I’d never heard of Bartas. My friend, Flamia, who knows a thing or two, when we met with him in 36 after the screening, said that he’d seen four or five films of the Lithuanian director. It’s curious the way that even prominent European directors with powerful international reputations remain ‘undiscovered’ in the UK. In a week that has seen a homicide, presumably the result of Russian military aggression, on British shores, Bartas’ film ought to be compulsory viewing. That it isn’t is no less surprising than to see the pictures of the House of Commons where a handful of MPs were present to listen to a statement on the murder of Dawn Sturgess. The insularity of the UK has only deepened with the advent of Brexit, and will continue to do so, both politically and culturally.
The narrative of Frost is straightforward. Two young Lithuanians, Inga and Roka, agree to drive a truck containing humanitarian aid to Ukraine. They have no idea what they’re getting themselves into. It’s a road movie to the furthest edges of Europe, to a bloody, fatal frontier where Putin’s wars are being waged. The set-up is perfunctory, even simplistic, as Roka is persuaded to take on the trip, and he persuades Inga to go with him. We don’t really know what their relationship is; they would appear to be a couple but they might just be friends. There’s a growing realisation that they’re out of their depth. They reach the Ukraine and hang out with some journalists. The war is out there, but for the time being they’re using the trip to work out their own personal psycho-drama. Then, as they approach the Crimean border, things start to become more and more edgy.
Bartas glories in the road movie. Each step of the journey is a step closer to the characters’ destiny. There’s no need to rush: the pace is stately. They’re not driving a BMW, they’re driving a transit van. The scenery, increasingly wintery, goes by in a succession of blurred images. The viewer is on the journey with the characters, going further and further towards some kind of edge. The tension is gradually ratcheted up until they arrive at the desolate border, where the buildings have been hollowed out and death lurks on the other side of the street. The film maintains an understated tone. At one point a convoy of armoured vehicles drive past, followed by a slightly ragged military column. Nothing terrible happens, there’s no shooting, no fighting, just the unmistakable evidence of the latent threat, which, the film makes clear, is a threat not merely to the protagonists, but to all of Europe. The possible implications are made clear. After Crimea, Lithuania could be next. And then who knows. This could seem like doom-mongering, were it not for the fact that the film so clearly captures the reality of what’s happening right now, at the edges of the European project.
Not for the first time, the aesthetic power of a film is amplified by the urgency of its political content. Frost takes the viewer far further towards a kind of Euro-Apocalypse Now than any news report.
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