Zvenigora

To read a little of the background of the film, it's clear that 'Zvenigora' is in part a quasi-allegorical reflection of Ukrainian history; one quite gathers that something is lost in the experience of watching for any viewer who lacks that knowledge and perspective. Just as much so if not more than this, however, the feature is also unmistakably fantastical in the story it has to tell - and with imaginative details in makeup, costume design, editing, and other elements, fantastical as well in how it tells that story. Where filmmaker Alexander Dovzhenko's other works can be slightly challenging for the unmistakable feel of an art film that they bear, and the occasional lack of total comportment between shots, scenes, intertitles, and story beats, this is also true to no small extent for the slant that 'Zvenigora' carries. Each subsequent moment does work to build a cohesive whole, yet in a way that refuses the merest tinge of plainspoken directness.

With all that said - whatever one's opinion of his body of work, there also can be no doubt that Dovzhenko is an artist with fine mastery of his craft. There are many marvelously arranged shots and scenes in this picture, rich with detail and positively thrumming with vibrant life. The director's shot composition, and his guidance of the cast, weave wonders before our eyes, a tapestry of unexpected heart and soul that defies the presentation that may immediately come off as disjointed. At times hard to parse, or downright flummoxing, it's in no small part a dazzling and even bewitching view.

Now, in fairness, when considering 'Zvenigora' as a whole, there's something to be said for the fact that audiences who aren't specially attuned to the wavelength Dovzhenko was operating on - the context of Ukrainian culture and history - may be put out, or a bit lost. I think it's reasonable to argue that a film which can't be comprehended and appreciated of its own accord across time and in different places fails to be a total success regardless of its merit otherwise. If an art film can sometimes be perceived by those who don't wholly "get it" as "much sound and fury, signifying nothing," certainly a feature that relies in at least some way on spectators' foreknowledge may have much the same sense about it. Still, once more - given the abstruse, whimsical concept on hand, I also think it's within reason to think 'Zvenigora' may prove a bit of a labor even for those who would share Dovzhenko's grasp and insight.

And, at length, formidable as the viewing experience may be, the truth remains that the skill poured into the construction of the piece is outstanding. It's so admirable that I rather think the strengths of the movie outweigh its faults - much to take in, some aspects perhaps not completely digestible, but worthy and enriching all the same as a slice of past cinema. So much splendid effort and care went into making 'Zvenigora' a robust, engrossing picture, and whether the responsibility for the challenge of watching falls to Dovzhenko or to each individual viewer, the value verily exceeds the vexation. It's a curiosity, and a task, and definitely not for all comers. Yet for anyone receptive to the more complex and enigmatic side of film, 'Zvenigora' is ultimately a terrific title that's well worth checking out.

Full review on my blog max4movies: Zvenigora is a Soviet silent black and white drama about a mysterious old man who spends centuries to find a legendary treasure buried in the middle of the Ukraine. The movie is essentially an epic fictionalized retelling of the country's history. Using recurring characters, who should be seen as symbols or embodied ideologies, several historical struggles are retold (e.g., the invasion of the Poles in the 18th century or the October Revolution in 1917). However, as there is no real plot to tie the several episodes together, the movie all too often feels fragmented and disjointed. Together with the symbolic dialogues and that at least some basic knowledge of Ukrainian and/or Soviet history is needed to understand certain scenes, the overall movie alienates many viewers. And while the production values and the cinematography are often impressive and the mix of historical events and surreal elements is ambitious, Zvenigora falls short in presenting a coherent journey.

Dovzhenko is certainly a controversial figure, especially during the 1930s and 1940s, for his ability to subjugate his Ukrainian identity to his sentiments as a staunch Stalinist. His behavior is at least suspicious, even considering the pressures he was subjected to.

Zvenigora is one of his most clearly political films, which does not exclude ambiguities in the treatment of propaganda content. Obviously it could be uncomfortable for the director, among other things, to narrate the Ukrainian civil war from the side of the red army... when he had fought in the ranks of the whites.

Dovzhenko did not hesitate to modify a script by Mikhail Johansen and Yurtyk (Yuriy) Yosipovich Tyutyunnik to suit Soviet tastes. The truth is that originally the text had to have clearly anti-Soviet overtones: written by two Ukrainians a poet and a militar who, seeing the turn that the story took in the hands of Dovzhenko, rejected any authorship of the result. It is especially cruel that Dovzhenko boasted in his autobiography that he had found a bourgeois and nationalist script, and adapted its content to Soviet doctrine, given that the two writers were shot shortly after, victims of the Stalinist purge. That Dovzhenko wrote his autobiography in 1939, obviously conditioned by the extreme political pressure of the time, is possibly no justification.

The positioning of the film is very clear considering that in 1928 a decade of the Ukrainian cultural and linguistic revival came to an end, a movement that the Bolsheviks saw as dangerous and that they were quick to repress.

