Chris Knipp Writing: Movies, Politics, Art


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PostPosted: Wed May 09, 2007 2:54 pm 
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Portrait of a saintly trickster

Former rock star Pyotr Mamonov gives a committed and intense perfomance in this visually elegant wide-angle lensed film about an eccentric healer. Anatoly (Mamonov) has been guilt-ridden for many years over being forced by German WWII soldiers to shoot his boat captain (seen in an introductory segment). He has become a monk but lives apart from the others on a little permafrost-covered island, obsessively stoking the coal furnace that heats the nearby monastery. Word of his ability to heal the sick, cast out demons, and foresee the future has spread abroad, and people regularly turn up seeking to be helped by him. A scene where he heals a boy with a rotting hip and then chastens the mother is particularly strong. Also watch how he brings down the father superior, Filaret (Viktor Sukhorukov), to size for his softness -- and finally drives out a demon from a young woman who seems crazy. It's her father who provides the tormented Anatoly with relief that makes him feel ready to die.

There is an undercurrent of rough humor in all this. Anatoly is a cantankerous and wily prankster and the tall young Father Job (Dmitry Dyuzhev) openly despises him. The film is episodic, but focused constantly on Anatoly. He is striving to relieve his guilt by living as a hermit in conditions as harsh as they are squalid, but he is not loath to visit his own sufferings on others.

Comments on the film usually dwell upon the lovely wide-screen visuals, in muted color, of the unusual landscape and the iconic monks by Andrei Zhegalov, which may at times evoke the Russian film classics. Sometimes the musical background (piano with orchestra), though sparingly used, seems a little too light and New Age for such an austere setting and intense tale. The screenplay by recent film-school graduate Dmitry Sobolev, is well paced, but a bit on the simple side, and resolves things a bit too easily at the end.

The Island seems in contrast to most of the work of Lounguine, which is very much about current people and issues. He said this is the beginning of a series of "lives of saints." And from what he says the focus on the spiritual is meant to fill a felt need in the materialistic Russia of today.

Mamonov was also featured in Taxi Blues (1990), Louguine's first feature, which won a special prize at Cannes; his The Wedding (2000) won the Cannes Best Acting Ensemble prize.

Shown as part of the San Francisco International Film Festival 2007.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.


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