Moscow Times (subscription), Russia
Nov 19 2004
Uncommon Senses
Casting blind or deaf actors may be relatively standard in Europe and
the United States, but it hadn’t been done much in Russia, until now.
By Tom Birchenough
Published: November 19, 2004
Setting a film in a home for the blind, deaf and dumb might sound
like a recipe for yet another bleak, moralizing post-Soviet film, but
Roman Balayan’s “Bright is the Night” is an exception to the rule.
Social commentary is simply not something the veteran Armenian-born,
Ukrainian-based director does. If anything, “Bright is the Night”
resembles his costumed 1995 adaptation of Ivan Turgenev’s “First
Love,” with its lush pastoral setting and atmosphere of slow but
unoppressive decay, and its understated treatment of the emotions
that connect a small number of characters in close proximity. It’s
summer, and the majority of residents are away from the institution,
leaving just a handful of staff and patients on the premises.
The main player is a young therapist, Alexei, played by Andrei
Kuzichev, who was seen earlier this year in a supporting role in
Vladimir Mashkov’s “Papa.” Though obviously devoted to his profession
and to those he looks after, he has plenty of extra time during the
summer months for wandering the forests and fishing in the lake with
the institution’s janitor, an amiable drunk named Petrovich (Vladimir
Gostyukhin).
But Alexei’s idyll is turned upside down with the arrival of an
attractive medical resident, Lika, played by another relative
newcomer, Olga Sutulova, whom he first encounters sunbathing in the
nude and later discovers to share his enthusiasm for engaging
patients by kindling their emotions for each other. Needless to say,
Lika and Alexei’s new-age therapeutic techniques raise the hackles of
the institute’s more traditional-minded director, Zinaida (Irina
Kupchenko), as does their growing romantic involvement. Zinaida has
long felt affection for Alexei, while rejecting the advances of the
institution’s other therapist, Dima, played by Alexei Panin.
If that sounds like a prelude to a major dramatic crisis, it isn’t.
Instead, the film is dominated by slow interactions between the
therapists and their patients, through Braille and a kind of sign
language made of hand and body contact. These scenes are made all the
more effective for the fact that the amateur actors playing the
patients are themselves either blind, deaf or dumb. Such
versimilitude has become reasonably standard for Europe or the United
States in art-house films, but is extremely rare in Russia to date.
Moving moments do emerge, particularly in the interactions between
Alexei and Vitya, a young boy whose arrival at the institute
precipitates the film’s denouement — if that’s what the final scene
can be called, given that the revelations themselves can’t be spoken
out loud. Climbing trees and running through the fields with Vitya,
Alexei reaches the stage, crucial to his method, when he feels that
his combination of touch and body sign language has allowed him to
“hear” the voice of the child. Once that bond is established, Alexei
is too devoted to abandon the lad, even if that means abandoning his
love.
Production values are modest, and certainly reflect the limited funds
available to this Russian-Ukrainian co-production. But
cinematographer Bogdan Verzhitsky does a great deal with the assets
he has. At a nighttime open-air dance scene toward the end, his
camera centers on two patients who have obviously responded to
Alexei’s treatment and found emotional engagement with each other,
contrasted with close-ups of eye contact between the other characters
who have not.
The paradox with “Bright is the Night” — a film that will catch some
international attention, given the reputation of its director and his
co-screenwriter Rustam Ibragimbekov — is how little interest it will
provoke among Russia’s multiplex-going viewers today. The small
late-afternoon audience with whom this critic watched the film was
dominated by people well into their 40s, who responded well. Most
likely, Balayan’s film will find its place on a mainstream television
broadcast sometime in the future, where it will appeal greatly to
those viewers — Soviet-era, yes — for whom a trip to the cinema is
no longer a possibility.
“Bright is the Night” (Noch Svetla) is playing in Russian at Dom
Khanzhonkova.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress