The Return (Vozvrashchenie)

 

 

THE RETURN (Vozvrashchenie)                  A                                                                              Russia  (106 mi)  2003  d:  Andrei Zvyagintsev

Why did you come back?  Why?  Why did you come get us?  You don’t need us.  We were fine without you, with Mom and Gran.  Why did you come back?  Why did you take us with you? What do you need us for?                    —Vanya (Ivan Dobronravov)

Described by this first time director as “a mythological look at human life,” this is one of the more starkly austere and emotionally spare films one could see, completely absent of anything unnecessary, but always direct and to the point, given metaphysical implications, reminiscent of an earlier, somewhat similar film, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s DISTANT (Uzak) (2002) that accentuates an excruciating loneliness, as the feelings in this film are so grim and remote, like a poetic glimpse into the human soul.  Remarkable for its spare storytelling that relies upon long, wordless sequences, the beauty of its stark reality is shockingly emphasized, like a Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness journey into the unknown, where one comes face to face with their ultimate fears.  What’s also surprising is the amount of unanswered questions raised by this film, which remain unresolved mysteries through the end, deeply entrenched in a primal ambiguity.  Structured into a series of episodes, the film marks seven days, each identified by intertitles, beginning with the introduction of two young brothers, Andrei (Vladimir Garin) and Vanya (Ivan Dobronravov), ages 15 and 13, who bicker and fight, like brothers do, but they’re also symbiotically attached, cut from the same cloth, demonstrating an intense closeness.  An early scene shows a group of young boys jumping off a tower into the sea, calling anyone who can’t do it a coward, so all but the youngest succeed, leaving Vanya temporarily stranded atop the tower, unable to face his fears.  Hours later his mother (Natalia Vdovina) climbs up there to console her child shivering in the cold, offering maternal grace and a warm blanket, suggesting he’ll jump when he’s ready, reassuring him that everything’s all right.  But the kids tease him when they see him again, excluding him from their playful activities.  Offering something of a diversion, Andrei races him home, each ready to tell on the other, but their mother quiets them, as their father (Konstantin Lavronenko), absent for 12 years, has inexplicably returned, sleeping in their mother’s bed in an identical position of Andrea Mantegna’s 15^th century painting, The Lamentation of a Dead Christ, Lamentation by Andrea Mantegna.  The boys are struck by his physical presence before running upstairs to confirm his identity, viewing a photograph kept in an illustrated family Bible, known by only a single photograph.  This simple gesture has a way of aligning the two boys even closer, as they’ve been together through all the years the father was absent, both a bit stupefied by his presence.  Their mother offers them no clues.  Again, without any explanation, he takes the boys on a journey, presumably a fishing trip, where they slip further and further away from civilization, into the most remote wilderness, eventually landing on a desolate island where they pitch their tents.  The older brother is glad his father has returned, while the younger brother isn’t even sure if this is his father or not, thinking he may be leading them astray to slit their throats, for all he knows, and sulks and disobeys his father every chance he gets.  This father uses few words, but offers severe and sometimes brutal consequences for disobedient behavior, which includes smacking these kids around, bloodying their noses, leaving them out in the rain, which makes them wonder why he’s returned at all.  But they’re so used to his absence that they continue to ignore him even when he’s present, seeing him as little more than a stranger.  Their rebellion leads to a sort of LORD OF THE FLIES mentality, as if they don’t adhere to his rule, then they’re really turning their backs on all rules, which leaves them in a precarious position.  It appears to be no accident that the younger child actor is named after the child hero in Tarkovsky’s Ivan's Childhood (1962), with both facing their own individual perils, where the innocence of youth is cut short, while the older child is named after Tarkovsky’s second film ANDREI RUBLEV (1966).     

