Red Army

The Russian Five, Alexei Kasatonov and captain Slava Fetisov in the rear on defense, and forwards Sergei Makarov, Igor Larionov, and Vladimir Krutov

From left to right, defenseman Alexei Kasatonov, Coach Viktor Tikhonov, goalie Vladislav Tretiak, center Igor Larionov, and defenseman Slava Fetisov

Soviet goalie Vladislav Tretiak (left) and legendary hockey coach Anatoli Tarasov

Valeri Kharlamov

Vyacheslav “Slava” Fetisov, captain of the USSR national hockey team

Slava Fedisov’s parents

 Slava Fetisov

legendary Soviet goalie Vladislav Tretiak

Soviet Hockey Coach Viktor Tikhonov

Slava Fetisov, (left) Soviet captain from 1980 – 1989, and Boris Mikhailov, Soviet captain from 1972 – 1980

 Slava Fetisov

Fetisov and director Gabe Polsky at Cannes, 2014

RED ARMY                A-                   

USA  Russia  (85 mi)  2014  d:  Gabe Polsky               Official site

Hockey players are not cowards!

This is about as much fun as you can have in the documentary format, where it has the feel of the madly inspired Guy Maddin on a mission, whose obsession with hockey, having been born and raised in Winnipeg, is nothing less than an ecstatic lifelong passion.  What’s perhaps most surprising is the degree of poignancy registered by a sports story.  The brilliance of the young director is not only the accumulation of such amazing archival material, but framing the subject matter as the examination of a historical event as seen through the eyes of a sports figure, where the transformation of an entire nation was happening simultaneous to events happening in his own life, creating an extraordinary look at how history can effect us all.  Perhaps what’s most unique is the degree of access into a period of Soviet history that is otherwise secretive and not easily revealed, where the filmmaker’s background, born and raised in the United States by Soviet immigrants might help explain the filmmaker’s inquisitive drive to uncover the mysteries of his own past, where his curiosity was bent on discovering how and why this Soviet hockey team of the 70’s and 80’s was so good.  Most are familiar with the Miracle on Ice, when a group of amateur and collegiate kids from America, barely together for a few months, played the hockey game of their lives and won the gold medal at Lake Placid in the 1980 Olympic Games, beating one of the greatest Soviet hockey teams of all time 4-3, gold medal winners in six of the previous seven Olympics, an event so improbable that Sports Illustrated called it the Top Sports Moment of the 20th Century.  Few, however, have taken an insightful look at just how good that Soviet team was that dominated the sport of hockey during the Cold War, where successful sports teams and players, much like the Space Race, were used as propaganda tools to demonstrate supposed ideological superiority.  Traditionally the Soviets didn’t even have a hockey team, as historically they played Bandy, an outdoor winter game that resembles field hockey on ice.  Since that game was never recognized at the Olympics (hockey was introduced in 1920), after World War II, the Red Army assigned Anatoli Tarasov to found a Moscow hockey club at the army sport’s club, CSKA Moscow, which represented the Red Army, while he served as the original coach of the Soviet national team for thirty years beginning in 1946, becoming the “father of Russian hockey,” developing a passion for the game, equally influenced by the mental dominance of chess masters and the athletic grace of ballet, where the Soviet style of hockey has an emphasis on skating skills, offense and passing, an amazingly creative and improvisational style where they move fluidly on the ice, working collectively as a team, turning the game into an art form.  

