papasergey

About to speak of the film where widescreen nearly-pornography is rendered absolute, I prime you beforehand there will be no sentimentality in my review - I'll speak straight from the shoulder.

So, hail the sexual revolution, as it was said by the Swedish Eurodance band 'Army of Lovers' in the 90s; these and similar musicians, so glamorous and possessing springness ('Mr. President', 'E-Rotic', 'T-Spoon', etc), rejecting the centuries-old dogmata, sang rollicking songs about Coco Jamboo, Dr. Dick and Sex on the Beach. DOGmata were thrown to the DOGS, even though the church didn't experience times of adversity in the West, unlike in our country, in long-suffering Russia; and in the world of popmusic, that happened a couple of decades sooner than in cinema, and let me express my view, why. Many are too timid to visit spicy film shows: imagine your stiff school mistress going to some tear-jerker and, by chance, seeing you entering another showing room with an exciting female bum on poster! But as for dance floors, there's hardly anyone but youth, and they haven't had dubious glances on themselves in ages. A pop band plays free-and-easy hits; everybody sexually hunts everyone; and what causes that small culpable circle to move, are ecstasy Disco Biscuits. But even before the disco time, time of messing about, the sexual revolution won in terms of clothes! 40-45 years ago, even for those times, and even in Russia, it was unlikely that anyone, except old grannies in their senility maybe, would be outraged at wearing short dress or a miniskirt by a young girl. Because all sane people understood: the majority wore shorts and mini not because they were sexually driven and preoccupied with sex. Girls feel HOT but it has nothing to do with being HOT, it's just summer weather! All in all, after comparative equality of men and women had come and condoms as well as birth control pills had flooded the market of everyday goods, sexual revolution began to advance with giant strides, no doubt about it. As a result, the present is full of TV music videos with blue subjects like cherries with cream, passionate glances and sighs, and satin female bare feet; what is the most popular book, is an erotic novel ('Fifty Shades of Grey'), which has beat even 'Harry Potter', 'Twilight' and 'The Lord of the Rings'. Thanks to the marvellous success of the bestseller #1, the film of the same name showed box office running into $ half a billion. All the rest films of 'free-and-easy' content still fail in business, but that's certainly not because they are not desirable; people are just still too shy to visit such showings, concerned about being caught by those acquaintances who consider the word 'sex' to be a synonym for 'lechery'...

At that, all the hypocrisy around having sex is due to nothing more than the fact that sex organs, by some natural reasons, perform excretion functions as well... That's the only thing these organs came in for their 'ill fame'; but if they weren't connected with excretion in any way, no-one, I'm quite sure, would ever think about sex blameworthily! And the words literally (with neither biological terminology nor euphemistic connotation) nominating these organs and what they do - would never be considered 'dirty'!

But it's high time to give up speculating about 'what would be if pigs had wings'; they would be angels, huh; if is a big word. Here comes 'Love' by Gaspar Noé. First of all, I can't but express my indignation at the virtual ban of it with us in Russia! It was shown officially just once, in Saint Petersburg, with some well-known oppositionists attending the showing. This dismisses the suggestions adduced in my reviews of the films 'Pouta' (Czech Republic) and 'Pouhdistus' (Finland): I said they were not 'banned', just ignored by Russian distributors on the grounds of unprofitability... I should have had not high opinion of our powers that be! I should have known that market laws wouldn't work any longer if politics intervenes in various branches of life!

But what I'm still convinced of, is that it's public opinion in Russia that allows these people rule! It was curious for me to look through the 'Love' reviews posted by Russians! There were of course a couple of odd opinions. A religionist lamented his bitter fate: he was unable to drop the filmmakers in hell pan. A young woman lapsed into daydreams of her bygone love. But by and large, the prevailing public opinion can be reduced to: 'this is not the film we in Russia are in need of'; the whole globalising world doesn't keep in step - our beloved Russia is the only one who keeps in step. (Such a wild sentiment is just perfect for the current regime.) Some extolled Noé's talents to the skies and tried to find a black cat in a dark room, but there was no cat. Very few reviewers treated the film impartially. Namely, as just a film with mission to show that the civilisation (not Russia, though, I'm sorry to inform you!) has latched onto a fine art house film with sex as the lion's share of runtime! The box office is low, extremely low in comparison with 'Fifty Shades', but art house films are always getting next to nothing in comparison with blockbusters, not much of eyeopener! A 3D art house, are you kidding?! That Noé sure wanted to snatch a large sum. That you would probably ask me. And I'd answer: 3D here is not a blockbuster attribute, just a ground-breaking technical spec: the 'first 3D nearly-pornographic mainstream' status makes 'Love' a pioneering film!

