Skip to main content

Duska

By
 
My wife and I watched Duska the other night, followed by a Russian round table discussion from 2010, which featured the late Lyudmila Gurchenko.  The title is the mistaken namesake of the Russian character in this Dutch film, implying little soul or heart.  As Sergei Makovetski noted, the name referred to the malformed baby in a scene he and the movie critic (Gene Bervoets) were watching.

The movie critic meets Duska at a film festival in Russia, played to great comic effect, and finds he can't shake his new friend no matter how hard he tries. When Duska shows up on Bob's doorstep back in Holland, this crimps Bob's designs on a cashier at the local cinema, resulting in a number of amusing situations.  Jos Stelling forces the humor at times, but Bervoets and Makovetski play off each other extremely well.


Bob has essentially become bored with life, unable to even be fully stimulated by the nubile Sylvia Hoeks, when she literally falls into his arms following a dispute with her motorcycle suited boyfriend in front of the theater.  You aren't quite sure whether Bob is imagining these relationships or if they are real, given the ever growing surrealistic tone of the movie.

The comments from the Russian critics was as amusing as the movie, as they found themselves deeply at odds over Duska.  Makovetski offered numerous defenses, while Jos Stelling felt he had undergone an inquisition afterward. It was a rather harsh tone that developed, with a lot of discussion of the meaning of the "Russian Soul" with Gurchenko pleading for Ukranians to have a greater accord with Russia.  Other critics saw the movie as a Western longing for the depth of the Russian soul, pointing out the movie critic's emptiness.  One critic felt they were making too much out of the movie, as it was pretty simple and offered no profound statement on the Russian soul.  He found the references to Pushkin empty and the music insufferable.

You can read into the movie pretty much what you like.  Stelling leaves it open ended.  There is a Gogolian quality to the story, like an "overcoat" that takes on a life of its own, but it isn't the type of movie that is going to stay with you.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ward No. 6

By
Ward No. 6 is a short story written by Chekhov in 1892.  It has appeared in various collections of Chekhov short stories, including The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories translated by Constance Garnett in 1921.  In this story, Chekhov explores the inner working of a run-down lunatic asylum in a provincial town.  He  introduces the readers to a coarse porter who speaks mostly with his fists, various patients, a doctor who presides over this ward, and expresses his thoughts with a local postmaster.  It was recently made into a movie , featuring Vladimir Ilyin.  Here's a clip . There's also this very recent short film (30 min.) by Suzana Purkovic, with English subtitles.
19 comments
Read more

Roadside Picnic: Life inside the Zone

By
If you're like me and wondered what the hell Stalker was all about, I would suggest reading Roadside Picnic , the book on which it was nominally based.  Tarkovsky took his idea from the character, Redrick Schuhart, a laboratory assistant and Harmont Branch of the International Institute of Extraterrestrial Cultures, leaving the rest up to the imagination.  The names were changed to protect the innocent. While Tarkovsky chose to shroud the story in mystery, the Strugatsky Brothers lay it out pretty clearly in their science fiction classic.  Redrick, the Stalker, has gone into the zone countless times but each time represents a new set of challenges, especially with the Harmont Branch cracking down on the plundering of alien objects left behind by a visitation to a small rural town in Canada. I suppose setting the story in a place outside Russia, allowed the Strugatsky brothers more room to explore new ideas and avoid heavy censhorship, but according to Boris in t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Light and Dark

By
I'm still trying to sort out the ending.  The story had to end tragically but was surprised that Rogozhin actually sought forgiveness in Myshkin after what he had done to Nastya, although I think that Dostoevsky intended the two to be read as one, along similar lines as The Double .  He kept Rogozhin a shadowy figure throughout the novel, ever lurking in the dark of the Prince's soul.  Try as he might, Prince Myshkin could not alter events and thus the fantasy world he had lived in upon returning to Russia crumbled before his eyes, leaving him at a total loss as how to reconcile himself with it. Once again, Dostoevsky plumbs great depths of the human soul.  This is a psychological drama told in theatrical terms, perfectly suited for the stage.  Characters appear and disappear as if moving from the shadows of the stage.  I can see the "green bench" as the central stage piece.  In the final part, one gets the sense that Lebedev is orchestrating event...
12 comments
Read more