While Tarasov was the dynamic builder of the team which started to have some success in the 50’s, winning their first World Championship in 1954 and first Olympic gold in 1956, he was beloved by his players, seen as a paternal father figure, as he embraced each of them as young men full of potential, “You’ll become great hockey players…and great men,” where his job was to unleash that potential with inspired play on the ice. One of his young protégé’s, Vyacheslav “Slava” Fetisov, was only 12-years old when he was chosen for the Dynamo youth hockey team, the oldest sports and physical training society of the Soviet Union.  Born in Moscow, he is one of the most decorated* hockey players that ever lived, the greatest defenseman the Soviets ever produced, where the list of his accolades amusingly overflow off the screen, like medals on the chest of a heavily decorated army officer.  To our amazement, Fetisov opens up like he’s never done before, literally befriending this young American director with a heavy mix of deadpan humor and Russian sarcasm, but also providing enlightening and sometimes eye-opening information about his storied life, where today his name is literally synonymous with hockey.  When he is introduced in front of the camera today at age 55 in a face-to-face interview with the director, he waves the camera away, as he’s busy taking a call on his cellphone, claiming it’s business, joking that Americans don’t know the meaning of work.  While his good-natured wit is appreciated today, it was not always the case, even in his home country, where he was a kid that grew up only blocks away from the rink, always the first to arrive, the last to leave, where so long as he was playing hockey he was happy.  As we are introduced to several former players, journalists, sports commentators, and even a retired KGB officer sitting in front of an immense statue of Lenin, they are each initially identified in the Russian language of Cyrillic and then in English, where there’s a constant interplay between Soviet and American, as the two nations were so much at odds during the Cold War.  Feeling personally connected to both worlds, Polsky, with a great deal of visual style, creates an often funny and always enjoyable film that is quick, witty, and fast moving, almost always with lively Russian music playing in the background, where there’s a joyous and festive spirit as we take a spin through Fetisov’s childhood, filled with strange and unusual training techniques, all designed to build teamwork and bring players closer together, to have each other’s backs, to look after one other, where players on the same lines stayed together off-ice as well as on-ice, becoming best friends in life, where the intensity of the experience is also connected to winning and being proud to represent your country. 

Interweaving plenty of archival footage from the 70’s and 80’s along with amusing and insightful contemporary interviews, the Soviets were extremely successful in the sport, winning gold in 7 out of 9 Olympic Games (Olympic record 62–6–2), winning the World Championships 19 times, where the players were honored with flowers and medal ceremonies each time they returned home to Moscow and treated like national heroes.  Even though they eventually lost the series, the Soviets surprised the world in the 1972 Summit Series, finally going face-to-face with the best NHL Canadian players and initially making it look easy, as the Canadian goalies had never seen the kind of choreographed movement on the ice before, where the puck could come from all directions.  To slow them down, the Canadians began engaging in a more physical style of North American play, resulting in disputes over officiating, roughhouse tactics and finally dirty play, where Philadelphia Flyer center Bobby Clarke deliberately injured the star Soviet forward, Valeri Kharlamov, intentionally slashing his skates, fracturing a bone in his ankle, where the Soviets were winning the series 3–1–1 when the injury occurred, figuring prominently in the Canadians winning the last 3 games.  Kharlamov was the most popular Soviet player at the time and his injury in front of a Moscow crowd had a chilling effect, only adding to the already existing East-West drama.  The Soviets returned to form for the 1974 Summit Series and won 4 games to one, where the Canadians wouldn’t win another head to head competition until 1989.  The interest generated by the international stage led to the next generation of Soviets, headed by new team captain Slava Fetisov and the Russian Five who helped win three consecutive World Junior Championships from 1976—78 as well as the 1981 Canada Cup, despite being led by Canadian phenom Wayne Gretzky, arguably the greatest player in history.  Despite the improbable loss to the Americans in the 1980 Olympics, the 70’s and 80’s were the period of greatest Soviet domination, where the International Ice Hockey Federation conducted a poll in 2008 asking a group of 56 experts from 16 countries to vote on the greatest team of the century, IIHF Centennial All-Star Team, which included four Soviet players on a team of six, with Fetisov and Gretzky the two leading vote getters at one and two respectively, including two Soviet forwards, Valeri Kharlamov and Sergei Makarov, legendary Soviet goalie Vladislav Tretiak, and Swedish defensiveman Börje Salming. 

Despite the honors, there was trouble brewing behind the scenes, where in the late 70’s Tarasov was suddenly replaced by a more dictatorial style of coach beholden to the KGB, Viktor Tikhonov, as the Soviet leadership feared defections, so they needed him to keep a close eye on all the players.  Housed in a prisonlike barracks 11 months out of the year, Tikhonov trained them relentlessly, refusing to let one player leave even for the impending death of his father, where according to Fetisov, the players won despite their coach, as they unanimously hated his approach, calling him an accountant due to the fastidious notes he was always taking, believing he suffocated their creative style and instead instituted a strict regimen and the threat of discipline, instilling fear instead of any love for the game.  Fetisov holds Tikhonov responsible for the Soviet loss to the Americans in the Miracle on Ice, claiming he favored the Moscow Dynamo players, who represented the KGB over the more skilled Russian Five CSKA Moscow players who represented the Red Army, which explains why he pulled the Soviet’s greatest goalie, Vladislav Tretiak, after the first period, pulling him for Moscow Dynamo goalie Vladimir Myshkin, suggesting it was the KGB players that allowed three of the four American goals.  But rather than being sent to some Siberian gulag after the loss, as people in the West might think, Tikhonov was actually honored and rewarded.  One of the curious side effects of the international exposure of the Soviet skill players was the interest by the NHL, as they wanted these players in the North American league, tempting them with big money contracts, but the Russian government wouldn’t let them go, though they initially tempted Fetisov with a contract similar to basketball player Yao Ming from Communist China, where they earn a huge million dollar contract, but 50% or more, depending on the terms, belongs to the government.  Fetisov, on the other hand, combining business and political sense, insisted on receiving every penny he earned.  So he stayed put.     

