Target (Mishen)

TARGET (Mishen)                               D                    

Russia  (154 mi)  2011  ‘Scope  d:  Alexander Zeidovich

An utter disaster in the making, dreadfully uninvolving, yet it’s two and a half hours long, which feels like an eternity, as this picture just never gets off the ground.  While it’s possible the Russian references are too oblique for a Western audience, as there may be specific phrases that a Russian audience would understand all too clearly, but as it stands, this is one of the worst films seen all year.  Basically, this is a futuristic rape fantasy, where what starts out as an intriguing idea unravels into a nightmarish chaos of uncontrolled anger and hostility.  Set in Russia only ten years in the future, the social classes are more divided, where the rich live in an extravagant luxury where they can afford anything, while the rest suffer offscreen somewhere, where their presence on earth is of little consequence, as they are only necessary to serve the rich.  While the influence of the United States is totally absent, China has become an Eastern superpower, a rival of Russia, where there is a transcontinental highway between the nations that is simply a neverending logjam of trucks where police swerve in and out issuing harsh penalties for alleged infractions.  In this altogether imperfect world, the super rich are always looking for ways to make their lives even better, where they can make a pilgrimage to a remote location near the Mongolian border, the site of an abandoned astrophysics station which allegedly receives cosmic rays, known as the “Target,” where those exposed, even for a short duration, receive everlasting youth, as from that point on they cease aging.  All right, so far, so good. 

One feels there are likely smaller chapters to this story, where it might play out better in a serial installment Movie-of-the-Week format, where the element of suspense would create anticipated interest, as people would be curious what would happen next.  However in one sitting, the film grows prolonged without ever establishing any tension or suspense.  Vladimir Sorokin allegedly worked nearly a decade on this script, supposedly an underground take on Tolstoy's Ana Karenina (really?), but it falls horribly flat, evolving into exasperating dribble in spots, where all too many subplots get thrown into the mix, not one of which ever generates interest.  Part of the problem is the dreadfully unappealing characters that only grow more contemptuous over time.  Nikolai (Vitaly Krischenko) is the brutal Putin or Stalin figure, a man who crushes his enemies as head of the customs division, responsible for all transport of cargo, which of course is rampant with corruption.  Viktor (Maksim Sukhanov) is a Russian Minister of Natural Resources, a man living in European extravagance with a much younger trophy wife, Zoya (Justine Waddell).  Also along is Zoya’s brother Mitya (Danila Kozlovskiy), an obnoxious Reality TV host with impressive looks who takes an interest in Anna (Daniela Stoyanovich), who runs a radio show on learning Chinese.  Zoya ends up infatuated by Nikolai, where each relationship becomes unhinged due to arousing suspicions and paranoia.

It turns out there’s little science fiction to this tale, as most of that plays out in anticipation of what the viewer expects, where the consequences of the visit has a Macbethian theme, a feeling of invincibility, which initially feels powerful and irrefutably ecstatic, near delirious, developing a ravenous appetite for animalistic sex bordering on brutality, descending into obsessive anxiety about the partner, while in some instances it feels like the brain ceases to function, where a switch overrides all reason and the world is divided into good and evil, where lengthy philosophical quandaries may turn to mush, absolute nonsense, as there are apparent unexplained side effects of the experience that overtake the initial euphoria of everlasting youth.  The problem here is that the story lacks vision or insight, as the usual view of Russia is that it is a country defined by a strong and powerful leader, something of a dictator who holds everything in check, where if you remove his influence and toy with the idea of democracy, for instance, the country will immediately descend into chaos.  Well this is not science fiction, this has been the view of Russia for the last several hundred years, so to reiterate this fear is hardly something new.  While there are a few ravishing location shots, cinematography by Alexandre Ilkhovsky, the mostly discordant music is something of a headache, as is the complete unengagement of the characters that couldn’t hold less appeal.  When the screenwriter resorts to babbling nonsense, as if characters have been subjected to electroshock, where life ceases to hold any meaning, it feels strangely like a completely humorless and continually dour apocalyptic version of THE INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1956). 

