francofonia (w&d aleksandr sokurov)

Sokurov has created a curious, Godardian elegy to European harmony. Francofonia is a potted history of the Louvre and its role as a lighthouse of European culture. The filmmaker narrates, telling of his fascination with the museum and its contents. Within the wider story, the film focuses on the history of the museum during the war, under Nazi rule. Paradoxically, rather than using the episode as an example of discord, it becomes a story about pan-european harmony. The museum’s director and the occupying German commander enter into an unspoken pact to preserve the museum’s integrity. The German does everything in his power to ensure that the museum’s treasures are not discovered and looted. They develop a relationship which is like something out of Renoir’s La Grande Illusion. 

The film documents their relationship through staged reconstructions, with actors taking on the parts, within a narrated, documentary framework. Almost as though Sokurov had an idea for a feature but never had the funds to make it, and this is the compromise result. Their scenes are interspersed with archive footage and a dramatic sequence where a container boat, supposedly carrying a crate of artworks, is lashed by a storm. 

Watching the film, you can’t help thinking that it says more about Russian history than the Louvre. The Louvre is a kind of fetishistic symbol for the filmmaker, representing the glory of European culture, a glory with which he identifies. At this time when Russia would appear to be reconfiguring itself, (or reconfigured), as an enemy of Europe, the story of two enemies who find themselves co-operating to save European culture feels like it might be a metaphor. There are hints of Tarkovsky’s meditations on art and culture in The Sacrifice. A quasi-mystical evaluation of European history, one that ring-roads colonialism (including modern-day colonialism) and washes its hands of the bellicose barbarity which has always gone hand-in-hand with European culture. Given this, there’s something unconvincing about Sokurov’s premise, no matter how fascinating. Francofonia is thought-provoking, but it feels as though it’s rooted in 19th century thought rather than the 21st. Having said that, at a time when the socio-cultural discourse surrounding Europe would appear to have been put into reverse, (not just in this country), perhaps this is appropriate.

days of eclipse (d. aleksandr sokurov; w. pyotr kadochnikov, yuri arabov)

Has a film ever had a better opening? The camera falls to earth. Yuri Khanin’s astonishing score plays out over images of the Turkmeni community. Faces stare out at us. We listen and we watch.

Which is the fundamental praxis of receiving cinema. Listening and watching. Only, usually, there is so much information to be processed that we almost forget this is what we’re doing. Sokurov follows in the footsteps of Tarkovsky, who sought to make his art of cinema into an experience to rival that of the great masters; which is also to say to rival or equate to a religious experience. Perhaps the key to this experience is to become aware of our existence through the act or art of engagement. This demands something most of our cinema rejects: self-consciousness as a part of the process; rather than the eradication of the self (also known as escapism) so much of cinema has sought to bring about.

Days of Eclipse lasts for over two hours but it reached a point where as far as I was concerned it might have lasted for six. The film depicts a Russian doctor who is living in Turkmenistan at the fag end of the Soviet empire. He is young, good looking and listless. The world is draped in the torpor of heat. It’s as though it’s under glass. A friend of his dies and there’s no explanation of why. Another friend of his has a weird, animalistic stain growing out of his wall. The doctor crosses a road and gets involved in a fight. He’s told his work is potentially seditious, so he decides to burn it, but then, the papers already alight, he has second thoughts and puts the fire out. Strange beasts crop up in his life: lizards, snakes, lobsters. Finally he escorts his friend as he leaves, heading for the sea.

What does it all mean? There are undoubtedly narratives at work here, about the demise of an Empire, about the search for significance in a world where the quest for Utopia has stalled and ground to a halt. However, perhaps as an aspect of these themes, or perhaps as part of the director’s own investigations into the real nature of and potential of cinema, the film also comes across as a dialogue between viewer and screen: an exploration of how the act of viewing oscillates between the passive and the active. Sometimes Sokurov’s images and use of sound overwhelm us, demanding nothing but reception. But at others the film asks its audience to make an effort, to engage, to find the humour and the pathos without these things being spelled out.

Sokurov has achieved belated fame beyond his country’s borders. I recently saw his feted Russian Ark on DVD. Where that seemed showy, slightly ponderous, with occasional flashes of brilliance, this earlier work felt swathed in a viscous genius, which seeped through the colour distorted print, frame after frame.