Drafted by the New Jersey Devils, Fetisov was initially promised by Tikhonov that he would be released to play in the NHL if they won another gold medal at the 1988 Olympics, which they did, but he refused to let him leave the country, even after a visit to Moscow, contract in hand, from the Devil’s President and General Manager Lou Lamoriello, who was even prepared to help him defect, if necessary, but Fetisov was a proud Russian that refused to leave under those conditions, never able to return home.  Fetisov’s wife Lada recounts a story of what happened in Kiev after Fetisov publicly refused to play any more for Tikhonov, where he was arrested, handcuffed to a car battery and beaten until 4 am, with the police eventually calling Tikhonov who informed them they could lock him up or do whatever they wanted, but he was not allowed to leave the country.  Finally he was called into the office of the Minister of Defense Dmitry Yazov, second only to the Soviet President (ironically dismissed from his post after a failed 1991 coup d'état attempt), who screamed and cussed him out for wanting to play for “the enemy,” but Fetisov instead offered to resign his position in the Red Army, where in 1989 he became the first Soviet citizen granted a work visa that allowed him to play hockey in the west, paving the way for literally thousands that followed.  At age 31, he began his second career in the NHL, which was hardly an easy transition, as he was forced to endure red-baiting hostility when the American fans initially hated him for not becoming an instant star and winner for their team, where he had difficulty adjusting to a more individualistic playing style.  He played nine seasons in the NHL, the final three in Detroit where he reunited with yet another Russian Five to win two Stanley Cups in 1997 and 1998, once again retiring a champion.  According to the director, “Soviets play hockey the way Brazilians play soccer.  It’s improvisational, it’s fluid, it’s beautiful.  It’s extremely difficult, but looks effortless.”  Legendary Hall of Fame Detroit Coach Scotty Bowman was so impressed by their play at the time that he acknowledged, “I don’t know who taught you to play this way, but whatever you do, don’t change a thing.”  Transforming his life where he went from a national hero to a political enemy, Slava Fetisov eventually returned home to Moscow a Stanley Cup champion, chosen by Putin to be the Minister of Sport for Russia from 2002 to 2008, where his story reads like something out of a Tom Clancy novel.    

        

*Vyacheslav “Slava” Fetisov Notable Achievements and Awards:

•

Member of the Organizing Committee for 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics.

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Hockey Hall of Fame Inductee

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IIHF Hall of Fame

•

USSR Hall of Fame

•

14 Soviet Hockey Championships

•

9 Time Soviet League All-Star

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9-time IIHF All-Star

•

5-time IIHF best defenseman

•

7 Hockey World Championship Gold Medals

•

1 World Championship Silver

•

2 Olympic Gold Medals

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1 Olympic Silver Medal

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1 Canada Cup Championship

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3 World Junior Championships

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2 World Championship Bronze Medals

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2 Time CCCP Player of the Year

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2-time Soviet MVP

•

9 Years Soviet National Team Captain

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3 Golden Stick Awards

•

Order of the Red Banner of Labour

•

Soviet Order of Honor

•

Soviet Order of Friendship

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Silver Olympic Order

•

Order of Service to the Fatherland 4th Class

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Order of Service to the Fatherland 3rd Class

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2 Orders of the Badge of Honor

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IIHF International Centennial All-Star

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Honored Master of Sports

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UNESCO Champion for Sport

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Russian Diamond Award

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Order of Lenin Award

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2-time Stanley Cup Champion as a player

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3-time Stanley Cup Finalist as a player

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Stanley Cup champion as an assistant coach

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2-time NHL all-star

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Asteroid 8806 was renamed “Fetisov”

Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer (Pokazatelnyy protsess: Istoriya Pussy Riot)

