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.

"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.

A friend lent me the DVD of this strangely compelling film. I was vaguely aware of its "arthouse" cinema release here in England a couple of years ago and thought that I had remembered it as having been well-reviewed. I don't know about you, but I love it when a film takes me by surprise, confounds my expectations and gives me the impression that I am being treated to a film-makers unique vision. "Of Freaks and Men" is a remarkable vision of exploitation amongst the middle classes of (what I presume to be) turn of the century Russia. Photographed in black and white and exquisite sepia tones it playfully uses Freudian imagery - trains, funnels, tunnels, stairways and doors - to create a dreamlike evocation of an apparently cultured and respectable society whose parlours may be used for the creation of titillating sado-masochistic pornography. The repression of sexual fantasies is mirrored by the subdued emotions that all the characters display when confronted by their trials. If you bring your own emotions to your viewing of this film you may, like me, find it occasionally heart-rending. The image of the beautiful siamese twins naked and cowering in terror from Viktor the leering, abusing pornographer is an image which I think will haunt me for a long time. All in all a richly poetic nightmare. To be viewed with an open mind and compassion.

OF FREAKS AND MEN is a constantly interesting story and film-------very well photographed---------about a strange, psychopathic pornographer who makes movies of women being whipped by a "nanny" for the underground market at the turn of the century. The film is shot in a sepia tone to give a nice authenticity to the proceedings. If you've seen photographs from the fin-de-siecle, you realize what marvelous recreations of those romantic-------though risqué--------photographs the filmmakers have achieved. Many of them look very much like the photographs of Julia Margaret Cameron----------one of the finest photographers working after the Civil War, who specialized in photographing women in dream like, highly romantic, almost spiritual scenes. She never did photos like this, of course, but the same care was taken in the art direction of this film.

But most interesting of all is the psychological workings of the minds of the very respectable middle class characters who find themselves drawn to this seedy business against their wills, but are quite willing to pursue their newfound inner freedom after the pornographer has left. This is one of Image Entertainment's most artistic releases for 2001. More please.

Jay F.

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.