J'ai vingt ans

This film is art. Like the Battleship Potiomkin, this Russian film doesn't aim at being an easy film, made to entertain and to fill people's brains with sugary dullness. It's its credibility, the Soviet neo-realism that it uses, which strikes. The way in which the film aims to show what Russia was like, in the Communist years. It's a situation hard to understand for a Western civilization. Russian patriotism, their intelligentsia and daily reality of work, study and vodka.

Which is why maybe, seen from a Western point of view, this movie may be not only hard to understand but also hard to follow as far as the concept of time is concerned. It remains a mystery in fact, how the characters find time to do everything or almost everything in one way. How people give strangers none, just by asking. How people seem to be so different, as well as their culture.

But that's not entirely to hold against the movie. It's the international realism that bites back the improbability of the film. The problems of 20 year olds, the silent struggle for political diversity, shown by the poets and their poems, and the struggle to cross the line to adulthood.

The photography is sublime. The voice overs that carry the movie away are profoundly extraordinary. Sergej looks at the sky and says "There is so much peace in the cosmos". Or the dance in the dark ballroom, Anja holding the candles which slowly become the only source of light. It's all very artistically deep, and it's strange how this film can hold the test of time.

Not to mention the chase scene, where Sergej follows Anya, unwilling to accept the fact that their relationship cannot end to being a simple encounter on a bus. Then there's the element of the friendship, challenged by aging.

It's not Soviet cinema at its best. Occasionally, the movie slows the pace down and becomes too much to bear. For example, the poetry scene is profound and meaningful, but much too long. The silent walks around Moscow are beautiful and suggestive, but again, always too long, although they unfold great and innovative camera work.

But it's one to see, because regardless of the fact that it's almost too meaningful, it's a good watch that draws you and drives you to thinking.

WATCH FOR THE MOMENT - When Sergej meets his father, who died in the WWII, and talks to him. The scene involves the atheist beliefs of Communism but at the same time signals to us that some sort of hope is there.

In illustrating the freedom of the Thaw, I Am Twenty meanders along unconstrained, with little resolution, and seems more like a series of vignettes than a coherent story. The camera angles are almost always close-fitting and create a sense of claustrophobia; the frame is surrounded by corners. In the midst of a cultural shift towards a more free nation (in Western terms), there is still a feeling of being enclosed. This makes scenes in which the shot is open seem all the more freeing. For example, when Sergei walks empty city streets in the morning, the sky takes up half the frame. This scene feels fresh and relieving in comparison to the rest of the film. Increased consumerism is clear, as one friend of Sergei's says he has gotten used to consumerism "like crazy". American influences are everywhere: in the music, the advertisements, and the styles of young Muscovites; Russia's character is still very much present, however. St. Vasily's Cathedral is prominent in the background of shots, and it is the famous Russian Alexander Pushkin's "Autumn" that is read aloud over one scene. I Am Twenty is not just a portrait of 1960's Russia, it is specifically a portrait of young Russians, who were the first generation to really live outside of the events of the early Soviet Union and WWII. Khutsiev portrays them is as aimless, but not hopeless. The camera work that encloses them is meticulously constructed and light is smartly utilized in every frame to provide a bright picture, despite the enclosed nature of the shot. The focus seems more on the situational than the psychological, in comparison to Kalatazov's Cranes Are Flying or Tarkovsky's Ivan's Childhood. Overall, I Am Twenty provides a smart and accessible picture of Russian life, albeit a picture that meanders an hour or so too long.

This film was shot in 1962, which saw Kruschev face off with Kennedy over the placement of nuclear missiles in Cuba. It is considered part of the "New Wave" of Soviet cinema because at this time the arts community felt a reprieve from the absurd, very often brutal (the list of artists perished under Stalin is countless). and totalitarian treatment of their work under Stalin. They once again felt like they had a certain amount of freedom to explore the human condition rather than simply crank out bland polemics about the glory of communism.

Because of extensive reworks by the censors, the film was shortened from nearly 3 hours down to barely an hour and a half when it was not finally exhibited until 1964.

The film deals with three school chums, Sergei, Slava and Nikolai. Sergei is returning to Moscow from his hitch in the Army to find that "you can't go home again" Slava is married and has a toddler. Nikolai is doing research at a scientific institute. Nikolai offers to find Sergei a job at the Institute, but Sergei decides to follow in his deceased father's (killed in battle at age 21 in 1943 during the Great patriotic War, aka WWII) footsteps and work at the local power plant.

Sergei finds that his relationships to people have changed. Slava is distanced from them by his marriage and family commitments, but still tries to be "one of the boys" Nikolai works hard, and flirts shamelessly in exchange. Sergei feels alone and uncomfortable, never really sure what he should be doing. He still lives in the same flat with his mother and younger sister, he goes to work each day and studies to be an engineer at night.

Sergei spies a lovely woman on the street car, and begins a long chase across Moscow, where he follows her from place to place, in the markets, on the Metro, always catching, then avoiding her eye, but never working up the courage to speak to her. Eventually he finds himself at the door to her building, watching her ride away in the glass elevator, kicking himself for not having more courage.

Sergei meets the same woman, months later, at the May Day parade. He is able to lure her away from her friends with some assistance from Nikolai and Slava. The two gradually fall in love, but Anya turns out not to be a very stable character. The romance builds, and Sergei is introduced in turns to her estranged spouse, who she is divorcing, and to her father, who expects that she will never settle down and will remain forever in the family apartment. Both consider her flighty and reckless.

Sergei's despondency eventually leads him to a dream where he meets his father, who died in battle never knowing that he had a daughter. He asks his father for guidance, and is told simply "live" because his father was cut down so young.