The result is that Zvenigora has a clear Stalinist program, chanting industrialization, collectivization, the Sovietization of Ukraine.

An old peasant who represents traditional and outdated values, tries to unearth the trasure of Ukraine, considered in the film as a symbol of the culture and history of the country, but associated at the same time with traditional and reactionary values.

The old man has two grandchildren: the soviet hero of the day, played by the almost always disagreeable Semyon Svashenko, a hieratic, authoritanian, almost inhuman figurehead, but inevitably with the reason on his side; and a second grandson with a somewhat stupid appearance, attached to superstitions, representing the survival of Ukranian values and traditions in the young generation.

The grandfather of course trusts the foolish grandson, and tells him stories about the buried treasure, about the origin of this treasure, which is in the stories of his country's past, which are narrated in the film.

But the treasure must not be unearthed, and so a monk with a gloomy expressionist aesthetic watches over it.

Civil war breaks out and the Bolshevik hero triumphs while the nationalist son flees to the West.

The hero ends up discovering what Ukraine's real treasure is: its mineral wealth, a source of industrialization, and which the Soviet regime plundered for decades.

The nationalist son emigrates to Prague, image of the excesses of the decadent Westerners, where he tries to seek funds from reactionary governments to unearth the treasure and free Ukraine from the Soviet yoke.

The film ends with the grandfather trying to unearth the treasure again, prevented not by the gloomy monk, but by the train of modernity and industrialization. He is then won over to the cause, condescendingly accepted and forgiven in honor of his gray hair. Only the reactionary son, despicable enemy of progress, is insurmountable.

The artistic value of the film is amazing. Zvenigora is Dovzhenko's most avant-garde and complex film, with an apparently chaotic but actually carefully planned structure, with images of ashtounding beauty and expressiveness and the brilliant editing characteristic of Soviet cinema of the time. Its noteworthy too because of the allegorical tone and symbolism, because of the disconcerting changes in style, because of an ambiguity clearly the result of the director's discomfort in the suffocating framework in which the government reduced him.

Zvenigora is a clear reflection of the moral dilemma Dovzhenko faced, of his own contradictions, and the clash between his love for Ukraine and his Bolshevik allegiance.

Still, or precisely because of this, the authorities did not like the film, basically because of its complexity, its intellectualism and its defiantly avant-garde character. If Dovzhenko believed that by sticking thematically to the regime's program he would get out of trouble, he was mistaken.

It is not an easy film to watch: first of all it tells us about a social and political reality that requires familiarity with the topic, as well as about the personal situation of the director; on the other hand, the scenes may seem disjointed at first glance, the changes in style and rhythm are extraordinarily drastic, and in general there is a narrative far removed from a classic narrative. But it's no doubt a masterpiece, which rewards all efforts.

With Eisenstein - scientist of film, scholar - it was about synthesized image that opened eyes with conflict of the individual parts. It was a studied thing, architectural. This, on the other hand, is what they were fond of calling back then a 'cinematic poem'. So, yes, the stanza is evocative of soul, the rhythm seductive with earthly lyricism; you can see how all this is later revitalized again into poetry with Tarkovsky.

Yet even though the heart is old world, dwelled by spiritual yearnings about the past and rural pageantry - the protagonist is an old man who escorts us through legend or memory - the eye is unerringly modern; it sees in ways that, now with hindsight, we can recognize as distinctly cinematic and only possible with the camera.

So an old battle is diffused with dreamlike ambiance, reconstructed mechanically by actors moving like tinker-toys, but modern life is dazzling where shown; dynamic, disorienting. There are some amazing shots of electric city night humming with motion that I will keep with me. It is ultimately about these two worlds briefly coexisting in the same frame, one rushing against the other, clashing or making way for the locomotion forwards.

Oh, there is the brief forray into civil war, and the brave, statuesque Red officer who must order his own firing squad. But elsewhere the Reds are shown to flee a village in defeat. The politics are ambivalent, mere footnote in the larger flow and pull.

The first part of Aleksandr Dovzhenko's trilogy (followed by "Arsenal" and "Earth") focuses on a man's hunt for treasure buried somewhere in a mountain, thereby showing a millennium of Ukrainian history. Beyond that, "Zvenigora" is about the relationship between humans and nature. Apparently, Dovzhenko was of the opinion that humanity's full submission to nature kept humans backwards, and that understanding and control of nature is required to advance (which they were supposed to have achieved with the October Revolution). When the movie got released, the Soviet magazine Kino (Cinema) called it bourgeois and nationalistic, although Dovzhenko was allowed to keep working after that.

Anyway, worth seeing.

For the record, Zvenigora is the Russian rendering of the name. In Ukrainian it's Zvenyhora, since in Ukrainian the Cyrillic G has a sound that's halfway between G and H.