In the spirit of The Decalogue (Dekalog) (1988-89), with echoes of Abraham and Isaac (Impossible Ethics: A Response to the Sacrifice of Isaac ...), the tension between father and sons builds continually throughout the journey, introducing Oedipal themes, exuding a heightened sense of reality, augmented by a dirgelike soundtrack that only accentuates the emotional and psychic distance between them, where Vanya is the moody core of the story, refusing to play along, angry and irritated at being ordered around by a total stranger, spending much of the picture sulking alone, silently.  His father’s response is harsh and at times cruel, an enigmatic and tortuous Stalin figure, leaving Vanya on the side of the road and driving off for hours at a time, forcing him to endure endless hours of pelting rain in the cold.  His absence is never discussed, no questions about his past are ever asked, and little, if any emotion is ever exhibited by the father.  His behavior is bewildering, yet the children offer unbelievably authentic performances.  While Russia historically is a patriarchal society, despite being called the Motherland, Russian films, including those of Tarkovsky, often reflect absent fathers and nurturing mothers, while also using recurring symbols of water and rain, natural forces of eternity that may also reflect a cleansing of one’s sins.  There is a morality tale at play here, as the children are constantly questioning the authority of their father, which may as well be a question for the nation, having endured a long history of brutal dictators, a brief hint of democracy, but then a return back to the rule of despots with Putin.  Using heavy force and humiliation, the father attempts to teach his sons hard corps discipline, military style, fueling speculation that he may have been in the military, but also survival techniques out in the woods, taking them on a long and arduous journey driving an 80’s GAZ Volga Stationwagon before traveling by boat, eventually reaching a remote, completely uninhabited island.  While they have a burning curiosity about him, wondering where he has been, why he has come back, how he has been spending his time, viewing him as a terrifying figure that they have every intention to love, but there are continual interruptions en route, with their father making inexplicable phone calls, presumably to some mistress nearby, but we never really know.  The boys grow tired of being ordered around, becoming more and more defiant over time, with Vanya eventually learning to despise him, extremely suspicious of his motives, having little use for him, feeling more liberated without him.  The stunning cinematography is by Mikhail Krichman, who would go on to shoot all of the director’s films, whose slow panning offers a strong sense of foreboding, given extraordinary weight, meticulously establishing the mood, capturing the natural beauty in the landscape with long, unbroken silences, while often changing focus several times within the same shot, given the artistic complexity of a Tarkovsky film, where the final shot actually resembles the final shot of MIRROR (1975), as does an earlier shot of the mother smoking on the porch during the unexpected arrival of the absent father, with a strikingly original soundtrack adding considerable depth, setting an atmospheric tone.  Resembling Bergman films shot on Fårö Island, offering a rugged and distinctive landscape in a remote location, this film was mostly shot at Lake Ladoga, Europe’s largest freshwater lake, located in northwestern Russia between St. Petersburg and the Finnish border.

