Assa

"Assa" was a film that I was eagerly waiting to see after all the positive reviews. It is an important film as it represents the changes within Russia on the choice of subjects to film. It is a brave film for its time. One of the major characters in the film is an admirer of the music of Nick Cave, at a time when few would have known who he was.

But the film has a major problem. The director introduces a strange fact that Noah of the Bible uttered the word Assa after the floods receded--and there is no such evidence in the scriptures.

Assa is considered one of the greatest films of the post Soviet generation. The soundtrack is not very far from what we call hipster nowadays - divergence from the mainstream. There are many underground musicians that either contributed musically or artistically. Also, it focuses on a major issue that existed among the "perestroika youth". How to choose a life of honesty and civility, when corruption promises "white mountains". Who can we trust if not our government? What will be the future, what is important in a life? These are all the questions that this movie focuses on.

Assa is a film for and by the youth and by the counter culture of its time. Aside from relevant problems being raised in the movie (a rare thing of its time), the film has notable music (that is still remembered and loved today by the grown up counterculture) and hipster style that existed and lived in Soviet Union before it became popular in US.

If pre-perestroika and the mindset of different people during that time interests you, as well as learning about non-mainstream music and counterculture, this is the movie for you.

The film is just fine to shoot. Conveys the spirit of those years and immerses in the atmosphere of the late 80s. The emphasis was placed on the contact of two different worlds, two different generations. On one side is a criminal authority, a person who is well versed in this world, with a firm hand. And on the other side, a young informal guy who sings on stage, lives in his own world. And in the middle is a beautiful girl, Alika.

The Acca film Festival legalized Russian rock and roll - not so much sound as "all this": men's earrings, communication tubes, lighters dancing in the dark, the maxim "the main thing is to feel sighted" and the whole countercultural show-off, without which rock becomes just highly paid music.

"Assa" gained a cult following in Russia upon its initial release, and I suppose that it still can be considered so. The movie is not very easy to get into. It's long, very slow-paced, and quite dark in terms of actual colors as well as atmosphere. Artistically, it has some good things going for it including the soundtrack, the actors' performances and some arty injections. I still don't think that the movie is as great as some people paint it out to be, although, one could probably argue that it, in a way, strided to fill a gap, one way or the other, for the young, subculture-oriented Russian 80's generation. Using the Soloviev connection, I'll say that if "Chernaya roza - emblema pechali..." was an, inverted, absurdistic take on later-period Soviet life, then "Assa" portrays a tragic clash between idealistic innocence and harsh Soviet reality.

The face of Russia as it was in the 80's. The image of the young generation through the face of gloomy regime. Love story of 2 young people is stuck between the old norms of Soviet union and the new rising power of organized mafia, two ingredients which will affect the collapse of the 70 years socialist power. The young generation demand changes, and immediately but it's being suffocated by both sides of the old order, and the movie ends with legendary Viktor Tsoi's song "Changes" which became an anthem after Tsoi's tragic death in a car accident. A Parallel story in the movie is the murder of Russia's emperor on 12th March of 1801 which is probably a metaphor of constant corruption in Russia.