Thursday, July 15, 2010
THE 70s FROM THE OTHER SIDE
Today's film was Karen Shakhnazarov's
Ischeznuvshaya imperiya / The Vanished Empire (2008)
in Russian.
An 18 year old Russian boy/man experiences the 70s just about the same way that the kids here did. Unsettled, counter-revolutionary, at loose in the world, young Sergey experiences romance, career, life.
In a set of vignettes we see much the same kind of thing that we have seen in Western films but with a twist.
Alienation is international.
This is a wonderful, charming film. The young man is irresistible even when he is behaving like an asshole.
The setting is unfamiliar. It is Russia. But the Beatles, the Stones and jeans leak through the borders. The blackmarket. The effect is the same.
The arc of the film is about loss. A lost culture, lost youth, lost love and underneath the story of the lost empire which Sergey's wonderful grandfather discovered and not so wonderful father (who we do not see) worked on as archeologists.
The entire film could be taken as an architectural dig.
But it is a lot of fun and quite enjoyable. I have never had a sense of "what it was like over there" and now I have a much better grasp. We are in it. We see it.
What a good movie. I would not mind seeing it again sometime.
That makes it a 4 out of Netflix5.
Labels: films
