 |
| Images courtesy of Dovzhenko Film |
Ukrainian modernist novelist and political activist Vasyl
Stefanyk’s 1900 novel The Stone Cross is regarded as one of the key
short stories of Ukrainian literature.
The story of an 1890s Galician peasant named Ivan Didukh who decides to
part ways with his native village in Ukraine to escape poverty and emigrate to
Canada, it was a psychological tale concerning departure, loss and memory of an
age-old connection to his country. While
the text itself was considerably dark for its bleak coda, it questioned the
notion of one’s devotion to their own land and the role which poverty played in
the mass exodus of civilians there.
Circa 1968 however, in his second feature film as a director, Leonid
Oskya sought to adapt The Stone Cross to the silver screen while mixing
in aspects of another Vasyl Stefanyk short story The Thief, resulting in
one of the key expressions of what was termed ‘Ukrainian Poetic Cinema’.
Ivan Didukh (Daniil Ilchenko) climbs the high mountains
looking for grounds to stake out a fertile plot only to grow increasingly
disillusioned by the meager results of his labor. Feeling unable to find work in his homeland,
his young sons encourage him to emigrate to Canada but not before he catches a
thief in his hut resulting in a fierce confrontation that briefly displays Ivan
in a lesser light. Not long afterwards,
Ivan engages in a farewell party with other Ukrainian villagers in an event
that feels strangely funereal. Though
his family of sons are present including famous actor Ivan Mykolaichuk, an
impression is being built that Ivan Didukh feels estranged from the land which
he spent most of his life in and in a manner of speaking is already dead. His only way of leaving behind a remnant of
his existence there emerges in the form of a titular Stone Cross being
built and erected on a hilltop.
Full of breathtaking vistas of Ukrainian landscapes with
tiny ant-like human workers traversing its nooks and crannies lensed stunningly
by Family Circle cinematographer Valeri Kvas and a subtly moody
orchestral score by Volodymyr Huba and a striking central performance by Daniil
Ilchenko, The Stone Cross is an evocative viewing as well as listening
experience. Departing somewhat from the
text by daring to characterize the story’s hero a bit of a brute by
incorporating elements of The Thief into the narrative while also fully
in service to the integrity of Stefanyk’s writing, it is naturalistic as well
as ethereal and like Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors and The Lost
Letter it functions as something of a whirlwind of Ukrainian culture and
iconography.
Ranking at number five among the 100 Best Films in Ukrainian
Cinema History, the Dovzhenko Film production was never released outside of the
country as Soviet authorities grew concerned about Ukrainian films gaining
popularity in the West. Moreover, its
director Leonid Osyka was withheld from leaving for abroad, citing alcoholism
when in actuality they were stifling the global emergence of the then-Ukrainian
New Wave. Despite this, in 2009 the film
underwent a digital restoration among many other Ukrainian classics and were
released as part of a Ukrainian Film Classics eight-disc collection issued by
the Dovzhenko Center in 2010. Looking at
it now from the outside, it is full of stirring if not vast images of landscapes
and frequent wide shots of collectives of people swarming together atop
mountains or sometimes snowfall.
Allegorical and symbolic, The Stone Cross on its terms speaks
volumes to the immigrant experience of leaving your world behind hastily in
search of a new one and the deep internal conflicts that can arise in so
doing.
--Andrew Kotwicki
