"From Russia W/O Love", a Movie about life in the old CCCP

[Ice]

http://online.wsj.com/public/article...195142942.html

From Russia, Without Love:
New Movie Slams Soviet Union
By ANDREW OSBORN
June 21, 2007; Page B1

MOSCOW -- For nearly a decade, director Alexei Balabanov and producer Sergei Selyanov have ridden a rising wave of nationalism in Russia to box office success with tales of local heroes triumphing over Chechen separatists, American crime bosses, and underworld hit men.

But their latest film, set in 1984, has left audiences feeling uncomfortable by taking aim at a new target: the Soviet Union. The gritty thriller, set in 1984 in the USSR's twilight years, has triggered controversy with an unremittingly bleak and violent portrayal of the period.

The reaction at a special prerelease screening in Moscow early this month was stunned silence. The country's political and cultural elite were invited to the screening but the theater was less than half full.

The film is named "Gruz 200" (Cargo 200) after the zinc-lined coffins in which dead Soviet soldiers were shipped home from the 1979-89 war in Afghanistan. Messrs. Balabanov and Selyanov say they made the movie as an antidote to what they describe as rising nostalgia in Russia for the Soviet period.

"I show what filth we lived in," said Mr. Balabanov, a director sometimes described as Russia's Quentin Tarantino. "Society was sick from 1917 onwards," he added, referring to the year the Bolsheviks took power.

The film -- a graphically violent story of the sexual abuse of a teenage girl at the hands of a sadistic Soviet policeman -- paints a relentlessly negative picture of a time that many Russians recall with warm nostalgia. The filmmakers hope to release the movie overseas but haven't yet signed up a foreign distributor.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who restored Russia's Soviet-era national anthem, has called the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century," and polls show a majority of Russians regard the period as one of relative prosperity, stability and national pride.

Cont...

I can't really comment on the accuracy of the film, but it looks interesting none the less.

[AntiochusIII]

Will they be arrested, assassinated, or simply shot, I wonder?

[Marshal Murat]

Who?

[Husar]

Who?

The filmmakers.
Wondered that as well, but I hope they get some lasting popular support, however unlikely that may be.

[Marshal Murat]

The filmmakers.

Who? What are their names? I can't find them.

[Bijo]

Sounds interesting. I will have to look out therefor.

[Husar]

Who? What are their names? I can't find them.

They're right at the start of the quoted article in the opening post:

MOSCOW -- For nearly a decade, director Alexei Balabanov and producer Sergei Selyanov have ridden[...]

Now I hope you're not one of Putin's assistants.

[CrossLOPER]

Another snuff film from this guy? Alright, whatever.

[Xiahou]

Will they be arrested, assassinated, or simply shot, I wonder?

Perhaps yet another unsolved crime which seem to befall government critics....

A very gutsy, and probably risky move for these guys to make a movie like that.

[Husar]

Another snuff film from this guy? Alright, whatever.

Do you think the Soviet Union was a good thing or do you just think his movies are bad in general?

[Hosakawa Tito]

Will they be arrested, assassinated, or simply shot, I wonder?

Glow in the dark Kool-Aid perhaps?

[KafirChobee]

Sounds like an interesting film, hope it makes it here. Though it's unlikely - we Americans don't care much about reading, subtitles are so annoying. ;)

There was an earlier discussion about the present wave of nostalgia in Russia about the good old Soviet days. It just proves that good propaganda can overcome the realities of the past.

Consider how many Americans still view the '50's as a golden age. Gah!

[Husar]

Sounds like an interesting film, hope it makes it here. Though it's unlikely - we Americans don't care much about reading, subtitles are so annoying. ;)

We will just dub it, like all movies.

[CrossLOPER]

Do you think the Soviet Union was a good thing or do you just think his movies are bad in general?

Actually both, somewhat.

As restrictive as it was in the Soviet Era, things were in realative good order. Things were being done and it was possible to advance in society. There was excellent free medical care and proper, widespread free education. The only reason you should have had a problem with the society is if you were totally abrasive to it.

