Skip to main content

Stiliagi

By

A friend tuned me into Stiliagi, or Hipsters, as it was called in its all too brief American release.  The movie would have seemed to have great cross-over appeal with its rousing 1950s musical theme, portraying a "gang" of hipsters bucking the repressive conformity of Soviet Moscow by staging underground Swing bars, while evading Komsomol kids.  But, it seems the movie got very limited play beyond Russia.

The film is loosely based on a real movement at the time, as noted in Volha Isakava's review.  These stylish kids mostly came from the elite ranks of the Communist Party, and were therefor immune from overt censorship, which would help explain why they flaunted their American style so openly.  Still, they found themselves coming up against the Komsomol, receiving harsh reprimands and sometimes being expelled from university, as was depicted in this riveting scene.  Isakava also notes the interesting juxtaposition of 50s theme with 80s Russian rock, showing that this defiance spanned post-war generations.


However, the director, Valeriy Todorovskiy, maintains a breezy style, choosing to not delve too deeply into harsh realities, even turning life in communal housing into an engaging musical number, as the young Mels (an acronym of Marx Engels Lenin Stalin) wrestles with his new found attraction to this subculture.  Mels becomes the star of the movie.  A former Komsomol kid smitten by the engaging "Polly."  He drops the "S" to become more "American," which leads to his expulsion from school and his full embrace of swing music, looking like a young Chet Baker.


Eventually, the kids need to make some tough choices and the movie veers toward reality, while avoiding any head on collision.  Mel and Polly are forced to grapple with parenthood, with an interesting twist; and the leader of the group, Fred, follows in his father's footsteps and becomes a diplomat.  Fred's father is played by the great Oleg Yankovskiy.

I suppose it may have seemed a bit too much like Swing Kids for some audiences, but it is a fun movie that deserves more international exposure.


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.
18 comments
Read more

Myshkin's dilemna

By
Wrapped up Part II the other night and have to say that Dostoevsky certainly has a comic's eye, although one senses the potentially tragic undertones.  For Dostoevsky the aristocracy seems to be one largely made up of capricious souls more obsessed with good manners than any profound sense of their being.  This is particularly true for the Epanchins, who comically wrestle with their emotions in one scene after another as he places them in very odd and unnerving situations that test the limits of poor Lizaveta Prokofyevna's endurance. Of her daughters, Aglaya, is the most interesting.  A real beauty much along the same lines as Nastasya Filippovna Barashkov, who likewise seems to have a hold on Prince Myshkin's emotional strings.  Part II ended with Lizaveta demanding to know the extent of the Prince's interests in her youngest daughter.  The Prince insisted his feelings were Platonic, but one senses there is more to be said on the matter in later chapters. ...
Post a Comment
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