Vasili Buslayev (1982)

User Rating:

6.0/10   

Director:

Gennadi Vasilyev

Writers:

Sergei Narovchatov (poem)
Sergei Narovchatov (screenplay)

Genre:

Drama | History

Plot Keywords:

Historical

Cast

Dmitri Zolotukhin	...	Vasili Buslayev
Lyudmila Khityayeva	...	Vasili's mother
Irina Alfyorova	...	Ksenia
Dmitri Matveyev	...	Kostya Novotorzanin
Aleksei Zajtsev	...	Potanya
Valeri Nosik	...	Filka
Natalya Krachkovskaya	...	Okuliha
Mikhail Kokshenov	...	Gavrila
Matlyuba Alimova	...	Empress
Nikolai Pogodin	...	Ankundim
Dmitri Orlovsky	...	Andron Mnogoletiche
Andrei Martynov	...	Okulov
Mikhail Rozanov	...	Elistrat
Lyubov Rudenko	...	Agniya
Igor Bochkin

Also Known As:

Василий Буслаев (Soviet Union: Russian title)

Runtime:

81 min

Country:

Soviet Union

Language:

Russian

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Mono

Company:

Gorky Film Studios

Very odd Russian/Soviet historical fantasy

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

VASSILY BUSLAYEV came out the same year as CONAN THE BARBARIAN and ZU: WARRIORS OF MAGIC MOUNTAIN, which were Hollywood and Hong Kong fantasy spectacles, and the approaches couldn't be more different. While John Millius was making a film based on violence and gore with some shallow philosophical underpinnings, and Tsui Hark was crafting a swordplay saga with extensive use of bizarre special effects and silly spectacle, this Russian film seems comparatively low key and restrained. Certainly it doesn't have the sweeping scope of Aleksander Ptushko's ILYA MUROMETS, a historical/fantasy movie made thirty years before, but then, it didn't have anywhere near the budget either. But besides that, this isn't the same kind of fantasy that the other films were, although there are still many elements of the fantastic present in the narrative. The movie is flawed, significantly, like many films of the global boom in sword and sorcery related product that erupted in the early eighties, but this film also has the distinction of being fairly unique because of its origins.

The story comes from an epic poem about a young wild man who enjoys immunity from punishment in his home town because of status as son of a prominent political figure. Unfrotunately for the rich merchants of his town, this young man, Vassily, is incredibly strong and athletic, thus he takes no consideration of what other people think of him while he seduces their daughters, eats their food, wrecks their shops, and generally makes a nuisance of himself. After all, what are they going to do about it? But eventually, while talking to a poor refugee, Vassily has a pang of conscience. He realizes that his mother-land is under attack by invaders, and that his strength could be used to stop it. So he gathers a group of able bodied young men in town, along with a princess who's got some good skill with a bow, and sets out to find a lost prince while defeating the interlopers in battle. Unfortunately for him, the princess is captured, and the prince as well as his army have been sold into slavery by the invaders who captured them. Vassily sets off to the land where they've been sold, and ends up in a tournament with the best warriors from across the lands with freedom being the prize for victory, and death the consequence of defeat.

It sounds like a fairly average historical adventure, and in most respects it is, with only a few exceptional details. For one thing, Vassily isn't just strong, he's practically Hurculean. This is the most obvious deviation from reality, although there's others. The film never really makes clear what era or which location the characters have managed to get themselves to, and that only increases confusion and disconnects the movie from real history, although it probably isn't that much further from the poem on which it was based (I haven't read it), but I'm not sure that it's a flaw in the writing. Considering that most of the props and locations look more or less authentic, historicity was probably either a secondary concern, or so ingrained as to not matter. Other odd bits include a surreal dream sequence in which Vassily practically argues with God Almighty, brought together with Coptic images of Christ and the saints super-imposed onto Vassili and other strange effects. It stands as one of the few outright supernatural sequences in the film, something which might not have gone over terribly well with the Soviet censor board. It's hard to forget that this was filmed in a Russia that was controlled by a harsh regime of totalitarians. The portrayal of the rich merchants and the riot by the poor peasants at the end of the movie is easily interpreted as the most obnoxious of fantasy: that of the communist variety.

As a historical film then, responsibility rests upon spectacle to make the film entertaining, and it does succeed in some ways. The actors are nice to watch; Dmitri Zolotukhin is a charismatic actor and plays his heroic role well, and on top of that he's got the body to compliment his character's super human strength. The actors who handle the evil merchants do so with ease, making them cartoonishly evil but completely unscary at the same time. It's actually battle sequences that fail to excite. The choreography for these is not especially believable, neither is it an aesthetic pleasure to watch. While ILYA MUROMETS had thousands of extras to fill battle scenes, VASSILY BUSLAYEV has only a couple dozen, and thus, battles remain ho-hum for the most part. Even the camera work from director Gennadi Vasilyev fails to impress, mostly being hand held shots in the middle of everything. Some Eisentien style montage would have done wonders for such sparsely populated battles. Even the final conflict is copped out by a rather strange technique. Cinematography also flies in the face of the colorful worlds of early Soviet fantasy films as well as that of the greater sword-and-sorcery movement by being moody and dominated by washed out, natural color, which fits often grotesque images of skulls and dead bodies that populate much of the film. Nothing great but then, this isn't a work of art, but a serviceable entry into heroic fantasy for Russian audiences who probably needed a patriotic shot in the arm. It's cold, dank, often grim atmosphere makes it accessible to those who are more interested in cold, dank, grim atmospheres than in Russian history or heroic epics, but the whole thing is much too low-key to be of interest to anybody other than fans of the genre, and even then, they might be wishing to watch something else by the end of the movie.