Papa, umer Ded Moroz

Although I saw it more than ten years ago, I just noted that no one commented on this remarkable little film, a situation that demands rectification. It is, though, a strange movie. It's stylistic background is the type of Eastern European visual poetry usually associated with Tarkovski, Sokurov and Paradzhanov: Long shots, unusual narrative that stresses poetic intensity over plot and psychology, a general alignment to the metaphysical condition of human existence. Yet, Yufit's outlook is much darker than that of those above. The central character of this dissociated story travels to see relatives on the countryside, mostly sordid, listless characters that hardly ever talk. A group of men in black suits haunt the area, involving people in weird rituals. In a separate storyline, a blind old man and a sick-looking boy built mortal traps in a labyrinthine bunker. There is very little dialog, little sense of continuity and a deliberate lack of explanation. Yet, the atmosphere of the film is intense - otherwise it would not have stayed with me that long: It is as if all the hopes for redemption or ascension to a higher spiritual level that imbue the films of Tarkovski have ceased to exist and left a black hole, an icy emptiness: The sense of spiritual deprivation is overwhelming. Difficult, but recommended for the tiny audience it was made for.

It's actually questionable if this should really be placed in the horror genre, though it is tagged as such on IMDB; regardless, it's a puzzling film with a darker than black atmosphere, which is unsettling due to its morbid themes and lack of almost any exposition or dialogue. I'm not sure if any synopsis will do the film justice or would be a good intro to help one understand exactly what is going on in this film. The sole other review on IMDB nails all of the key points; this is a poetic Russian art film along the lines of Tarkovsky or Sokurov, but filled with an occult despair.

Given that a character announced dead appears to mysteriously come back from the dead, I can't help but liken this to a zombie film, like Night of the Living Dead or some such, only if they made it as a poetic art film in the Russian tradition and obscured the fact that it was a genre film at all, took out any explanation of what characters are doing and their relationship to each other, filmed mostly in long shots, underacting or almost listless performances rather than overacting, etc. Whether this is horror or not, it's so strange, mysterious, and atmospheric that it's far more horrific than outdated genre works like NotLD or even most horror films; it's worth a look for the open-minded fan of horror or for lovers of Russian art cinema.

The murderous happenings in the beginning that are perpetrated by the child and the grandfather are never explained. About all we know is that the main character heads to a small village where his cousin lives, presumably to write a story about a mouse or shrew. A radio message seems to have symbolic implications as it talks about using a poison to kill moles disturbing farms. It's not clear if it's actually the outsiders of the village that are being discussed, the strange men who roam around with their peculiar ritual of wrapping people in cloths, or simply just moles (sometimes a mole is just a mole). There is one segment of surprising dialogue that clarifies a few points near the end--intimating that the rituals performed by the men are a means of "understanding the unknown," (unfortunately, the translation I had was a bit poor, though I doubt it would have made a difference) but it's all very vague.

It ends on a disturbing and very memorable note, though, of course, failing to provide any kind of closure or convenient explanation for the events of the film. I'd like to eventually read into the intentions of the creators or interpretations of film theorists, but I suspect the film was, is, and will always be, an enigma. Though the film is quite slow and overly obscure, the black and white cinematography and unexplained logic of the events carries the atmosphere wonderfully, and if their intent was to make a startling and ineffable work of cinema, then the filmmakers have succeeded.