Men posture for control, show dominance and make war while women aim to get on with things, keep the home together and give birth in agony. That’s the facile message of Klondike, Maryna Er Gorbach’s beautifully filmed yet tiresomely obvious evocation of the Ukrainian-Russian conflict in the Donbas region, carrying the inevitable seal of authenticity, “inspired by true events.” It also boasts a final onscreen title, “Dedicated to woman…” What’s with the ellipsis? And the singular “woman”? Set in 2014 in the town of Hrabove, where Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 was shot down by Russian separatists, the film tells of an expectant couple who need to decide whether to remain on their farm or leave after a rocket takes off a wall of their home. Premiering at Sundance and then moving on to Berlin’s Panorama, the puzzlingly named Klondike will benefit from its appeal to a simplistic form of ur-feminism, but the real saving grace is Sviatoslav Bulakovskyi’s evocative cinematography.
This is the first feature written and directed solely by Er Gorbach, whose previous works (including Omar and Us and Love Me) were co-directed with her husband Mehmet Bahadir Er, here producing. The story it tells should feel far more potent, especially given some remarkably constructed sequences and a highly developed sense of framing, but the script is too intent on making pregnant Irka (Oxana Cherkashyna) the representative of womanhood, and audiences will be divided as to whether the final scene is a moving summation of the fierce power of woman’s nurturing instinct or an exasperating and glib evocation of the Biblical dictum, “in pain thou shalt bring forth children.”
It’s mid-July, and Irka and Tolik (Sergiy Shadrin) are sharing ideas about home improvements and buying furniture before their baby comes, when an explosion tears off the wall where ironically they had talked about putting in a picture window. His focus turns to getting them out of town but she sets about tidying up the place, refusing to give in to potential despair or even the inconvenience of living without an outer wall. Tolik feels the need to play a delicate balancing act, especially as his car was temporarily taken by Sanya (Oleg Shevchuk), a childhood friend aligned with the Russian separatists; if he can appease Sanya and his armed comrades, then maybe he’ll be able to get Irka to safety the following day. Irka’s brother Yaryk (Oleg Scherbina) also wants to get her away, but his uncompromising attitude towards the separatists and general anger at his brother-in-law signal a different approach to the same goal.
Then late that afternoon, Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur is shot down and the wreckage lies scattered around Hrabove. The aircraft’s detritus becomes an evocative anomaly in the gently undulating landscape and Er Gorbach uses this disturbing, other-worldly contrast to great advantage in some of the film’s most impressively shot scenes: body bags lie in a field of sunflowers and the plane’s wing jarringly appears like a beached behemoth on dried-out grassland. The camera’s slow pans reinforce the sense of calm shattered by unnatural violence, the eternal landscape not yet scarred by internecine fighting.
Irka tries to keep going, milking her cow Maya who she tenderly comforts, but Tolik slaughters the animal and gives the meat to the separatists, hoping that will buy enough goodwill to get them out of the region. Also typical of men (presumably): he’s horny that night, notwithstanding the fear and their blasted wall, while she just isn’t in the mood. The next day Tolik and Yaryk’s differing ideas of how to deal with the separatists and their Chechen collaborators reaches boiling point, setting off a chain of events that reinforces the sense of brute male posturing contrasted with Irka’s efforts to hold things together and deliver her baby.
Bulakovskyi’s coolly measured visuals ensure the rolling landscape is a frequent focus, which makes sense given how the countryside is used by the people who live there and traverse it. While both Tolik and Irka are proprietors of their farm, raising chickens and their cow, she’s the one with an instinctual need to nurture the land and animals; conversely, the cinematography emphasizes the notion that the men simply pass through the terrain. The war in Donbas is meant to be about territory but of course it’s far more about identity and allegiance, and while Klondike knows this, it plays down this crucial element in favor of a gendered message about the conflict – and by extrapolation every conflict – which, despite all the attractive art house stylizations, is maddeningly reductionist.
Director: Maryna Er Gorbach
Screenplay: Maryna Er Gorbach
Cast: Oxana Cherkashyna, Sergiy Shadrin, Oleg Scherbina, Oleg Shevchuk, Artur Aramyan, Evgenij Efremov
Producers: Maryna Er Gorbach, Mehmet Bahadir Er, Sviatoslav Bulakovskyi
Cinematography: Sviatoslav Bulakovskyi
Production design: Marketa Korinkova-Taplin
Costume design: Viktoriia Filipova
Editing: Maryna Er Gorbach
Music: Zviad Mgebry
Sound: Srdjan Kurpjel
Production company: Kedr Film Ukraine), Protim V.P. (Turkey)
Venue: Sundance (World Cinema Dramatic Competition); Berlinale (Panorama)
In Ukrainian, Russian, Chechen, Dutch
100 minutes