As the film progresses, it asks the usual passel existential questions common to "youth angst" films like "why am I here, where am I going, what is it all for?" The film never seems to approach any answers to these questions. Slava's discontent at losing his freedom to marriage, Nikolai's being asked to become an informer at work, which would make Nikolai into a collaborator with the Communist regime that he thinks he is slowly gaining freedom from, Sergei's inability to fit in, are all exposed, but never concluded. It is an open question for me whether this lack of resolution came about because the director chose not to answer these questions (in order to make the viewer think, rather than pour pabulum down the his throat), or because Khutsiev felt that his answers would never get past the censors.

Despite its dark and troubled subject matter, this film is filmed in a very bright and artistic style. The camera work for the film is most impressive. During the long chase scene across Moscow, the camera often took the point of view of the actors, catching glimpses of each other through someone's crooked elbow on the streetcar or over a stack of books at a street vendor. In other scenes the scope is large and there are many beauty shots of central Moscow, Lenin's Tomb, the Kremlin, parks and so on to show the inherent loveliness of Moscow. The distinctive flared shape of the cooling towers of a nuclear reactor is worked seamlessly into the background, rather than as a jarring set piece demonstrating the progress of the great Soviet Society. The director's choice of camera angles and the setup of the shots is definitely arty without feeling forced or over the top.

The director clearly is in love with Moscow and its people. The tenor of the film is very Hollywoodesque: The streets are always clean. Newly fallen snow is always pure and white, not covered in soot and ash. The streets have no potholes. There are no drunks lolling in the street. People go to parties, drink and talk without making asses out of themselves from too much vodka and bad singing. Communal apartments are quiet, brightly lit and inviting rather than the dank and noisy holes that most people equate with Soviet planned communities. The actors are all tall, strong and handsome, the actresses are all slender and model beautiful. All are impeccably dressed in the latest (for 1962) fashions: coats and ties for the men, skirts and heels for the women. The contrast between the actors and reality is never stronger than the scene where the lovely leads watch a Comsomol choir singing. The true faces of the proletariat contrast with the scrubbed and primped actors in a most striking way.

The film is shot in gorgeous black and white, with terrific contrast and depth. I have often asserted that to film THINGS , use color. To film PEOPLE use black and white, and the subtlety and shading of the lighting and camera work in this film back that assertion up quite nicely.

Some of the scenes are very touching and speak to feelings that most of us have had at one time or another. We ache for Sergei and Anya to get together and be happy. We feel the tension and hurt feelings between the young men as they realize they are growing apart as they grow up.

For all of its beauty the film has some distractions. The actors themselves are convincing enough but much of the dialog, especially in scenes such as where Sergei meets Anya's father, and later his own father in the dream, or when Sergei offers a toast to the humble potato for saving their lives from hunger during the war, fall flat because of ineffective dialog. Granted, I was watching the translation via the subtitles, but it seemed to me that if the subtitles were even 1/2 accurate, that the dialog could have been more incisive and illuminating. Sergei is portrayed as a deeply thoughtful character who can't quite get his ideas together, with an internal monologue which mixes Puskin, Mayakovski and his own misgivings throughout the film, and yet when he gets a chance to really explore those thoughts with Anya's father, he says virtually nothing, and when he has a crisis of friendship with Nikolai, Nikolai and Slava can't help but think Sergei's droll truisms about humanity are simply jokes in poor taste. Both scenes could have been masterstrokes of exploration of the angst that has so clearly taken hold of the three boys, and yet the dialog again lets us down.

I truly enjoyed the film for its portrayal of 1962 vintage Moscow, if only the glitzy side of it. It truly is a tribute to the director's view of Moscow. Like many Soviet films, it is overlong and almost painfully slow in places. Still, I consider it a good experience to have seen it, and recommend it as an example of the Soviet New Wave.

Very beautifully shot 1960s Moscow, in both its most quiet and lively moments, with at times very fun to watch camera work by Margarita Pilikhina.

Unfortunately, I think some of the film's essence was lost in translation for me though - meaning actual translation that sometimes was hard to follow semantically, a lack of societal context to fully comprehend political allusions and not having been exposed to soviet films and storytelling all that much before. Might have to rewatch at some point.

Certain diegetic accents were a little surprising or confusing to me, (especially the end felt foreign and didn't really tie in smoothly with the rest of the movie) which also made it difficult to connect to the main characters at times - the chasing scene (omg) and the way women and marriage are being discussed, didn't necessarily make that easier.

*watched a slightly shorter finnish copy of the original.

I've always thought that a lot of films that were made in the Soviet Union got overshadowed by Eisenstein and Tarkovsky, not to mention by European films from France, Italy, by Bergman, by Kurosawa and many others from Japan. I feel sad when I think about that, because there are so many great films that were made there that the general film loving public did not and does not get to see. The only two films that may have broken out of this "embargo", so to speak were The Cranes are Flying and Ballad of a Soldier. Criterion has been doing some good deed and releasing a few of such great films I speak of in the Eclipse Series and I only hope they keep releasing them because there are just too many to list that others must see.

I Am Twenty is one of those films. It was made during the de-Stalinization period, otherwise known as the Krushchev thaw where people had a short period of freedom of speech, which Hutsiev, the film's director utilized in making of this film, where the story centers on three friends in their 20's going through a sort of a quarter-life crisis in the Soviet Union, worrying about such things as where to live, means of getting money, and exactly what to do with their lives - which at the time was unheard of - one of the reasons for which Krushchev condemned this film during the end of the thaw (when it was being released) and most certainly which contributed to this film's censorship.

This undoubtedly is the kind of film that speaks the universal language, which I hope would be an intriguing watch for people who can track this film down and watch it (there are English subtitles for it, I checked)

Shot beautifully, flows poetically, and definitely leaves a mark.

I loved it [07-22-2011, 08:23 PM]