Of Freaks and Men

This works on a dreamlike level rather than as a coherent story: the content is contained in the images and the relationships of the characters. Some of the events seem oddly motivated but make sense when seen as part of a tapestry. What is the tapestry depicting? The film is about the appropriation of a certain reality (which I would read as a psychological reality) by certain unruly elements in human nature. Those elements desire pleasure in pain and seek no relationships outside the exploitative. Amongst the central characters are a pair of Siamese twins but the filmmakers have gone out of their way to show that all of the characters are mental and emotional 'freaks'. What is interesting is that none of the characters who are exploited are really victims - they contain the seeds of their involvement in the central pornographic film-making within them from the first. This is even true of the Siamese, one of whom is innately drawn towards debauchery. The film is excellent at giving us the feel of a situation in which anarchic elements of the psyche rule. It is a bleak exercise - the characters who seem to escape to the West cannot escape their perverse desires (which bring them no happiness) and the idealist filmmaker portrayed is finally a sell-out. In that sense I found the film too bleak - there has to be some hope in the world! Maybe the filmmaker is attacking what has gone on in Russia since the fall of Communism: with the country run by gangsters and the people willingly being exploited. This film feels amazing but leaves a bitter taste in the mouth.

I've seen this brilliantly directed Russian movie at the 18th Istanbul International Film Festival and I was mesmerized by the beauty of it. It's definitely not a movie for all tastes. It's crammed with sick ideas. But the film is very rewarding, for those who are willing to watch it. The use of colour (sapia) is fascinating and the cinematography is breathtaking. The film also has a unique sense of humor, it's very absurd and sometimes really funny. I think it may gain a cult status in time. This film makes you think, that the movies from the early era could have been nastier or maybe they were not that innocent at all. And of course that the art of movie-making (and also photography for sure) is highly connected with voyeurism. Well at the end I'd like to say: If you are familiar with these themes and if you are a devoted cinema lover then stick with this one, because it is a unique masterpiece and in my personal opinion it's one of the best movies of this decade.

Every so often one has the pleasure of discovering a film so unusual that it seems that nothing has influenced it in its creation of a world all its own. One such was David Lynch's "Eraserhead", another, Charles Laughton's "Night of the Hunter" and now to join the august company is Alexsei Balabanov's "Of Freaks and Men". By dressing up a most scurrilous plot in images of extraodinary elegance and beauty the director has created an astonishingly original entertainment. Turn of the century St. Petersburg is hauntingly captured in beautiful sepia visuals of waterways and bridges, classical exteriors and upper class salons. But behind this facade the very devil is at work in the form of a gang of pornographic photographers who insinuate themselves into the lives of two respectable families whom they summarily proceed to corrupt. In due course the daughter of a highly respected engineer is enjoying having her naked buttocks spanked by an old crone in front of the camera, while the blind wife of a doctor in the other household becomes infatuated with another member of the gang who is only there to satisfy his paedophiliac fascination with the adolescent boy Siamese twins she and her husband have adopted. And this only for starters! As things go from bad to worse and goings on become more depraved - although admittedly we see no more than the odd spanking - the visuals become ever more beautiful particularly when the twins travel to the snowbound east and the girl travels west to wander a townscape of blowing autumn leaves. I think Balabanov is trying to say something about the voyeuristic nature of the camera and the progress of photography from still to moving pictures. To probe for deeper meanings wound not be very fruitful from a film whose raison d'etre, I suspect, is simply to intrigue and delight.

Alexei's Balabanov's Of Freaks of Men was a quite strange yet interesting viewing experience. The film mechanics and overall setting seemed to contradict the content that was being portrayed, perhaps to construct a novel "Balabanov" perspective. For instance, the use of pre- Revolutionary Tsarist Russia as a setting, complete with bourgeois colonnade backdrops and 19th century luxuries and proprieties, to display an underground pornography business that slowly takes over the lives of the main characters was quite an unexpected juxtaposition. The use of "brown-screen" (black and white?), intertitles, and classical music further strengthened this divide, almost making it seem like the organized crime of Balabanov's Brother 2 existed and was captured on film in the early days of cinema!

There are several ways one can interpret this artistic leap. One interesting perspective is to view the decline of the doctor's and engineer's Bourgeois families at the hands of the exploiting Johann as yet another example of the failure of Capitalism in the eyes of a Communist. The fathers of the two families made their money in a hog- eat-hog Capitalistic world, and their children (Tolya/Kolya and Liza respectively) ended up being used by a bigger Capitalist hog, Johann the pornographer. An alternative view would be a demonstration of how post- Soviet Russian organized crime was not an artifact of that particular era, and that it existed underground since before even Communism. That would have turned the movie into a nationalistic excuse for the deterioration that occurred in Russia after Gorbachev.

Although other views can be constructed, I feel like this movie was nevertheless a very successful and creative experiment on Balabanov's part. He has captured the new in the style of the very old to create a unique movie.

"Pro urodov i lyudej" (Aleksei Balabanov, 1998) is a dark, quixotic look at the earliest days of underground film making in Russia. One of its most interesting features is that the entire film is shot in sepia tone rather than full color, no doubt to emphasize the dreariness of its subject. There are a few outdoor scenes that show us a blue sky, but aside from that the entire film is rendered in that muted sepia color.

The sad-faced, willowy Dinara Drukarova plays Lisa, a young woman who is imprisoned in her own family home and forced to pose nude for the camera, being whipped on screen for the pleasure of a few depraved male customers. After several months of captivity, Lisa escapes and heads for the big city to make a new life for herself... but discovers that the degrading scenes she has been posing for have become a fixation for her.

The title translates into English as "Of Freaks and Men."The "freaks" part comes in when we are introduced to young Siamese twins, joined at the waist.

But as the film progresses, we perceive that the twins are the least "freaky" characters in the film.

Though the scenario is admittedly somber, there is a richness of tone and a strong storyline driving the film forward. We want to know what ultimately happens to the heroine, Lisa, and to the young conjoined twins. "Of Freaks and Men" is justly celebrated for these compelling virtues.