Why in the hell anyone would completly sacrifice every aspect and replace it with what's there today is beyond me. It absolutely needed repairs, but there was no reason to destroy the nation.

Propoganda is not necessary. In many aspects, it WAS better.

As for the man's movies, I'd have to say that "Braht" appears to be the only one worth watching.

[Husar]

Thanks for the clarification.

Why in the hell anyone would completly sacrifice every aspect and replace it with what's there today is beyond me. It absolutely needed repairs, but there was no reason to destroy the nation.

I think that's quite correct, it wasn't perfect before, but currently it sounds like quite a mess, at least in some parts of the country. Then again, like you say, the old system needed some serious "repairs" as well but some are the same that Russia still needs today.

[CrossLOPER]

Then again, like you say, the old system needed some serious "repairs" as well but some are the same that Russia still needs today.

Many times easier to have repaired what was there than what is there now.

[Banquo's Ghost]

Many times easier to have repaired what was there than what is there now.

I doubt it. The Soviet Union was a morally bankrupt and economically moribund society. There was nothing that could be done with it to make it better except put it out of its misery.

And misery it was. There were some things to value, not least the outstanding education and care for the elderly, but mostly Brezhnev's era was filthy, miserable, corrupt and degrading and got worse and worse because of the fossilisation of government and the paranoia of the military.

As restrictive as it was in the Soviet Era, things were in realative good order. Things were being done and it was possible to advance in society. There was excellent free medical care and proper, widespread free education. The only reason you should have had a problem with the society is if you were totally abrasive to it.

The medical care was free, but not of a high order. My wife still sings the praises of Russian healthcare, but any westerner tends be appalled at the standards of care in comparison.

Advance in society? Not unless you were a party member and corrupt to the eyeballs in most cases. And whereas the later Soviet system might not have been as harsh on free speech as the West used to characterise, you conveniently forget that most of the seventy years comprised brutal repressions and political imprisonment. Gorbachev's reign was not typical of Soviet experience.

Kruschev's 1950's era was, by all accounts, reasonably decent too, since most people had stopped starving to death from the Uncle Joe's collectivisation drive and panicking about a one-way ticket to some "guaranteed employment."

I suspect you own the same red-tinted spectacles that blind many people in Putin's Russia, enabling him to protect you all from the evils of "weak" and "decadent" ideas of free thought and free markets.

Certainly the disaster that the west inflicted on the new-born democratic Russia made most ordinary people hate liberalisation, but that was due to the already corrupt classes of the party discovering the party that is capitalism unrestrained by law.

[CrossLOPER]

I doubt it. The Soviet Union was a morally bankrupt and economically moribund society. There was nothing that could be done with it to make it better except put it out of its misery.

OK, so the current state of Russia is acceptable? Explain.

And misery it was. There were some things to value, not least the outstanding education and care for the elderly, but mostly Brezhnev's era was filthy, miserable, corrupt and degrading and got worse and worse because of the fossilisation of government and the paranoia of the military.

Right, the country is awful because of a leader. Fantastic basis you got there.

The medical care was free, but not of a high order. My wife still sings the praises of Russian healthcare, but any westerner tends be appalled at the standards of care in comparison.

????? TOTAL BS.

Advance in society? Not unless you were a party member and corrupt to the eyeballs in most cases.

There was no such thing as severe corruption in the government until the Soviet Union came along.

I And whereas the later Soviet system might not have been as harsh on free speech as the West used to characterise, you conveniently forget that most of the seventy years comprised brutal repressions and political imprisonment.

Where did I deny that there was repression? In any case, it was harsh, but tolerable mainly because of what the country gave in return.

Gorbachev's reign was not typical of Soviet experience.

Proof that it was workable. Too bad that Gorbachev sent everything to hell in the end.