PUSSY RIOT:  A PUNK PRAYER (Pokazatelnyy protsess: Istoriya Pussy Riot) – made for TV          B-    
Russia  Great Britain  (88 mi)  2013  d:  Max Pozdorovkin and Mike Lerner 

Art is not a mirror to reflect the world,
but a hammer with which to shape it. 
—Bertolt Brecht

Pussy Riot is an interesting phenomenon, a performance art collective that takes on the persona of a feminist punk band to spread its subversive message of feminist power and freedom, formed on August 2011, the same day Vladimir Putin announced he would be a candidate for Russian President after having already served two consecutive terms, the maximum allowed in Russia.  While protests and demonstrations took to the street, none had the impact of this Riot Grrl act, something of an outcry of a rebellious Kathleen Hanna from Bikini Kills in The Punk Singer (2013), as it was clearly designed as a challenge of freedom of speech under the authoritarian rule of Putin, where 3 girls in the band, Nadia Tolokonnikova, Masha Alyokhina, and Katia Samutsevich were sentenced to 2 years in prison for “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred,” which is seen as little more than trumped up charges everywhere else in the world except Russia, a country that simply doesn’t understand performance art or punk music.  In her testimony before the court, one of the girls (Katia) claimed there was only one single university throughout the entire country of Russia that even acknowledges modern art exists, the Rodchenko Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia where she graduated.  On the day in question, several Pussy Riot girls wearing ski masks stormed the altar at the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow and tried to plug in their guitars and sing an anti-Putin message, though this protest only lasted 40 seconds before the police hauled them away.  That church in particular, according to the group, was chosen as it’s where the orthodox priests gave Putin their blessing over Easter services, uniting the church and state into one absolute autocracy.  The film shows excerpts of the arrest, brief performance tapes, the police interrogation, and the ensuing trial where the girls were kept behind a protective glass cage, supposedly for the public’s safety?  While they acknowledge they are completely non-violent and have no intent to hurt or harm anyone, their message is simply designed as a provocative act of liberation.    

To the West, Russia is synonymous with a 20th century revolutionary uprising, where the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 is one of the notable achievements in Russian history, Ten Days that Shook the World, where the absolute power of the Czar was turned over to the masses.  So why would they now be afraid of a few girls with guitars?  Pussy Riot had done a few earlier performances, all spontaneously erupting in public places, recorded on YouTube, wearing ski masks, waving banners, holding flares as they create a brash attitude of punk anarchy and rebellion.  These events, however, are little more than publicity stunts, designed to go viral over the Internet, where young people are more affected as nearly all of them follow updated events on their iPhones.  What set this event apart was that it took place in the largest of the Eastern Orthodox churches in the world, where the church turned to its religious zealots to bring their outrage to the extreme nationalists of Putin, where together they joined forces in declaring Nadia a “demon with a brain,” actually taking seriously the satiric notion that she was out to destroy the church, calling the event blasphemy, suggesting she would have been burned in the 16th century, an act of condemnation they obviously find acceptable, where one of the church elders sums it all up with the chilling commentary, “There have always been witches that wouldn’t repent.” The church floods the streets with outraged parishioners, while State TV shows condemn the group for their religious disrespect, all demanding severe punishment.   Even Putin went on record in a television interview and claimed “they got what they asked for.”  One of the more interesting segments is the all-male police interrogation, where Katia is asked if she wants to get married and have children (Nadia is already married, while she and Masha already have children), and she responds that this is what they’ve always been “told” what girls should want, that really many girls, including herself, have no interest whatsoever.  To many Putinists and orthodox Russians, this belief seems to signify their actual crime.  