When I've first time (still a child then) watched this film, I didn't doubt it was either Mexican or Brazilian. Years after, I hardly believed the Internet, that was just another film by Uncle Sam, as this land, in my opinion, always feasting its eyes upon its own efficiency and richness, was unlikely to film something capping joy of communists of every stripe and hue.

Yet, it's a fact! US did film that. As they say, an ideologically irreproachable film. I mean 'Socialist realism' ideology. And a flat ostracism in the Capitalist world is also a fact. In return, the film made out all right in the 'Eastern Bloc', and no surprise. Where it became the greatest hit, was my land, Russia.

'Cause being a proletarian meant to be in then, in Communists' time. While one shouldn't put being rich on airs, unless eager to get great problems... Of course, people still tried to earn a little extra money, either lawfully or not quite (where on earth from would otherwise appear a sarcasm like 'you must live on just your salary, wage slave!') However, they never made a song and dance about it. On the contrary, they would heartily deny being not short of bob. For example, my late grandpa (he worked at a higher education institution and jostled for all positions but president) would come to the point of uttering an absurdity trying to make me believe that in Soviet time: there were no domestics in houses of Communist Party top managers as well as in those of top musicians and scientists; people went by public transport rather than by taxi; people hardly ever deposited money in banks as they lived from payday to payday. And when I, smiling, would argue that I, despite not living in those times, know there were still all those things then - servants, taxi and private accounts - he would frown and say, well, perhaps, but personally, I've never heard of it.

This is it, an ideology gap. Nowadays, being poor has nothing to do with being in. On the contrary, modern Russians want, to an increasing extent, to have themselves addressed as 'Mister' rather than 'Comrade' or 'Dear'. Russian cars are called none other than 'scrap' and outlet store frequenters, 'beggars'. Outcast dogs and especially cats are often treated better than outcast people. And very few modern Russian people are likely to treat juvenile delinquents well, as it is commonly thought that one should work (unless being cripple) rather than plunder.

But yet, this is a perennial problem, frankly speaking. At all times and under all social conditions, there are waifs and strays, lead by particular young proletarians and sometimes even hushed up by ministers of religion. Indeed, mates, what chickens are we to beg and gobble garbage in cesspits?! Gotta be robbers!

And so new youngsters join theft ring in the crime…

And certain creative specialists, willing to extol them to the skies, do turn up. Certain politicians, willing to put romantic tales of aggressive lumpen proletarians on a pedestal, do turn up either. And there are always certain proletarians, a bit less lumpen (than those tales' characters), who follow these politicians blindly, as that's so big of them - to protect interests of the poor! But as soon as some of the poor manage to grow rich to some extent, they tend to repudiate the poor flatly and start hating the under age dregs of society as social chasm between them is growing… And then, politicians set enforcers against dangerous special offenders, so that 'respectable citizens' would vote for those politicians, who guard them from those, who shatter their peace and quiet, the most successfully. The circle closes up…

It is the same both at the first and now, was and is. Thereby, I've no pronounced idea on this film. It was just filmed to spide one ideology and to please the other. A burning problem was raised deliberately; it was filmed in real slums with real guttersnipes instead of actors; the story was dialogued so that the poor had the red colouring of proletarian heroes and the rich, the white colouring of haughty touchy persons. The film's musical topic was originally the sentimental 'fishermen's march' by Dorival Caymmi; it was deliberately covered by the Soviet popscene so that the Russian lyrics would tell of an orphan beggar who scowls at the blue-ribbon residential areas and deep in his heart dreams of spilling the blood of their inhabitants, having fleeced them down to the last scrap as a preliminary…

Any doubts that these guys won't be found wanting to do exactly that? What do you think the opening rape scene tells of? Even Laurie, the vicious and deadly female character of the 'Watchmen' film, verily believed that a male capable of rape was worth hating. Isn't it reasonable?.. Thus, brigands and robbers of all hues, even if 'the rule here is' to justify them, are in fact inhuman and immoral