Kruschev's 1950's era was, by all accounts, reasonably decent too, since most people had stopped starving to death from the Uncle Joe's collectivisation drive and panicking about a one-way ticket to some "guaranteed employment."

That would be one of the negative aspects of having a strongman for a leader.

I suspect you own the same red-tinted spectacles that blind many people in Putin's Russia, enabling him to protect you all from the evils of "weak" and "decadent" ideas of free thought and free markets.

There is no punishment for thought, also the investments in the free market are very high. As of now, there is a dramatic increase in prospects for tourism. This requires the (re)building of hotels and reorganization of services. I believe Putin called for this, actually.

Certainly the disaster that the west inflicted on the new-born democratic Russia made most ordinary people hate liberalisation, but that was due to the already corrupt classes of the party discovering the party that is capitalism unrestrained by law.

... and so they were praised. No one has a problem with liberalism, but the transformation that occured was so hideously executed, that it made people bitter at how there lives were destroyed in persuit of something that required decades of careful steps. Instead of a fully functioning democratic nation, what was created was an even bigger mess.

[KafirChobee]

I agree with Banquo's.

As he indicated, when the collapse did happen the Wests' givernments sat on their hands. While the Wests corporation ran into play 1800's capitalism. It was a total fubar. The only Russians that had money were those associated with the Russian mafia and the corrupt soviet officials. It was a heaven sent formula for the greedy, and a total bust for the working class.

Remember how they handed out shares of the old USSR to the people, as though they now each owned a piece of the closed factories and such - and that would make things OK? Make them capitalists. A share was worth a bit, but most had to sell more than one for a loaf of bread. It was a silly idea.

CL, the problem I have with your comparing the present with the past is that the one seems to excuse the other. It's like being up to ones neck in crap and then it's only to the waiste, and saying the former wasn't all that bad.

[CrossLOPER]

CL, the problem I have with your comparing the present with the past is that the one seems to excuse the other. It's like being up to ones neck in crap and then it's only to the waiste, and saying the former wasn't all that bad.

I beg to differ.

[PanzerJaeger]

Its good that at least some russians realize the terrible society they created for themselves by going communist. To think how many of them died fighting as Stalins dogs... I bet it was hard making a tactical withdrawal against your own MGs.

What is most pathetic is that they let it continue for so long. I guess when you live an environment as horrible as imperial russia, communist russia was somehow appealing?

[Banquo's Ghost]

Its good that at least some russians realize the terrible society they created for themselves by going communist. To think how many of them died fighting as Stalins dogs... I bet it was hard making a tactical withdrawal against your own MGs.

Unnecessarily nasty and requires rebuttal. Whatever the faults of their leaders, the Russian people fought heroically against the brutal evil visited on them by the German invaders - who contrived some of the most utterly wicked acts on innocents ever seen because of their own leader's propaganda. Certainly the wickedness was reciprocated and spiralled into madness, but the Germans set the standards when they decided all Russians were sub-human and implemented that prejudice from the moment they crossed the border.

The heroism of ordinary Russians at the siege of Leningrad for example, when the invaders smashed all the extraordinary cultural icons at Tsarskoye Selo (acts of allegedly civilised people that even the revolutionaries didn't indulge in) and starved millions outshines anything the aggressive pawns of the Nazi regime achieved.

These people fought for their own way of life whatever faults it had. The people you admire so much sowed the wind, and deserved the whirlwind that followed them right into the heart of their darkness.

What is most pathetic is that they let it continue for so long. I guess when you live an environment as horrible as imperial russia, communist russia was somehow appealing?

And what's the excuse for Germany embracing the evil of Nazism? A bit of inflation and a bruised ego? How long would they have put up with National Socialism if the Allies hadn't stamped it out for them?

[Husar]

These people fought for their own way of life whatever faults it had. The people you admire so much sowed the wind, and deserved the whirlwind that followed them right into the heart of their darkness.

Very well said.

