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| Image Courtesy of Grizouille Productions |
Film can be confrontative in many different ways: forcing viewers to consider some experience on screen or touching on a common emotion with the character’s stories. Others can find ways to pull the viewer into a scene and force them to struggle through what the characters do.
The queer Russian film Stand (2014) uses subtle camerawork to pull viewers into the story and confront them on their own spectatorship. The film uses a sort of cinema verité style with natural lighting and the feel of a mumble-core movie, but some interesting camerawork upends this by morphing between hand-held, documentarian-style, and occasionally first-person perspective.
The opening scene finds Anton (Renat Shuteev) and his boyfriend Vlad (Andrey Kurganov) driving home in some unnamed Russian city at night. Anton suddenly yells at Vlad to stop the car because they pass a man being beaten up on the side of the road. Vlad stops the car, but after Anton yells what’s going on, he holds his boyfriend’s seat belt, not allowing him to get out and help. Within a few seconds, someone from the attack runs up to the car, forcing Vlad to drive off.
Though Anton and Vlad are extremely close, their different perspectives on what they should have done creates conflict between them. Should they have stopped and tried to help the victim, and, as a consequence, been put in danger themselves? Another layer of connection to the event happens when they discover that the victim was likely attacked because he was gay.
An unknown narrator occasionally summarizes, provides brief exposition, and also touches on the film’s themes of morality, spectatorship, and taking a stand. This makes an intriguing experience for the viewer in that they are distanced from the action on screen with this narration. But some small shifts begin to challenge the perspective of the viewer and pull them into the story.
This shift of perspective becomes a literal way to force the viewer to consider the themes of the film. The camera’s perspective shifts from an objective, documentarian-style to that of one of the characters on screen. This subtle change is barely noticeable as the characters on screen disappear for a few frames, and the camera appears to take on that character’s literal point of view.
Police don’t bother to investigate the attack, fueling Anton to investigate on his own. His quest to make up for not initially helping drives the plot and the conflict between him and Vlad. Nearly the entire film uses no soundtrack and lets the suspense and intensity of the events speak for themselves. This neutral tone, however, is challenged by the cinematic sleight of hand of confronting viewers with their own spectatorship.
Most of the violence takes place off-screen, but the slowly-building intensity explodes into a brutal and frightening climax. So what starts out as a queer relationship drama becomes a much more involved and challenging watch.
- Eric Beach