"Beanpole", the second feature length film of the talented Russian director Kantemir Balagov, is a film you either love or hate. I love it.
The film is both very beautiful and very uncomfortable. Very beautiful because of the prominent use of the colors red (despair) and green (hope). Very uncomfortable because of the many uneasy scenes it contains. I counted at least 5 or 6, which is very much for one film. In this review I cannot treat them in detail, because each uneasy scene would be a spoiler in itself.
"Beanpole" is loosely based on the novel "War's unwomanly face" from 1985 by Nobel prize winner Svetlana Alexievich. The film is situated just after the Second World War has ended and has nothing to do with the heroic war films from the Poetin era. It rather falls back on films such as "The cranes are flying" (1957, Mikhail Kalatozov), that display the more unpleasant sides of war and show that not al Russians were heroes.
The film is situated in the aftermath of the war, and in this respect resembles "The best years of our lives" (1946, William Wyler). In stead of showing the physical and econmic damage the war has done, "Beanpole" focuses on psychological damage. In stead of following a group of male veterans ("The best years of our lives"), "Beanpole" follows two female veterans. The message of "War's unwomanly face" is that society looks with suspicion upon women with a history on the front of the war. Did they really do any fighting or were they just the call girls of the male soldiers? In "Beanpole" there is a (very uneasy) scene that reflects this ambiguity. By the way "The best years of out lives" shows that male veterans are also nog always welcomed back in civil society and treated with the respect fitting with the atrocities they have experienced.
As I said "Beanpole" focuses on the psychological damage done by the war, and neither of the main characters has survived the war wholy intact in this respect. Their relationship can be characterized as a strange mixture of mutual support and power struggle. Sexual attraction is used as one of the weapons in this power struggle. In this respect the film made me think of "Lady Macbeth" (2016, William Oldroyd), although I can not really explain why.
The film is both very beautiful and very uncomfortable. Very beautiful because of the prominent use of the colors red (despair) and green (hope). Very uncomfortable because of the many uneasy scenes it contains. I counted at least 5 or 6, which is very much for one film. In this review I cannot treat them in detail, because each uneasy scene would be a spoiler in itself.
"Beanpole" is loosely based on the novel "War's unwomanly face" from 1985 by Nobel prize winner Svetlana Alexievich. The film is situated just after the Second World War has ended and has nothing to do with the heroic war films from the Poetin era. It rather falls back on films such as "The cranes are flying" (1957, Mikhail Kalatozov), that display the more unpleasant sides of war and show that not al Russians were heroes.
The film is situated in the aftermath of the war, and in this respect resembles "The best years of our lives" (1946, William Wyler). In stead of showing the physical and econmic damage the war has done, "Beanpole" focuses on psychological damage. In stead of following a group of male veterans ("The best years of our lives"), "Beanpole" follows two female veterans. The message of "War's unwomanly face" is that society looks with suspicion upon women with a history on the front of the war. Did they really do any fighting or were they just the call girls of the male soldiers? In "Beanpole" there is a (very uneasy) scene that reflects this ambiguity. By the way "The best years of out lives" shows that male veterans are also nog always welcomed back in civil society and treated with the respect fitting with the atrocities they have experienced.
As I said "Beanpole" focuses on the psychological damage done by the war, and neither of the main characters has survived the war wholy intact in this respect. Their relationship can be characterized as a strange mixture of mutual support and power struggle. Sexual attraction is used as one of the weapons in this power struggle. In this respect the film made me think of "Lady Macbeth" (2016, William Oldroyd), although I can not really explain why.