporaries. You can, of course, ignore all of this, and go along for the well crafted and enjoyable ride, but it feels as though there’s more to Verhoeven’s game than sheer hedonism. 

compartment number 6. (w&d juho kuosmanen, w. andris feldmanis)

Another tale from the Arctic circle, Compartment Number 6 is a railroad road movie which follows the Finnish protagonist, Laura, from Moscow to Murmansk. Laura finds herself in a sleeper carriage with Ljoha, a drunken Mayakovsky lookalike. Initially intimidated by him, their trip then turns into an odd couple romance. The film opens with a literary party in Moscow, where people quote Pelevin, and in this moment one wonders whether Compartment Number 6 might offer an insight into that other Russia, the one that seems to have been kicked into the long grass, both by Putin and his henchmen and the rest of the world. Pelevin’s Russia is full of strangeness and a warped literary cynicism which goes back to Gogol, Bulgakov and their ilk. But after suggesting it might investigate these offbeat roots, the film doesn’t really go there, no matter how much Yuriy Borisov, as Ljoha tries. His erratic but doleful performance lends the film a slightly more left field outlook, but this is really Laura’s story. Not all that dissimilar from this year’s breakout European film, Trier’s The Worst Person in the World, Compartment Number 6 is another film by a man which is a study in a woman achieving some kind of altered consciousness through an unexpected love affair that doesn’t work out as it might have done. This zeitgeisty theme is well framed by the train journey and the Maguffin of Laura’s quest to find the Murmansk petroglyphs, but the film’s ultimate destination feels seems more prosaic than the spectacular scenery it presents.

Mr Curry, more generously, suspected that the issues we shared with the film might have been down to the source material novel from which the film has been adapted.

a dream in polar fog (yuri rytkheu, tr. ilona yazhbin chavasse)

A Dream in Polar Fog offers a deep dive into the world of the Siberian Chukchi people, who live on the Russian coast near the Bering Sea. Set in the years before the Russian Revolution, it tells the story of John MacLennan, a Canadian sailor who suffers debilitating frostbite after an explosives accident. The captain of his icebound ship sends John, in the company of the local elder, Orvo, to the nearest town to be treated. But on the way, they are caught in a blizzard. Nearing death, a female shaman amputates John’s hands. When he returns to the coast, the ship has sailed. This is the set up for Rytkheu’s tale, which is thereafter an account of John’s integration into the Chukchi way of life. Rather than seeking any chance to flee, John finds himself more and more integrated, embracing a more traditional, holistic and ecological existence in the company of the Chukchi, who become his family. In this sense, the novel, published in 1970, feels way ahead of its time. Even more so, when one realises the novel emerges from an industrial Soviet culture which Rytkheu had previously embraced as a writer. Rytkheu’s need to capture and convey a way of life he knew as a young man shines through in the sometimes prosaic text. The author acknowledges the way in which technological advances have helped the Chukchi, but he is also fiercely protective of a way of life which is threatened by the onset of ‘civilisation’. The novel’s value as an anthropological text is clear, as well as offering a fascinating glimpse into one of most curious borders on earth. At one point the narrative mentions that people from Nome used to visit a festival on the Siberian coast. Curious, I looked up where Nome might be, to discover it is in Alaska. At their closest point, Russia and the USA are less than a hundred miles apart. The polar fog the people of these lands inhabit has little respect for arbitrary political or ideological divisions.