Der Heizer

"A Stoker" is one of the last films of Aleksey Balabanov, the cult director of the new Russian cinema. The story of the revenge of a small man, a former major, who is brilliantly played by unprofessional Yakut actor Mikhail Skryabin.

One of my most favourite movies is Brat by Balabanov. Thus, having read somewhere that Russian movie critics called Kochegar the best Russian movie of 2010, and its plot is quite similar to that of Brat, I was expecting something at least as good. I was wrong. Comparing these two movies, I should say that when watching Brat, I have a feeling of seeing truth. Watching Kochegar, I feel seeing artificial people in artificial situations. Apparently, Mr. Balabanov forgot that a good movie should teach, should send some message. This movie just shows the very dark and vicious sides of life without any message. Just blunt murder and blunt nudity. Something is wrong - either with Russia, or with Balabanov, or with me.

The best movie from Balabanov with perfectly matching music from Didyulya. It's not a surprise that its special rhythm, language and symbols are not accepted by everyone. Actually it was shot in Kronstadt. Although it's not far from Saint Petersburg, it's style is still somewhat different.

Not the kind of film that can be understood from western Europe audiences; I am not even sure it was released in French movie theaters. It is not a good film actually, but an interesting one, if you accept the offbeat, weird tale, totally f...up. Even without any subtitles and Russian spoken, it is rather easy to more or less follow this film. The settings are in St Petersburg - Russia and involves a war veteran, some kind of a homeless - but not a homeless though, who is in charge to get rid of corpses, victims of two hired killers. He gets rid of those corpses in a big, huge boiler, he cremates the bodies...It is gloomy, weird, disturbing without being genuinely depressing though. It just deserves to be seen to be believed. I like it, a curious way to show the Russia of the 2010's in another way than propaganda war films.

One of the best Balabanov movies. It was shot in Kronstadt, located on Kotlin island near Saint Petersburg. The atmosphere of the 1990-ies in Russian is perfectly depicted together with the sad fate of the minor nation of Yakuts in the old Russian empire. The main mail characters are subject to the post-traumatic syndrome of the cruel Soviet-Afghanistan war in 1980-ies. But the philosophical meaning of the movie is much deeper than these recent circumstances and the music is perfectly suited for that.