The annual guarantee of the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, that is, the "Best International Film" from this year onwards, although some of them will be controversial, is basically the best quality film in various countries every year. And this year's Russian Olympic film actually comes from a director born in 1991!
Kontemir Baragov
This year at Cannes, Contemir Baragoff's film "The Tall" won the Best Director Award in the Attention Unit, and this is only his second feature film.
In 2017, his directorial debut "Intimacy" has been shortlisted for a kind of attention unit in Cannes, and the work has been well received and the word of mouth has exploded.
In the second movie, I actually won the award directly! This kind of enthusiastic posture made the media shout that he was "Russia's Dolan (Cannes pro-son)"!
Two "pro sons"~
But after watching "The Tall", you will feel that such a director can not be overstated!
It's such a surprising film that it's hard to imagine the director being that young. After World War II, Leningrad was told in a deep but incomparably delicate brushstroke to a generation that had never experienced war. Those shocking everyday routines make up the best anti-war story.
"The Tall Man"
Beanpole
Director: Kontemir Balagov
Writers: Kangemil Balagov / Alexander Trekhov
Starring: Victoria Maroshnitchenko / Vasiliza Pierikina
Genre: Drama
Country/Region of Production: Russia
Runtime: 134 minutes
To say that it is outstanding is that it does not preach or stir up tears. In this story, we can see not only the accumulation of pain, but also a group of people who are still alive, who are running for their livelihood like anyone else, and doing whatever it takes to love.
It may not make you cry silently, but it will bring a heaviness that is almost impossible to breathe, and in the end, a flower of hope will gradually bloom.
1
There are no women in war
The movie "The Tall" is the film that Baragoff has seen S. Baragoff. A. Alexievich (former Soviet writer, masterpiece "The Lament of Chernobyl") is a work that was inspired after the novel "There Are No Women in War".
Having never experienced World War II, he was deeply touched after reading the novel and decided to make this history that even the old director did not dare to touch.
After World War II, Leningrad (present-day St. Petersburg).
The first scene takes us to the place where the aftertaste of the war is most intense--the hospital. In the center of the venue stood a nurse in a daze, at least one head taller than everyone else.
This is the protagonist of the story, Iya, a nurse at the Leningrad Hospital. She was wounded in the head by a shell during the battle and sent back to the rear. The recovering Iya was left with the sequelae of the concussion.
She became sluggish, somewhat slurred, and from time to time she lost consciousness and could not wake up no matter how others shouted.
Around the life of nurse Ia, the film slowly unfolds for us the style of leningrad after the war.
The hospital was crowded with soldiers with few arms and legs, who had been delayed in being resettled; who gathered together every day to do nothing; the streets were littered with ruined buildings, and cadres and children in cars seduced women with food; dozens of people lived in a small building, and food was distributed according to the ration system.
No matter how bad life is, it is always life. Iya took her two- or three-year-old son, Basha, and with everyone's help, her life was getting by.
But fate refused to let her go, and once when she was playing with Basha, Iya, who suddenly fell ill, suddenly froze and choked Basha alive underneath.
This incident hit Iya hard, and her face lost any expression except sadness, and became more wooden and sluggish. Just then, a woman appeared, who made Iya happy but also more sad.
Her name was Martha, and both she and Iya had been used as comfort women in the Soviet Army during the war. There, they became lovers. When Iya was sent back to the rear, she entrusted her son Basha, who was born in comfort, to Iya.
That's right, she's Barsha's mother! Under Iya's dodgy look, Martha guessed the result, and she still looked at Iya with a sweet smile, but her eyes were full of tears.
The main story of the movie unfolds between two scarred women. One of them has concussion sequelae and occasionally falls into sluggishness; the other has experienced multiple pregnancies and abortions in a comfort station, has long lost her fertility, but still wants a child.
As a female narrative, the tall Iya wears out almost all female characteristics, while Martha has a crazy pursuit of female identity. Women who did not walk away in the war had to be difficult to retain their humanity.
