Scoundrels. Soldiers. Bandits. The slow draw. The quick draw. Forsaken landscapes stretching across what seems an endless horizon. And you squint at the blazing sun and think this must be madness. The hold-up. The chase. The shoot-out. From John Ford to Sergio Leone, these are staples of the Western, building blocks of a mythology. And as it turns out, mainstays in the Eastern as well.
So, the Wild East. One hears that term and probably thinks of Feudal Japan and the samurai - the Jidaigeki pictures that Akira Kurosawa jumpstarted, and the likes of Hideo Gosha and Kihachi Okamoto took to bold new heights - but nope, take a few steps back to the continent and the blasted earth of The Soviet Frontier during the tumultuous 1920s and 30s when the Red Army fought the Islamic Turkic 'Basmachi' rebels for control of the steppes.
From February 11th to the 17th the Film Society of Lincoln Center will be showcasing 8 films under this Wild East banner. What they consider to be the best of Soviet Action cinema. I'll be previewing three films from the series.
While their shared nature with the West and Far East is clear, these Soviet filmmakers drew deep from their own folklore and heritage, laying out a tapestry that is sown together by that distinct Russian lyricism, wherein men are sharpened by a bitter nostalgia and a melancholic honor. It is a world where the gun in hand may be your closest comrade or lead to your final folly.
White Sun of the Desert (1969, Vladimir Motyl) Screening Feb. 16th and 17th
A veritable cult classic in Russia, probably the best known film in the series internationally, Motyl's actioner carries with it a sunny disposition (no pun intended) and ambling narrative structure that suites the film's sandy setting. This light, playful, sometimes ruminative tone offers an interesting, almost bittersweet contrast to the inevitable violence.
And when the gun play occurs it is fast, precise, and cool-handed. The pro dishing it out is our hero, Sukhov, a Red Army officer on his way home to his wife. He's a real man's man - he nonchalantly lights a cigarette with a stick of dynamite and then tosses it over his shoulder- but also waxes poetic, as is the case with his internal dialog to his beloved Katerina, which lends nicely to the film's laid back tone. He's also a gentleman and upholding (as he puts it) to his "revolutionary duty", and thus we get to the main plot thrust. On his travels he's coaxed into taking charge of a harem recently abandoned by their husband, the Basmachi leader, Abdullah.
Making their way to the village of Pedzhent (where the only thing of prominence is a "museum of the Red East"), Sukhov, and his sidekicks, the stoic Sayid and boy soldier Petrukha, prepare for the inevitable showdown with Abdullah. The town is populated with a bevy of familiar types: the spindly museum curator stands in for the barkeep. The once esteemed, now drunken customs officer is the mayor or preacher, and then, sitting outside of the action as our eternal observers, are the old wise men of the village.
If one accepts the time and place of where the film came from (and this goes for the whole series), then I think one can see that Motyl offers up a rather simple, nicely textured folktale, one that is just as adept at lensing the sweetly quiet moments as it is at cutting together some fine action set pieces.
The Seventh Bullet (1972, Ali Khamvaev) Screening Feb. 11th 12th and 15th
Moving from the romanticism of Motyl, Uzbek master Khamvaev paints on a bleak widescreen canvas with wily, sardonic gestures.
His tale of a Red Commander's detachment succeeding allegiance to the local Muslim warlord is anything but black and white propaganda.
While it might be unfair to compare such drastically different films --like comparing The Searchers (the apple) to The Wild Bunch (the orange)-- Khamvaev's story results in a political and religious landscape where characters are far more blunt in their disposition, more richly fascinating in their psychology than Motyl's seemingly quaint mythic portraitures. From the rebel mastermind, Khairulla to his double crossing teenage bride-to-be, right down to the vengeance seeking horseman (a nomad who is neither Muslim nor Revolutionary), Khamvaev's characters unsheathe their convictions with an abrupt, often unforgiving and desperate violence. A violence that masks greater existential malaise.
Much of The Seventh Bullet's action is also laced through with an ironic, farcical glee that results in rousing, oddly hilarious set pieces, like when Commander Maksumov mows his way through rebel forces in a particularly bouncy fashion that recalls Toshiro Mifune in Seven Samurai. In this moment he is truly enlivened with the spirit of the revolution, and still the film manages to sidestep rampant cultural stereotyping and ideological narrow mindedness. Settling in the dust one sees an even-handed and sympathetic nod to all sides, for though the Reds may win the day, Khamvaev sends home the all too familiar point that there are no real winners in war.
At Home Among Strangers (1974, Nikita Mikhalkov) Screening Feb. 12th and 15th
Backed by popular song the sepia soaked opening exuberantly bubbles over with genuine sentiment as our young soldiers joyously dance in victory for the revolution, for equality, for peace, for friendship.
And in one cold cut all that evaporates, replaced with the oppressive blues and grays of an office, the monotony of clerkships and official party duties. The great friends, shoulders slumped forward, hair lines receding, live a waking death, in, as one of them puts, "a paper grave." It's an jarring, effective shift, and one of the high points in actor turned director, Mikhalkov's feature debut.
When an armored train car transporting gold is hijacked by a gang of outlaws, Shilov, one of the great friends, is suspected of being the inside man. To prove his innocence he escapes custody and sets out to find the outlaws and return the gold. Whether through illusive details or just lack of cohesion, the simple plot becomes somewhat convoluted, forcing the viewer to perform unnecessary legwork that only takes away from one's involvement with the characters. To add to these matters Mikhalkov quickly loses grasp on the the assured juxtaposition of the film's earliest scenes, with the remaining running time having director and cast (Mikhalkov among them as the charismatic outlaw leader) awkwardly see-sawing between poignant docudrama and melodramatic dreck. This is all helped along by the film's abrasively modern and ill-placed score.
One element that does succeed to stunning effect though is Pavel Lebeshev's evocative mix of black and white and color cinematography. Lebeshev, in his feature debut as DP, conjures up both a frank and ethereal realism that adds much to the film's atmosphere, dazzling the eye perhaps no better than in the train heist sequence which lovingly recalls the early days of silent cinema. Lebeshev would soon go on to lens Larissa Shepitko's masterpiece The Ascent, and later, Sergei Bodrov's Prisoner of the Mountains.
So despite it's incoherence (and with more than a winking nod to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) At Home Among Strangers remains an earnestly done experiment.
And that wraps up my look at the Wild East. Like I stated before, if one considers these films as documents from a particular time and place, fans of the Western genre from any side of the globe will be sure to find something worthwhile in what appears to be an eclectic and informative series.
The full schedule, ticket info and more background on all 8 films (including another from Khamvaev, The Bodyguard) can be found at The Film Society of Lincoln Center's website.