While the Pussy Riot’s lawyers called the arrests “cynical and unlawful,” the trial itself was seen as a show trial presented before the public, drawing unprecedented international press coverage, where the complaining witnesses, one by one, ended up being a stream of church parishioners, where the outcome felt predetermined all along, as the State’s moral authority, as represented by that infamous alignment between Putin and the Orthodox Church, held their ground.  The solidarity of the girls throughout is impressive, maintaining a defiant sense of humor, believing they held the higher moral ground, where their humorous stunts and TV court appearances declaring the whole process a farce would only earn them legions of supporters.  Before pronouncing sentencing, however, each of the defendants was allowed a final comment, where Nadia indicated “Pussy Riot is a form of oppositional art, political action that utilizes artistic forms.  It is a form of civic activism against a corporate political system that uses its power against basic human rights.”  The three were sentenced to two years in prison.  Two of the Pussy Riot members, Nadia and Katia (who was eventually released on appeal as it was proven she “didn’t” do as accused, as she was arrested before she could even get the guitar strap off her shoulder, never singing or playing a single note), were also members of Voina since 2007, an anarchist art collective where one of their earlier stunts posted to the Internet was photographing several members, including an 8-month pregnant Nadia, getting naked and having sex in a Russian Biology Museum, a satirist response to President Medvedev’s announcement to increase the birth rate in Russia.  Perhaps the ultimate irony of this made-for-TV documentary about such politically inspired performance artists is such a conventional, by-the-numbers approach in making a movie about them, as they obviously deserve better.  Throughout the film, Pussy Riot never actually sings an entire song, even the theme song playing over the end credits turns out to be Peaches and Simonne Jones singing “Free Pussy Riot.”

Postscript
After having served 21 months of a 24-month sentence, the remaining two Pussy Riot girls, Nadia and Masha, were released just after Christmas of 2013 under a recently passed Amnesty law that allowed their early release without ever admitting to any crime. 

The Five Best Soviet Era War Films

Stalingrad, February 1942

Five Best Soviet Era War Films 

There’s an interesting article written recently by Michael Sontheimer from Der Spiegel that contains historical accounts from interviews of Russian soldiers directly after the Battle of Stalingrad, only recently released from the Russian archives, dated November 2, 2012

An Inside Look at World War II's Bloodiest Battle 

Over the next few days, a different choice will be posted each day.  This should be an interesting challenge, where the theme will be restricted to WWII, since the most horrific human conditions imaginable occurred during that part of Russia’s past.  Some of the most grim and unforgettable war images come from Soviet era war films, as none were bleaker and more miserable, matching their wretched history, as Russia lost 15 – 20% of their entire population, and anywhere from 22 to 26 million deaths overall, not to mention captured soldiers, the injured, or the missing, to keep the Germans from overrunning Moscow and Stalingrad in World War II, coming within 20 miles of Moscow, which is something unfathomable to Western sensibilities and perceptions, but the extreme degree of misery and loss is the essential ingredient in understanding Soviet war films.  In contrast, America lost less than half a million war dead in WWII, and 58,000 in Vietnam.  It’s probably fair to say the fatalistic bleakness of Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr comes from the Soviet sensibility, where humans under extreme duress were challenged to such an unheard of degree that hopeless futility was common, where the spirit was literally sucked right out of a people, when all odds were continually against them.  This was an era when people were expected to do the impossible, survive the harsh winter elements on no food or worn out boots, or maintain their health and spirits when people all around them are dying, not to mention have the fortitude to endure the many psychological tests, such as poor leadership, or the many secret police interrogations which are all part of the war experience.  Perhaps the most uniquely defining element captured in these films is the psychological complexity of understanding the dread and fear of the characters seen onscreen, who are unlike those in any other era, where the idea of surviving the madness of it all is an enduring testament of humanity. 

Elena

ELENA            B                    

Russia  (109 mi)  2011  ‘Scope  d:  Andrei Zvyagintsev

Somewhat slight compared to his earlier efforts, THE RETURN (2003) and THE BANISHMENT (2007), this is a subtle film that delves into the heart of the Russian conscience, where a wordless ten–minute opening into the empty expanse of a meticulously clean, thoroughly modern and luxurious yet seemingly cold and sterile Moscow condominium sets the scene for an unsparing examination of class consciousness.  Something of a generational morality tale where the future looks hopeless and overly bleak, this is a slow moving character exposé, almost a theater piece, where what’s most significant is the developing interior worlds of the characters, given a very novelesque structure of what turns out to be a modern day variation on Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment.  Centered around two main characters, a retired couple, Elena (Nadezhda Markina) and Vladimir (Andrey Smirnov) live in separate bedrooms, each with their own television sets, where every morning she opens the curtains and wakes him up, where her role is carefully defined around the subordinate position of serving him, like a nursemaid, where it’s a portrait of two entirely separate worlds.  Extending further is the world of their children, each through previous marriages, where Vladimir’s mostly unseen and distant daughter, Katerina (Elena Lyadova), seems to live a hedonistic and carefree existence, accustomed to being taken care of all her life by the support of her father, while Elena’s aloof teenage son lives in a state of abject poverty with his perpetually idle father and nagging mother in a tenement housing project sitting adjacent to 3 nuclear power smokestacks.  The dismal picture of their blighted lives says it all, where Elena is constantly hounded for money, but Vladimir is unyielding when it comes to offering help, wondering why he should support a family whose own father won’t get off his unemployed ass and get a job to help support his own family?  When Elena tries to compare her son’s situation with his daughter, Vladimir refuses to hear any more on the subject, claiming even though his sarcastically hostile daughter is no great prize, he’s at least fulfilling his fatherly obligation.  What to do about their future is the subject of the film’s moral center, told through alternating characters, one living under the protection of supreme comfort, while the other can be seen traipsing through the graffiti-laden slums to visit her son and grandson. 

