Change Your Image
maxkorneev
Reviews
Bacurau (2019)
Brazilians at Cannes
When Hollywood shoots cinema-apologies trying to excuse, culturally, the American people from the harm it made to the indigenous inhabitants of the continent, here in the old world this seems too posh, pathetic and perhaps even hypocrite, having in mind it is all still there solely for money-making through box office. It seems the time has finally come for appropriate artistic response from the other side. This is exactly what Bacurau is about.
A group of upper-middle class Americans is frequent to god-forgotten settlements in third-world countries for a single purpose of realizing the strongest desire pumping in humanity - a primal desire to take life. This is where the strongest allegory about first Europeans in the new world comes to one's mind. Armed and headed by an experienced military man, they still believe the village of Bacurau is an easy target, but the ways of God are inscrutable. They are doomed to die just because the locals are ready to deal with the first-world, self-indulged hunters coming to disanimate animals, not human beings.
While driving through Iceland I once took a backpacker from Sao Paulo who then worked at a silicone factory around Husavik and whom I certainly asked about the criminality in Brazil. He both confirmed the fact and let me into the reasons for brutality - literally, this is in Brazilian blood to act in a criminal way. Things are made clear now why the 'murder tourists' were so violently killed, with heads placed on the church porch, with the villagers keeping calm after taking some psychotropic (a reference to centuries of local passion for mind changers?).
When you vigorously strive to apologize, this will irreversibly bring about misery and helplessness. The entire artistic calling shouts out that 'we are not miserable.' There is no need to express regret, the mirror answer is imaginative, not real, which only adds power to it. The screenplay, the actors and the camera itself show the artistic, historic, and social individuality of the people.
To support this, two most important scenes should be mentioned: the revelatory scene uncovering the true motives of the mayor of the neighboring village, with money acting as a 'sign and symbol' of not-so-far-away Uncle Sam; second, the museum scene where the attendant asks not to clean walls from blood - this will be a part of the exhibition, the history itself, seemingly a metonymy, which suggests the village representing the country as a whole.
The entire picture is a great allusion to the nation, so please be meticulous while watching. This trend is extremely important for the global cinema progress and is like a breath of fresh air, which I can't but adore.
Dovlatov (2018)
German Jr's Dovlatov
In Soviet times, no one needed talent. Mediocrity ruled the ball, with talented people suppressed, gifted ones even harder - having been afraid of, like a primeval creature is scared and therefore responds aggressively to anything inexplicable. Those talented, having no way of expression, finding no audience, reading audience first of all, would fall into nothingness unless fled abroad or drowned in vodka. This was consistent and gave no chances to artists in developing anything worth reading. But the talent was nonetheless stronger and many infiltrated the history of literature. What Soviet leaders promulgated was easily captured locally, in chief editor's offices, writers' union, even by sellers of forbidden books trembling for their lives and freedom. Total ignorance, straightforwardness, and ultimate desire to crush any individuality made its way to exterminating any roots of artistic calling that has been so strong in the Russian literature before Soviets. That's when the genocide started whose fruits we have along, with the post-Soviet ravenous lust for money having superimposed and inflicted the last strike.
Across the ocean, the world saw beatniks to be the last whose nervous, preagonic howl loomed over the world of big literature, eventually resulting in poor language and rhetoric of late post-modernism with its too much relying on commercialization and losing the essence. What we have now is the outcome of how polar types of societies evolved to squeeze profound art from both sides leaving no place for genius looking for an exit of its artistic power. These days, there is no room to even write a word unless it brings profits to the publisher.
Both Soviet masses and elites were not ready to new trends having no desire to read about trifles rather than something big. Leaving general all-humanity topics for small things was a border between modernism and post-modernism and was for sure better perceived in developed countries rather than those built by narrow thinking of power-holding minorities. Brodsky finally left for the US to be honored a Noble prize, which may be argued about as a politically motivated act, but no one doubted his talents except for those who were afraid that his literary actions may rock the boat of stable way to a better future (which we may very well observe now as well, huh). Whether they did understand that their work is used for political games in this new world, that we don't know, but what we got in the end is a collapse of literature as we, or previous generations, knew it. Through years of struggle, true art has lost its positions and we'll never see it as before again, with the last man of letters having perished at the turn of the century.
As for Dovlatov, Ernst Neschastny once wrote: "He was drinking as hell, drowning himself in alcohol, as generations of Russian men before him - dark Russian alcoholism with the only purpose of slowly killing themselves, reaching the end they were seeking so much, trying to elude the reality they couldn't fix or live in." This is what we don't see in the film, but what we should know. Being unacknowledged throughout his life and finding glory only after his death, Dovlatov remains an image of how the system mutilates fates and lives. Those who he called "low and pathetic people" were the one responsible for their country and its future that we have now. They are to be blamed for narrow-mindedness, vanity, stupidity, thirst for power, and personal ambitions. After all these years, we still see it in federation-level decision makers.
The closing scene is of course the most important one showing how hard it is, emotionally, socially, and physically, to overcome the pressures coming both from inside and outside and follow your way. "Don't listen to no one, your books are your business. It's going to be hard but you will find inner power" sounds like parting words to every artist in doubt. And being such, Dovlatov makes a final line concluding his existence and, perhaps, alluding, in part, to any human's life: "Still we exist, always drinking, in worn out shoes, poor, and sometimes talented. We still exist. We are and we will be. The only way not to lose yourself is to go through that thorny way of hopes, disappointments, and losses. "