I was wrong to think that my most favourite dystopia had never been filmed. There is actually a screen version, and those who filmed it were the Western Germans, and the year was 1982. Since the crowd funding project via the Russian Internet appeared to be unsuccessful as the Russian world wouldn't give the hard-earned money for such cause as a Russian filmisation of some century-old controversial novel by a Russian-born emigrant writer, the Germans are unlikely to have competitors… But... Never is a long day! Someone who really praises this work of literature managed to get a qualitatively digitized copy of its nearly dead screen version. And – to translate it into Russian, using the opportunity since the book is originally in Russian of course. As a writer, Zamyatin is indeed quite controversial: some praise his writings and some just loathe them, but one can't remain indifferent about them, it takes only to start reading... Like it or not, the novel 'We' has been popular all over the world for ages and, in spite of being, in the respect of popularity, second to the Western dystopias 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' and 'Fahrenheit 451', does pretend to be one of the most noted Russia-associations. However, the only 'We' screen version is recalled in the West as well only by certain people (who have watched it on TV). That one of the users here on the IMDb, who applied to the German studio which had filmed it and was answered that it had been lost, might be rather interested to find out it finally surfaced! At least we Russians have now an opportunity to watch the film to pay a tribute to a Russian who did something close to revealing the entire genre to the world, dystopia fantastic novel! Personally I'm a fan of this Zamyatin's work since the very first opening of the book: at Russian schools, this novel is part of senior pupils' syllabus (although it, finished in 1920, was first published in the author's motherland only in 1988), as the modern authorities see a strong anti-Soviet sarcasm in it, which is profitable for them. But as for the film, taking my seat to watch it, I hardly expected anything fine: I'm convinced of a priori mismatching of some books with their screen versions. What I got, was quite a literal fidelity to the main feature of the hypothetic remote-future society described by Zamyatin: all inhabit the same glass rooms where blinds are drawn just for an hour – for a 'Sexual' one. As a matter of fact, when success in this point of filming went to their heads, the filmmakers substantially stinted themseves of all the rest. How much could be shown in a big way: clashes of revolutionaries with Guardians, panic among those cogs in the One State's machine who had first seen wildlife… Huh, they could at least show those free apemen coated with hair! But the entire film is just a curious and quite spectacular mirror trick as a scant number of actors and extras reflect in mirrors manyfold, and cohorts of 'numbers' whose motions, synchronous and consuming not much power, are bred-in-the-bone. A teleplay, not a true film. Perhaps a show ballet. But no cinema magic. At that, at least some of the actors – Dieter Laser, Sabine von Maydell, Heinz Moog – it's no trifle… But hey, some guys perform on stage just as hobby and, on my honour, do no worse than here; all they need is a lighting director who knows much about optics. Darn! I clean forgot. The film has some cachectic nude.

But I perhaps have no right to resentment: my dream to watch a movie on my favourite novel has come true, and I, after all, know now that there is still the film 'We' – and not just somewhere in mouldy archives! Zamyatin has, to a certain extent, been the mastermind behind the much-talked-of anti-totalitarianism authors: Aldous Huxley with his 'Brave New World'; George Orwell, '1984'; and Ray Bradbury, '451 °F'. I mean, it's profoundly symbolic that the author of the 'landmark decision' on how to denounce cynical social order in literary satire, was Russian. Well, the short story 'The New Utopia' by Jerome K. Jerome, the novel 'The Iron Heel' by Jack London were published prior to Zamyatin's 'We'; Jules Verne himself sometimes made free with his reputation by releasing novels like that ('The Begum's Millions' etc.) Yet, priority on this matter is ours as we ('second best' distressful; the Chinese are the 'best') have always had authorities that would just say 'Citizens die like flies? Never mind: women will bring new ones into the world'… Yes, we have some classic writers whose works of mid 19th century in the best way possible revealed the essence of the fact that power was always spilling blood. Those who have read the poem 'The Railway' by Nikolai Nekrasov (about a host of the dead while constructing the first Russian railway) and the last chapter of 'The History of a Town' by Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin (where the town's last Governor acted like no less than a totalitarian leader) can't but recall the deadly perfect One State where the Benefactor is able to ruin any 'number' with his love! Nowadays, there are certainly films casting a sinister dystopian mist over filmgoers from all over the world and really thrilling. But often, these films are pure fluff, just fun to watch. Examples include: 'Equilibrium' AKA 'Cubic', 'The Matrix', 'V for Vendetta', 'The Island' and 'Cloud Atlas' (well now, the latter is a crackerjack film due to the amazing South Korean 'Soap'!). But 'We' doesn't agree with the film business laws: you'd rather not film it at all if you can't involve such graphics as Cameron did in his 'Avatar'! However, that's my opinion, while the West Germans had a different one, and I, as a true lover of Zamyatin's novel, deep in my heart, can't but thank them for their nice try!