Having met late in life, their lives were already structured, as Elena was the nurse in the hospital several years ago when they met, and has continued serving that same role in marriage.  Something of a control freak, Vladimir is particular about having things exactly his way, where there isn’t an ounce of recognition or awareness of how he’s treating his wife, while she dutifully submits to each and every one of his commands, never expressing any sign of resentment.  Under the surface, however, she is boiling at her husband’s refusal to take her family seriously.  For all practical purposes, this is the set up, with no other background information provided other than the acute visual detail captured by cinematographer Mikhail Krichman, who worked on the director’s earlier films as well, and the splendid intermittent use of the 3rd Movement of Phillip Glass’s Symphony #3, a tense and pulsating use of throbbing strings that effectively becomes the voice of the subconscious.  Vladimir’s sense of control can be see in this wordless car driving sequence that expresses a rather sophisticated sense of choice, Elena (2011) - Car driving scene - YouTube (2:46), where the haunting Glass music comes in at the end.  Shortly afterwards, he suffers a heart attack at the gym, literally forcing him to confront his mortality.  One of the best scenes in the film is the hospital visit by his daughter, the simply brilliant Elena Lyadova, who is haughty and cynical, just like her father, but surprisingly eloquent, Elena 2011 - YouTube  (5:16), where the cameraman can’t take his gaze off her fascinating performance.  This visit seems to solidify his view that he needs to write a will, informing Elena that she will receive a generous monthly stipend, but his daughter will inherit everything else.  This sends Elena into a state of flux, her hopes for her son dashed, as she sees Katerina as a spoiled and ungrateful child, someone who couldn’t be less appreciative of her father, only using him for money.  With few spoken words between the two of them, Elena has to wordlessly convey the plaguing guilt of the young Raskolnikov, as she wonders if righting a wrong by committing an unthinkable mortal sin is permissible if it’s in pursuit of a higher purpose, where her transformation is chilling.   

Like the novel, the film barely touches upon the crime, but lingers instead on the unintended interior consequences of the punishment, where Elena skillfully covers up the tracks of her foul deed, where earlier in the film Katrina understood her well, claiming she played the part well of a mournful and grieving wife, where in the hospital her words to her father haunt the final moments of the film, like a Macbethian witch’s prophecy: “It’s irresponsible to produce offspring that you know are going to be sick and doomed, since the parents are just as sick and doomed.”  If Zvyaguintsev films produce anything, they brilliantly foreshadow a bleak future, where Elena struggles with a Mephistophelian choice to prevent a gloomy future for her grandson Sasha, where his parents are elated when she suddenly has available cash to bribe his way into college, rescuing her grandson from the inevitable fate of being forced to join the army, seen as a fate worse than prison.  He barely acknowledges her actions however, much like Elena feared Katerina would react, when the director then shows us the real face of the Russian future.  As the electricity goes out in the tenement housing projects turning the apartment dark, Sasha goes outside and joins a gang of others waiting for him that get liquored up, and in an exquisite example of the best uses of a hand-held camera, follow the group as they hastily approach a clearing in front of the nuclear power smokestacks with the precision of a military strike, where in a riveting sequence they attack a group of outsiders huddling next to a fire, savagely kicking and beating them all to within an inch of their lives, a senseless act of ultraviolence that’s right out of Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971), a stormtrooping, boot-kicking, neo-Nazi vision of disillusioned youth that’s becoming all too common an occurrence these days, almost always alcohol fueled.  Like the wordless emptiness of the opening sequence, the final sequence is eerily similar, with the tenement dwellers now inhabiting the luxurious condo, bringing with them their learned habits of drunken idleness and shirking responsibility, soulless creatures who are literally pretenders to the human race.