They are still in love, but whether it is the death of Basha or the difference in personality between the two people, they seem out of place. Martha can flirt and have sex with a newly met man on the street, but Ia is terrified of men and women. Martha, on the other hand, wants the latter to help her have a child.
This relationship of mutual dependence and mutual torture makes them insist on life little by little. Until the end of the movie, they try to change, and in the end, only each other is left.
2
After the war, it is still hell
I still want to introduce everything that happened to this "heroic city" in World War II. As one of the main battlefields of the Soviet-Russian decisive battle during World War II, the Battle of Leningrad was the longest besieged, most destructive, and deadliest siege of major cities in recent history.
Friends with concepts will know that the worst part of the war is the siege war, because the protracted period, the supply of the city is cut off, and a large number of civilians will be unable to continue. The siege of Leningrad lasted more than 900 days from 1941 to 1944.
500,000 soldiers in Nazi Germany were killed or missing, 3.5 million soldiers in the Soviet Union were killed or missing, and more than 1 million citizens of Leningrad died. The entire city's infrastructure was destroyed, people ate everything that could feed them, and in the most difficult of early 1942, nearly 10,000 people died every day, mainly by freezing and starving.
And how painful will the city's post-war recovery be?
"The Tall" doesn't give us an aerial shot of the whole city, only the details. The hopeless warriors in the hospital played imitation games without heart and lungs, learning animals from each other for everyone to guess. When a warrior learns to fly birds, sadness will hit us unexpectedly.
A bird with folded wings, he seems to symbolize the hopeless future of the entire group.
The film uses such symbolic imagery to frequently hit the viewer. The most impressive, such as "dogs".
Basha is taken to work by Iya to the hospital, a group of bored wounded soldiers continue the boring imitation game, everyone encourages the shy Basha to participate in the game, Bazaar does not know what to perform, someone suggests performing puppies, and the noisy hall suddenly becomes quiet.
"When has he ever seen a dog, the dog has been eaten."
A dog appears in the movie. When Martha follows her boyfriend to their house, the first scene of her mother is not herself, but the good breeding dog she is leading. That's right, in their world, there is no need to eat dogs at all.
In Martha's world, there are even stories of people eating people. Her boyfriend's family, sitting in the luxurious villa restaurant, enjoyed the services of the maid. One side told her, "You can't imagine our experience in the war." ”
The film does not shy away from many problems of the Soviet era, such as Ivan, the chief physician who has been helping Iya, who has been fighting for power in the hospital system and has to go away.
Among the patients, there was an old acquaintance of Iya, Schoba, who was paralyzed during the war and unconscious from the neck down. The arrival of the wife gives us a better understanding of the family: their two daughters died in the war. How did he die? It doesn't matter if it doesn't matter.
He was originally one of the soldiers who had no heart and no lungs, but the arrival of his wife made it impossible for him to keep the smile on his face, and all the families and responsibilities that they pretended not to remember were clearly placed in front of them in the moment they saw their wives.
He couldn't go home, or he would force his wife to die. On his last night, his wife hummed a song for him while he murmured, "I'm sorry, it's all because of the war." ”
His wife was gone, and Ia euthanized him. Such fate may continue to fall on more soldiers.
The film calmly tells the story of fate, the camera is like a calm bystander, recording the simple life day after day, but at some unexpected turning point, it suddenly pulls you into the abyss of despair.
Smiling the whole time, Martha introduced her past in front of her boyfriend's family, how she sold her body in the barracks to find a backer, how she lost her fertility, and how she was dependent on Iya. And the boyfriend's bitter and tangled face, there is distress and boredom, but there is no room for sympathy.
Iya and Martha are the tragedy of fate caused by the war, and the film presents the devastation of the whole Leningrad and the scars in people's hearts.
3
There may be hope
But in the movie, it still leaves us with a glimmer of hope. This glimmer of hope may be the breath that the city later recovered.
For example, Martha's desire for babies. Having a child is the main thread that runs through the film's development, and it is also the expectation of the Soviets to recover their scars after World War II. Hope is hard to come by, but it never stops.
The attitudes of the two protagonists towards having children are also diametrically opposed. Iya's indifference and numbness and Martha's persistence also hint at the attitude of the Soviets after the war, and are a true portrayal of society as a whole.
