Chekhov's Gun

It is very nice to see the work of Victor Serge being reprinted by New York Review Book Classics .  They have a literal treasure of trove of obscure titles, including those of Platonov  and Yuri Olesha , among many others, and not just from Russia.  But, Serge's work stands out, as noted by Christopher Hitchens in this article he wrote for The Atlantic in 2003.  In Hitch's words, After Dostoyevsky and slightly before Arthur Koestler, but contemporary with Orwell and Kafka and somewhat anticipating Solzhenitsyn, there was Victor Serge. His novels and poems and memoirs, most of them directed at the exposure of Stalinism, were mainly composed in jail or on the run. Some of the manuscripts were confiscated or destroyed by the Soviet secret police; in the matter of poetry Serge was able to outwit them by rewriting from memory the verses he had composed in the Orenburg camp, deep in the Ural Mountain section of the Gulag Archipelago. A great place to start is wi...

It was only a matter of time before someone thought to use the abandoned town of Pripyat for a horror movie, at least there appears to be some good footage of the old Chernobyl workers' village, and Dimitri Diatchenko looks quite convincing as the 'extreme tourist guide' Uri.  Diatchenko is known mostly for his muscle, but apparently is quite a guitarist as well.  The story is by Oren Peli, who had his own 'Blair Witch Project' in Paranormal Activity .  This project came with a much bigger budget, but hasn't received glowing reviews.  Unfortunately, a script doesn't mean much in Hollywood, but it seems Oren's name does judging by the trailer.

Watching A Dangerous Method the other night, I couldn't help but think there was some connection between Freud and Stanislavsky, especially since David Cronenberg drew more from Christopher Hampton's play, The Talking Cure (2002) than he did the book by John Kerr.  Very well acted film.  Others have strove to draw connections between the two, notably Donald Freed in his series of lectures on Freud and Stanislavsky , published in 1964, but it seems that they arrived at their famous methods independently with no communication between them.  Hard to imagine, since the two had to at least be aware of each other. The most interesting aspect of the film was the role Sabina Spielrein played in Jung's and Freud's lives, notably Jung's life.  Spielrein was the first woman psychoanalyst, and brought Freud's method to the Soviet Union in the 1920s.  By this time, Stanislavsky's method acting was well established, but just the same one wonders if the two came ...

It seems that Alexander Sokurov had to appeal to the highest authority in Russia to get the financial support he needed to complete his final installment in his great "Power" tetralogy.  Vladimir Putin would seem an unlikely patron for Sokurov, who has long bucked authority ever since completing his studies at VGIK in 1979.  But, after an hour's discussion at Putin's country retreat, Sokurov had his backer.  Sokurov claims Putin was drawn more to the subject matter of the movie than to him, one can't help but think that Putin saw in Sokurov the international recognition he brought to cinema.  After all, Putin is more a power player than an auteur. Whatever the case, we should all be thankful Sokurov got the opportunity to complete this marvelous film , which takes a whole new look at the Faustian bargain, seeing it more as a power game than a question of spirituality.  This might put off some Faust fans, but I think most will be mesmerized by the way i...

Tarkovsky opens Mirror in a very Chekhovian way with a lonely woman waiting for her husband to return to a country house when another man turns off the road and comes to flirt with her.  He is a country doctor and playfully jests with her as one would imagine Astrov with Jelena in Uncle Vanya, but she's having none of it, or so it would seem. The husband never returns, and the focus of the film switches to her son recounting his youth through the many reflections of a mirror.  We don't find out much about the son, or even see him.  He floats in a state of semi-consciousness brought on by some illness or fatigue, drifting back and forth in time.  The event cuts , as Ryland Walker Knight describes them are distilled images held in a form of suspended animation in the narrator's mind.  But, it is not a cold abstract film. It is a very emotional and moving film that speaks volumes for the state many Russians found themselves after WWII, reflecting back on th...

It takes a little while to figure out what is going on in Andrey Platonov's The Foundation Pit , but about midstream this seemingly dry story takes an unlikely absurdist turn, when he describes how the horses had begun to under collectivism and were now taking their straw and putting it into a communal pile where they all ate together.  Like Tolstoy and Chekhov, Platonov recognizes the value of conveying his themes through animals as well as people, although in the case of this short novel, it seems all life forms and even the dead have been reduced to the same level of abject poverty as collectivism sweeps the Bolshevik nation. The original translation feels a bit dry, but Robert Chandler eventually captures the absurd spirit.of the novel, as Platonov skewers the ambitions of the early Soviet state by showing how a small town tries to come together in a collective spirit after purging the notorious Kulaks.  As is noted in this article by Karen Vanuska, Platonov relies hea...

Bulat Okudzhava was one of the greatest Russian "singing bards" and in 1979 he made a rare trip abroad to America , where he performed to a small audience at the University of California at Irvine and later in concert in New York, which is captured on this CD, presenting a beautiful range of vintage songs with Bulat offering short introductions, in Russian of course.  You can go to grooveshark for a taste of what must have been a wonderful evening.