Russian directing team Natasha Merkulova and Aleksey Chupov make films (Intimate Parts; The Man Who Surprised Everyone) that catch the audience off balance and shock them into seeing Russia through new eyes. In Captain Volkonogov Escaped (Kapitan Volkonogov Bezhal), their largest scale production so far, it is political repression they speak of. The gloves are off in a grotesque comedy set in the 1930s that gives full vent to the Russian lust for metaphor, mysticism and visual expressionism. This may present a barrier for viewers who insist on realism in their movies, or who dislike watching a succession of torture scenes. But it is a coherent stylistic choice that pays off handsomely in the final moments.
Yuriy Borisov, the actor of the moment now starring in a slew of festival films like Petrov’s Flu and Compartment No. 6, plays Capt. Fyodor Volkonogov, the top dog in a pack of young, violence-happy NKVD agents (predecessors of the KGB) who are taught to torture and kill innocent citizens judged “unstable” for the country’s political future. Their job is to carry out mass arrests and executions, often using “special interrogation” methods to get a signed confession. Although no specific group is invoked – on the contrary, their bright red sweat suits were totally anachronistic in the 1930’s and thus anonymous – it is quite clear we’re in the middle of Stalin’s Great Terror, when “enemies of the people” were rounded up on trumped up charges and some one million Soviet citizens were shot or tortured to death.
The film’s title seems to herald a grotesque retelling of Robert Bresson’s masterpiece A Man Escaped, in which a young French lieutenant did the impossible in 1943, breaking out of a heavily guarded German military prison in Lyon (a plaque in Bresson’s film commemorates 40,000 prisoners and 7,000 dead), to the strains of a Kyrie from a Mozart mass. Fyodor’s “prison” is an equally imposing building where enemies of the regime are put to death, or one might say the real prison is his own cruelty and indifference to his victims. Compassion for their suffering is the only spiritual redemption.
The power-drunk youths, who live together in a vast aristocratic building that has been requisitioned for party higher-ups, play an indoor volleyball match in which they casually destroy a crystal chandelier. There is a frightening edge of barely concealed violence to their hijinks that the directors waste no time bringing out. When Fyodor arrives at the office, another fortress of masonry built in more graceful times but now occupied by torturers, he finds a major has just jumped out the window and his comrades are being sent to “rehabilitation” one by one. He makes a sensible decision and bolts for it.
The rest of this dynamic, slightly repetitive two-hour tale could be called “Run Fyodor Run”, as our anti-hero tries to stay out of the clutches of his former colleagues and stay alive for a while longer. He soon has Major Golovnya (Timofey Tribuntsev) on his tail, a tubercular bulldog who won’t give up.
Fyodor spends the first night with a bunch of derelicts, who are rounded up and pressed into graveyard duty, tossing the dead (many in red sweats) into a shallow grave. The young captain is sickened to recognize his best buddy Veretennikov (a comic-tragic Nikita Kukushkin), among the victims. Great is his surprise when Veretennikov climbs out of his grave ghoul-fashion and warns him he’ll soon join his pals in eternal suffering in hell for what they have done. The only way out is to find one of the people he’s wronged who will forgive him.
Always one step ahead of the bad guys with guns, Fyodor starts off on a quest to find forgiveness and discovers it’s not an easy task. His first visit is a gruesome one to a morgue decked with naked bodies, where the daughter of a scientist he’s killed has found a place to sleep. Her reply to his request that she forgive him is a short obscenity. Next he visits the widow of another torture victim and finds she has gone mad. His confrontation with the husband of a woman who told the wrong joke in the market – Fyodor took care of her personally – punches him in the face. And so on.
The striking features of Yuriy Borisov, particularly his mobile eyes under a strong brow and shaven head, help him navigate a full range of emotions from insolence to fear to frustration, and it is always interesting to see how the other characters will react to his boldness.
Mart Taniel, the cinematographer who participated in writing the screenplay with Chupov and Merkulova, gives an exhilarating look of sweeping breadth to Sergey Fevralev’s staggeringly outsize sets, which include astounding wall murals and stylized industrial landscapes. Nadezhda Vasileva’s costumes are characterized by those ridiculous but expressive red jumpsuits worn by the hit men, advantageously on display in a traditional Russian song and dance sequence that is sheer, unapologetic fun.
Another excellent credit is Francois Gédigier’s editing, which incorporates blocks of flashbacks (the torture scenes) without the slightest confusion between past and present.
Directors: Natasha Merkulova, Aleksey Chupov
Screenplay: Natasha Merkulova, Aleksey Chupov, Mart Taniel
Cast: Yuriy Borisov, Timofey Tribuntsev, Aleksandr Yatsenko, Nikita Kukushkin, Vladimir Epifantsev, Anastasiya Ukolova, Natalia Kudryashova, Dmitriy Podnozov, Victoriya Tolstoganova, Yuriy Kuznetsov, Igor Savochkin
Producers: Valeriy Fedorovich, Evgeniy Nikishov, Alexander Plotnikov
Co-producers: Katrin Kissa, Charles-Evrard Tcheckhoff, Nadiia Zaionchkovska
Cinematography: Mart Taniel
Production design: Sergey Fevralev
Costume design: Nadezhda Vasileva
Editing: Francois Gédigier
Music: Elena Stroganova, Matis Rei
Sound: Matis Rei
Production companies: Place of Power (Russia), Lookfilm (Russia) in association with Homeless Bob Productions (Estonia), Kinovista (France)
World sales: Memento International
Venue: Venice Film Festival (competition)
In Russian
126 minutes