The Way Back

THE WAY BACK                                                       B                     

USA  (133 mi)  2010  d:  Peter Weir

Peter Weir hasn’t made a film in 8 years, which is a staggering revelation considering the superb craftsmanship associated with his films, especially the breathtaking visualizations.  Perhaps he hasn’t been able to raise funds after the mixed reception of his last work, MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD (2003), which played fast and loose with the historical facts, actually changing the storyline from the book upon which the movie was based in order to fit the gung-ho George W. Bush saber rattling war scenario that was taking place at that time.  This is a National Geographic funded project which allows him to film in some of the more remote areas of the globe, based on a 1955 book The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom by Slawomir Rawicz, where he and several others escaped from a Siberian gulag in 1940 and in a year’s time walked 4000 miles from Siberia, finding and following Lake Baikal, trekking past the Tran Siberian railway to Outer Mongolia (also Communist), across the Gobi Desert, past the Great Wall of China (still Communist) into the Himalayan Mountains, initially finding refuge in Tibet, but continuing their trek into India where the British government at the time was staunchly against both the Nazi’s and the Russians, though the Russians were a war ally.  There has been some controversy about the book, as it was initially released as the author’s own story, but when it was revealed afterwards that he was released by the Russians under a 1942 amnesty agreement, Rawicz indicated it is actually the story of three Polish men who recounted their stories to him, one of whom is a former Polish soldier, Witold Glinski. 

Described as the first Hollywood film about the Soviet gulag, this overly detached and in the end unengaging film opens in Poland in 1940 when it was invaded to the West by Hitler and the Nazi’s, and from the East by Stalin and the Russians, opening with a Stalinest interrogation sending a Polish citizen to a Russian gulag for twenty years for making negative statements about Stalin.  The conditions there are decripit, with prisoners starving from lack of adequate food, housing prisoners with professional killers who run the inside of the prisons with smuggled weapons.  In reality, these were forced labor camps, something that was common in both Japan and China during this same time period, where the conditions were so brutal that escape seemed the only viable option.  In Siberia, however, the natural elements are so severe, and the distance so great, that chances of survival from an escape are rare to slim.  This film is reminiscent of the epic Japanese War Trilogy THE HUMAN CONDITION (1959-61), a three part drama by Masaki Kobayashi who documents similar conditions when defeated Japanese soldiers were simply abandoned and left on the mainland of Manchuria, China and had little hopes of ever finding their way back home, where the film follows the futile efforts of one soldier who escaped from a Russian gulag only to wander endlessly, starving for days on end without food, making his way alone through the vast emptiness of the barren landscape, eventually succumbing to weakness and starvation, left to die alone, frozen in the bleak emptiness of a desolate winter.  These exact same circumstances await the seven escapees, one of whom freezes to death the very first night. 

Featuring breathtaking cinematography by Russell Boyd, the humans are specks on the landscape as they initially make their way out of the Siberian forest before becoming engulfed in the immensity of the world around them, afraid to show themselves in Stalinest nations for fear they’d be turned back in to the authorities, so they instead have to creep around towns and hide where they could.  When they reach flat landscapes, it’s most treacherous, as it’s also harder to find food and water out in the open spaces.  One of the film’s failings is the inability to deal with the subject of starvation, which should have been everpresent throughout the journey, yet they somewhat nonchalantly find food all too easily.  Finding water in the desert was truly miraculous, but there was very little tension established about finding food.  Instead when people started to physically deteriorate, attention was paid to physical injuries or ailments, but no words spoken about food, which had to have been on their minds, perhaps even hallucinating about it.  Also, some of the arduous nature of their adventure is glossed over, as the seasons change from ferocious winter storms to spring pretty quickly.  The film also does little to delineate between the characters, where the audience never develops an emotional attachment to any of them, or understands why one is considered the navigator or leader, when he’s actually the youngest or newest prisoner, which makes little sense.  Who made him in charge?  In reality, it’s human nature for there to have been some dissension in the ranks over leadership, yet in this film there was no discussion whatsoever.  It was this lack of tension or screen intensity between the characters that left a feeling of vague disconnection with the audience, where the enormity of what was taking place rarely developed into an acute sense of awareness or personal triumph, never really becoming quite so intensely powerful as Phillip Noyce’s RABBIT-PROOF FENCE (2002), which remains the definitive film on the subject, perhaps because the journey coincided with monumental social changes, so the epic adventure was superbly and dramatically placed in historical context.