[PanzerJaeger]

Unnecessarily nasty and requires rebuttal. Whatever the faults of their leaders, the Russian people fought heroically against the brutal evil visited on them by the German invaders - who contrived some of the most utterly wicked acts on innocents ever seen because of their own leader's propaganda. Certainly the wickedness was reciprocated and spiralled into madness, but the Germans set the standards when they decided all Russians were sub-human and implemented that prejudice from the moment they crossed the border.

The heroism of ordinary Russians at the siege of Leningrad for example, when the invaders smashed all the extraordinary cultural icons at Tsarskoye Selo (acts of allegedly civilised people that even the revolutionaries didn't indulge in) and starved millions outshines anything the aggressive pawns of the Nazi regime achieved.

These people fought for their own way of life whatever faults it had. The people you admire so much sowed the wind, and deserved the whirlwind that followed them right into the heart of their darkness.



And what's the excuse for Germany embracing the evil of Nazism? A bit of inflation and a bruised ego? How long would they have put up with National Socialism if the Allies hadn't stamped it out for them?

Defending Russians by claiming they are slightly better than Nazis(which is debatable)... that says it all right there.

[Brenus]

“Defending Russians by claiming they are slightly better than Nazis (which is debatable)...”: That is the victory of Neo-Nazi. It is not debatable if you just study the roots of each ideology.
A Jew, a Gypsy, a Slav can’t survive Nazi Regime, based on racism. No even a vague chance…
Any citizen can survive a Communist Regime with bit of luck and no involvement in politic.
Those communist Regimes did kill, but so did the Western Capitalist & Democratic Countries…
France, England, USA, Spain, Portugal killed millions in the Cold War period, in the wave after WW2, decolonisation and Containment Wars. We use gas, starved populations to death (Vietnam, Biaffra (Nigeria), just as ex.), and deported populations in so-called Safe-villages (Vietnam, Algeria) as did the good Uncle Joe. And operation Condor was NOT a good democratic conduct…

Sorry, have to go to work... To be Continued...

[Marshal Murat]

How can you compare 2 evils?
Communist Russia was not the best place to live, but neither was a Nazi Germany. Both were brutal ideologies, the Germans only reviled because they lost. What can I say. I do not support the Holocaust or the eugenics projects that the Germans carried out, but I don't support the kulak liquidation and the imprisonment of thousands in gulags. It's choosing between evils, and I favor neither.

Those communist Regimes did kill, but so did the Western Capitalist & Democratic Countries…
France, England, USA, Spain, Portugal killed millions in the Cold War period, in the wave after WW2, decolonisation and Containment Wars.

How does this support or negate any argument? Two wrongs don't make it right or wrong. Does this mean that the U.S.S.R. wasn't so bad because NATO did the same? No. It means that we were both bad, but I would rather die free than live in Communism.

In closing....
If the Nazi's are pummeled for the Holocaust, then I want the Communist pummeled for killing or moving people who's only crime was being prosperous and living on the land their parents had lived on.

[Strike For The South]

The Nazis invaded and were bent on conquering Russia. My grandfather was one of the few "Americans" (IE not new slavic immgrants who obvuisly cant be trusted) who spoke good Russian and thus worked with them throught the war he had nothing but great things to say about the common Russian who he said was fighting 2 oppresions he was also a huge critic of the US though becuase right after the war they told him to interrogate the Russian defectors for info. He said the US could be as bad as the riegemes we fought but we were just better at hiding it.

[CrossLOPER]

How does this support or negate any argument? Two wrongs don't make it right or wrong. Does this mean that the U.S.S.R. wasn't so bad because NATO did the same? No. It means that we were both bad, but I would rather die free than live in Communism.

It means no one can really take a higher moral ground.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Maybe so many Russian look back on the USSR with "warm nostalgia" because the ones that wouldn't had been purged.

[PanzerJaeger]

Maybe so many Russian look back on the USSR with "warm nostalgia" because the ones that wouldn't had been purged.

Are you drunk?