With
exception to his final film Hard to Be a
God, a fantastical science-fiction nightmare about another planet trapped
in the Middle Ages, much of the late cantankerous and visually overpowering
provocateur Aleksei German’s tragically short lived filmography (only 6
features over the course of nearly 50 years) took place at either the height of
Stalinism or in the case of Khrustalyov,
My Car!, the tail end of it.
Less
focused on laying the groundwork for a straightforward narrative than trying to
immerse and/or mire the viewer in suffocating depravity, filth and violent
mayhem in a way of life gone frighteningly mad, German fought an ongoing uphill
battle against the Soviet Union to bring his uncompromising visions of Russia
as a kind of Medieval Hellscape both horrific and peculiarly darkly
humorous.
Not
many filmmakers can hit all the bases from intelligent to insipid, glorious and
gross, awful and whimsical simultaneously in a kind of berserk two-and-a-half-hour
jaunt and come away leaving a smirk on the viewer’s face as their nearly
recycled dinner resettles into their stomach. Which brings us to the meticulous and
frequently painstaking writer-director’s fifth and arguably most Fellini-esque
transgressor, the hallucinatory and phantasmagorical tragicomic nightmare Khrustalyov, My Car!
Deriving
its name from Soviet security chief Lavrentiy Beria’s famous declaration upon
Stalin’s deathbed, Khrustalyov, My Car! is
a near-radioactive dose of unbridled insanity and frontal assault on the viewer’s
senses with so much nonstop unrelenting visual information you feel the need to
come up for air. Loosely chronicling the
waning days of the Stalinist military dictatorship, the coarse and caustic high-contrast
black-and-white 1.33:1 feature leaps about the snow covered nighttime streets
of Moscow, 1953 before settling on brain surgeon General Yuri Georgievich
Klensky (Yuri Tsurilo) who is in hiding evading the so-called anti-Semitic “Doctor’s
Plot” targeting Jewish doctors.
When
we first meet the tall and stocky General Klensky, with his bald cap, bristling
moustache and thick shoulders as he swills yet another hard drink, Klensky is
something of an imposing figure of power.
Over the course of the film however in a series of increasingly surreal vignettes
and chance encounters during the doctor’s escape plan, the once intimidating
Klensky’s powers are stripped away one by one until he’s as helpless and vulnerable
as the rest of society. Though the viewer
may or may not have a grasp on German’s bonkers and seemingly spontaneous
narrative, it is plain as day Klensky’s stature as a military-medical service
general is slowly coming apart.
Something
like 8½ as imagined by Gillo Pontecorvo,
Khrustalyov, My Car! is as difficult
and taxing of a viewing chore to sit through as it was for its writer-director
to bring it to the silver screen. Co-produced
by a French company, the film was beset by problems over its seven-year
gestation period including financing and production being stalled outright by
the Soviet Union more than once coupled with the filmmaker’s painstaking
attention to detail. Throughout the film
is a recurring motif of black automobiles careening down the snow covered
streets of Moscow at night, a series of fleeting moments scattered about which
in actuality took the filmmaker roughly a year to track down and gather for his
film.
Visually
the film’s Academy Ratio black-and-white cinematography by Hard to Be a God director-of-photography Vladimir Ilin looks
something like Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev if
it were shot by Robert Richardson. With
hard and hot lights illuminating the shoulders and accentuating the white areas
on the image to give a soft, radiating glow, the first impression one gets
watching German’s film is that of magical realism. We’re wading through some ugly realities as
the film bores on but its photographed and lit in such a way that we feel as
though we’re sleepwalking, not entirely sure if we’re asleep or reaching a
waking state.
Performances
in the film are strong with a palpable sense of discomfort, sweat and heavy stench
streaked across every actors’ face with much of the heavy lifting on Yuri
Tsurilo’s shoulders whose hapless Doctor Klensky goes through every emotion
from formidable heavyweight to meek everyman and back to being as gleefully
happy as a pig in shit. As a warning,
there are some unspeakable horrors ahead for Klensky and actor Tsurilo who
would return for the writer-director’s final film goes the full distance
without looking back.
That
said, Khrustalyov, My Car! is first
and foremost an auteur driven piece with so many carefully placed objects and
figures coming right into the claustrophobic and cramped space of the camera
frame. You look to the center of the
shot and things are constantly coming into the shot from off to the sides
unexpectedly, rarely leaving you with a single image to focus on which
invariably adds to the disorienting effect.
Specific sound effects become deliberately reused in places where they
shouldn’t exist and to top things off, Aleksei German freely mixes fantasy with
reality to play around with the facts for farcical, satirical effect though some
of the subtler gags pertaining to Stalinism will likely go over western viewers’
heads.
After
a long and arduous journey bringing Khrustalyov,
My Car! to the screen, the film suffered another setback with its disastrous
1998 world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. Though Aleksei German wasn’t in attendance,
the film was savaged and dogged with numerous walkouts of equal parts bewildered
and disgusted patrons. Many dubbed it
incoherent or impenetrable when it wasn’t being crude and occasionally
ultraviolent. But it wasn’t all doom and
gloom for Mr. German’s picture which enjoyed the support of the Cannes Film
Festival jury president Martin Scorsese who championed it as the number one
film of 1998.
In
the years since its release and after seeing the director’s final film Hard to Be a God, the film’s stature as
a radical, dangerous and in its own perverse manner oddly delightful shock-treatment
has only grown with time. Seen now, it
has lost none of its ability to confound, infuriate, sicken and tickle
pink. As with his final film, Khrustalyov, My Car! isn’t for all
tastes and only really comes recommended for the staunch and adventurous
cinephiles. But for those eager to not
simply settle for whatever fits nicely and tidily into the box and dares to
transgress into uncharted and uncomfortable territories, Khrustalyov, My Car! promises many sweet and unexpected rewards you
never thought you’d need or want in your life.
Score:
- Andrew Kotwicki