Sob as Sombras da Guerra

Ukraine's official entry to 2022's Oscars is a very good anthology film. It consists of four stories that beautifully portray the consequences and suffering of war, without war scenes. Some stories are better than the other that need more development. It's emotional and powerful although it feels empty at certain points.

The four short stories are only three, first 2 no longer than 10 minutes, without begininig, end or puprose, toataly useless. Last part 1 hour and 20 minutes has a good screenwriting , good actining, also without beginning, end ,, story or purprose but it's not useless.

The writer and a director is a household name in Ukraine after she has catapulted herself into fame with the meritorious TV series To Catch the Kaidash.

For the latter, Natalya Vorozhbit has served as the writer and a showrunner. She has transplanted the 19th century classic Ukrainian novel into nowadays reality where all Ukrainians recognized themselves and their troubles and guilty pleasures. The whole country has been swept away with the master craft.

Now Mrs. Vorozhbit has made her way into the big screen, and the start is vertiginous. 100 minutes of the grilling movie is painful experience to stomach and to delve into. As Ukraine goes through the catharsis of the war in the East, one might expect that the movie, especially propped up with a dole of public funds, would transgress into a piece claining, albeit subtly, the righteousness of our case.

Far from it. The war is cruel and demanding for both sides, and especially for those caught in between as the DUI-ed headmaster of Popasna School N3 who launches a string of interconnected novellas.

After the third episode when the gates of the hell seem to have widely open, you are plunged into the seemingly innocent mild road incident when a strayed hen is killed. Would you expect what you see from a pair of peasants whose rusted shaving razors are piled in a filth sink?

It is still evident that the dramaturgic power of Vorozhbit, given her experience, still dominates over her cinematography. Details are gripping as the aftertaste and anticipation of more to come from this ascented star of Ukraine's cinema and theater.

I liked the work of each department. Everything is quite realistic.

Among the actors, I would like to note Koltovsky, Kulynych, The characters make you want to watch the film.) Especially the chemistry between them. What I love about The Fortune Teller is the dialogues. In the movie "Cyborgs" and here, the dialogues are very cool, alive. With the help of these lively dialogues, 30 minutes of the film flew by in 5 minutes.

The plot is reminiscent of the film "Donbas" directed by Serhii Loznytsia, as well as the film "Amores perros" by Iñárritu.

This movie cuts to the bone when you watch it. It fascinates with its hopeless situations in which you find yourself together with the characters, and then you worry about every plot twist.

The indignities of war can be horrendous, if not downright repulsive. And, while it's important that these atrocities are not overlooked, the way in which their stories are told matters greatly. That's where writer-director Natalya Vorozhbyt's debut feature regrettably drops the ball. This collection of loosely linked vignettes set during the civil war in the Donbas region of Ukraine shortly after the Maidan Uprising presents a series of stories depicting the physical, psychological and social impact of the conflict on the area's citizens, much of it in restrained but unflinching detail. The problem, however, rests with the specific material chosen for these vignettes. Of the four narrative threads, the first is the most compelling, credible and engaging, even if it drags somewhat in spots. The remaining three, however, suffer from a variety of issues: the second one is dull and largely pointless, and the fourth is bizarre and at times laughably silly. But the most troubling is the third, which is positively sick, twisted and perverted, even if it manages to keep from becoming overly gratuitous in telling a story that seems to have little to do with the conflict itself and which merely provides the stage for an episode of manipulation porn. What's more, the film overall does little to shed much light on the war itself, choosing instead to focus on the individual tales for which the conflict serves as little more than a backdrop. Given that this offering was primarily made for a Ukrainian audience, perhaps the filmmaker decided that locals were already familiar enough with the kinds of issues covered here and felt that they didn't need to be belabored in the movie's narrative. But, for those on the outside looking in, it feels like there's a lot of back story missing that doesn't enhance the individual tales told in the picture's overarching content. And, as for what's being shown here, it's not patently obvious that we really need to see it, no matter how realistic it might be in capturing stories typical of the subject matter upon which they're based. In these days of the current Ukrainian conflict, it's natural to want to be supportive of the nation's people, culture and society in the face of the oppressive circumstances currently prevailing there, but that doesn't mean everything that comes out of that region should automatically be given a pass because of its source of origin, and that's certainly the case where this film is concerned.