And Iya's twists and turns in the process from the initial death of the child, to the re-pregnancy and then to the miscarriage, are also their pursuit of hope. When she tried to tell Martha the truth, the latter frantically covered her mouth, and the picture was eventually used in the poster.
Don't say, don't tell me there's no hope.
Another hint of hope in the film is the use of color. Baragov's use of color has always been bold, from "Intimacy" to "The Tall", there is an extremely strong color texture, like oil painting. This can also be seen in his posters.
The whole film is filled with dark colors such as red, yellow, and green in a blockbuster, but it does not break the despair of temperament at all, but instead has a kind of pyrotechnic gas of life after neutralization, which brings a desperate psychological impact.
At the beginning of the film, you can see the green sweater that Iya wears, which is also the main color of Iya, wearing a green sweater and a green dress. The director has been playing yellow light all around her to highlight her incompatibility with her surroundings.
The red-haired Martha is dressed in red as the main color. Their green and red not only form a sharp contrast, but also symbolize their living conditions. Martha, who can exchange her flesh for food, and Iya, who treats her environment with a certain sluggishness, represent despair and hope, respectively.
Martha's ice-breaking stemmed from the green dress she wore when she met the newcomer. She tried to spin in circles, then began to spin wildly, and then tucked the extravagant dress into the tailor's hand and drove the latter out the door.
Later, the dress was borrowed by Iya from the tailor and asked Martha to wear it to meet her boyfriend's parents. In that mansion, Martha, who had suffered from old wounds, dripped blood on her green skirt. On the green clothes, there were red blood stains.
At the end, Ia, who gave Martha the green dress, wears a red sweater. After losing her child and going through too many tribulations, she seems to have lost hope for the future, and at this time, Martha, dressed in a green dress, embraces her.
This interlacing of colors is not only the switch between hope and despair between the two protagonists, but also the process of the two of them entangled, pulling, giving and robbing each other. The stubborn green in the picture guides people who do not know the future.
If "Intimacy" is still a little naïve, then "The Tall" can already see Baragov's super control, far beyond the maturity of his age, and the ability to realize his narrative ambitions. The completion of the post-90s director's work is really amazing.
"The Tall" is not so much about the pain and sorrow of two women, but rather about the transmutation and distortion of the whole city. The sadness in the lens is more and more obvious in the slightly gorgeous colors, full of devastated hearts and broken souls.
And it is in this despair that human beings have found hope again and again. The thrill of this process has been left in "The Tall".
Look for hope in war
Schindler's List (1993)
Schindler's List
Directed By: Steven Spielberg
Genre: Drama / History / War
The most well-known and shocking film about what happened to Jews during World War II, based on Schindler's true story of saving a thousand Jews, is a must-see series for fans.
The Pianist (2002)
The Pianist
Directed By: Roman Polanski
Genre: Drama / Music / Biography / History / War
The real experience of the Polish Jewish pianist Speyman during World War II, from the settlement to the escape, he witnessed the glory and ugliness of human nature and wrote an epic of sorrow and joy.
A Beautiful Life (1997)
Life Is Beautiful
Director: Roberto Bernini
Genre: Drama / Comedy / Romance / War
The Jewish father, Quedo' family of three, was locked up in a concentration camp, afraid of psychological trauma to his young son, and he pretended that it was all just a game and a game, until the Allies arrived, and the son sat on the Allied tanks, still waiting for the father who would never return...
Swing Frenzy (2018)
Swing Kids
Director / Writer: Kang Kyung Chul
Genre: Drama / Song /Dance / War
During the Korean War, in a prisoner-of-war camp in South Korea, a tap dance troupe was formed to use dance to find strength for itself. But will war really accommodate the next stage?
"The Great Dictator" (1941)
Director: Charlie Chaplin
Genre: Drama / Comedy / War
When it comes to anti-war movies, this originator-level work must not be missed. Chaplin's first sound film, in which one man played two roles, portrayed the great dictator Single to mock Hitler, and the last six minutes of speech will forever be engraved in film history.
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