L'oiseau blanc marqué de noir

A WWII movie set in the Carpathians and named after the Ukrainian version of Pandora's Box, this is a sheer masterpiece! Well, in these last few months I have seen quite a few films set in similar regions, depicting similar (in cases, the same) lifestyle, but I have to say this has been the most affecting till date. We see a very delicate episode of the Carpathian history played out here – starting from the Soviet reclamation of Carpathians through the Nazi-Romanian occupation to Soviet rescue again – and no, I have spoilt nothing. All of it is captured through the life of a family of musicians, comprised of five brothers and a struggling-to-provide father. The eldest brother joins the Soviets while a younger one joins the nationalists - in due course of time, through the promiscuity of love, one ends up being responsible for the other's life. The wide-eyed, typically Carpathian mountain beauty is present here in Dana, for whom three people get entangled in a twist of fate. The film has a very solid story, superb, rustic and lively music, great costumes and detailing and also some very good frames. The landscapes are shot brilliantly – the slippery rocks, the difficulty of warfare in the terrain, the monstrous rafts, and harshness of life in conjunction with shortage of food – everything is sketched beautifully. There are a few sequences that are unforgettable – the family playing as their house burns, the strange percussion that produces brilliant sounds, Giorgiy's (the youngest son) reaction to a broken illusion, the rowing of the raft through a mad river, the bride distributing the bread, and definitely, the final chase. A film that is stylized like others from this region, but makes a difference in the impact that it achieves – it goes beyond an ethnographic movie and tells us a universal story, which when set against the daunting Carpathians, becomes a devastating and magnificent poetry. Time very very well spent.

Out of each of Ilyenko's first three feature films, The White Bird Marked with Black is the most accessible. It finds a middle ground between A Spring for the Thirsty's stark minimalism and Eve of Ivan Kupalo's surreal maximalism. This middle ground shows an Ilyenko who got his craziest experiments out of the way, brilliant though they were, and is more interested now in producing a more conventional narrative. Perhaps Soviet censorship also had to do with the more conventional narrative; the previous films were big enough risks that resulted in censorship so it'd be understandable to want a bit of a break. The worldview of the film is less at odds with the Soviet line, although this may reflect Ilyenko's thinking rather than Soviet pressure: sometimes to survive, a people has to adapt, however painful the adaptation may be.

Although it has a more conventionally told narrative than Ilyenko's other films, it's not an easy film per se and watching it benefits from at least a bit of rough knowledge of the time period it's set in. Showing the effects of war on the peasant population, it focusses on a group of brothers and a few other characters, showing how their reactions to the constant territorial change differs. In one amusing scene, the father explains why he has so many different clocks: one for the time zone of each of the countries that take over the territory, so that he doesn't have to keep changing the time when a different empire takes over.

Although The White Bird Marked With Black is not directed in such an unconventional way as his previous two films are, Ilyenko maintains his good eye for colour. The composition of most of the shots is simply stunning. Even the indoor scenes are beautifully presented. Camera movement also makes some scenes very fluid. The camera is positioned on the end of fast-moving rafts and during dance scenes it gracefully spins around the dancers, mimicking their movements.

This is a complex film, and beneath the surface there is a wealth of themes, exploring the preservation national identity, futile resistance and adaptation. It's rich in meaning. The overall intention behind this film is more nuanced than Ilyenko's previous work. Just as Ilyenko no doubt had to make difficult choices to get it passed by censors, a people must sometimes make difficult choices in order to survive.