Winner of the Golden Lion award at the 2003 Venice Film Festival for both Best Film and Best First Film, exactly as Tarkovsky had won the Golden Lion for his own debut 41-years earlier, IVAN’S CHILDHOOD (1962), yet for Siberian-born Zvyagintsev, a former actor and TV director, this remains, arguably, the director’s most dramatically powerful and artistically accomplished film, and his most accessible, while also among his most exquisitely edited, though one ghastly tragedy happening shortly after the completion of the shooting resulted in the unfortunate death of Vladimir Garin who played the older brother Andrei, drowning in a lake not far from where the movie was shot.  In his acceptance speech, a visibly moved Zvyagintsev dedicated the Golden Lion to Garin.  The Cannes Film Festival of 2003 was similarly affected by the death of Emin Toprak, one of the lead actors in Ceylan’s DISTANT (Uzak) (2002), co-winner of the Best Actor Prize, who perished in a car accident shortly after that film was completed.  Part of the film’s emotional center is the struggle the boys have in attempting to develop a new relationship with their father, which seems on again and off again several times before they actually reach their destination, as just when he is about to send his two sons back on the bus to their mother, he inexplicably changes his mind, with Andrei identifying with his father, while Ivan feels cut off and exiled, as if he never existed.  While on the island the father goes off on individual hikes exploring the vicinity before asking his sons to join him, showing them an observational watchtower that overlooks the entire island (that Ivan refuses to climb), leaving the boys plenty of time on their own to squabble about his absence, wondering if he could have been in prison, or has a criminal background.  The father is on a quest to retrieve something buried on the island, digging a fairly deep pit to find it, yet viewers remain clueless what it is, as it ends up having no bearing on the real story, which is the developing family dynamic with its shifting moods, with the father trying to turn them into men, which he actually succeeds in doing, much to the surprise of the boys themselves, but circumstances dictate a hastened maturity, particularly in Andrei, assuming his father’s role (seen wearing his father’s watch), developing skills and instincts well beyond their years.  Most likely it’s the first time the boys have even been apart from their mother, leaving Ivan especially affected by her absence.  Like the Stalin era, there are hidden secrets that we never learn, especially about the father.  This absent father syndrome mirrors the loss of so many soldiers in World War II, with the Nazi Army coming within 20 miles of Moscow in what was a Red Army wipe out, a devastation of human losses, where throughout the war 22 to 26 million Russians died, or 15 – 20% of the entire population.  Historically, this was a moment of great trauma and suffering, and a psychological shock to the nation.  Perhaps this historical realism is at the root of the spiritual revelations of this film, recreating a similar shock, a deep psychological trauma, where perhaps the father’s absence is viewed as an act against nature, and it comes to represent a kind of allegorical elegy, and only through a spiritual transcendence or human epiphany can one appreciate and celebrate a renewed meaning of life.  There’s a photographic aftermath that celebrates their lives together, captured in monochrome snapshots from Andrei’s camera, like diary entries, with the boys playing around, mostly smiling, revealing a spontaneity that never previously existed, leaving viewers with a stark, dreamlike idealization.  For a film that offers few emotions throughout the journey, it certainly pays off with one of the more explosively emotional endings imaginable, as it is wordless, yet moves effortlessly and uncompromisingly to its natural conclusion, summing up the entire film in the last breathtakingly beautiful final twenty minutes.  The original music by Andrey Dergachev (aka Dergatchev) is hauntingly eerie and atmospheric, and at the end, solemn to the core, Vozvrashcheniye (The Return) OST - YouTube (5:07).    

Nothing But a Man

Director Michael Roemer

NOTHING BUT A MAN        A+                

USA  (95 mi) 1964  d:  Michael Roemer

One way for local whites to take the strut out of a black man's step was to put him in prison...Southerners who had just lost a war managed to convince courts to put hundreds of black men in prison, including black soldiers.          

—from the book Ain’t Nothing But a Man, by Scott Reynolds Nelson

But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people...then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.
—Martin Luther King Jr. from April 16, 1963, Letter from Birmingham Jail full text

I ain’t fit to live with no more. It’s just like a lynching. They don’t use a knife, but they got other ways.    —Duff Anderson (Ivan Dixon)          

One of the better films that reveals what it means and how it feels to be black, reportedly Malcolm X’s favorite film, this is arguably the best black film ever made in America, set in Alabama’s Deep South in the early 60’s, though interestingly enough it was actually made by a white guy, Michael Roemer, born in Berlin, Germany, who fled the Holocaust as an 11-year old child on the Kindertransports, coming after his mother’s family shoe store was destroyed during Kristallnacht.  In the early 30’s Nazis organized boycotts of Jewish businesses in Germany, publically burned Jewish and non-German books in Berlin, established quotas for non-Aryans in schools, and excluded Jews from public parks and swimming pools, with the director remembering having to sit on separate yellow benches when Jews were denied entrance into movies theaters, circumstances eerily similar to blacks in the Jim Crow South, with white supremacy resembling Nazi racialization, especially in its impact on families.  Made on a $300,000 budget during the dawn of the Civil Rights era, the production coincided with the civil rights insurgency and benefited from input from activists, shot during the tumultuous summer of 1963 simultaneous to the Medgar Evers’ assassination, George Wallace preaching “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever” while standing in the doorway blocking the entrance of two black students at the University of Alabama, the March on Washington, the site of Martin Luther King’s infamous “I Had A Dream” speech, and they were still filming the day four young girls were killed by bombs at the Sixteenth Street Church in Birmingham.  Both Roemer and his co-writer and cinematographer Robert M. Young were Jewish, educated at Harvard University, and wrote the script after traveling through the South together, with Roemer directing the black-and-white film using a neorealist style, giving it a near documentary look.  What distinguishes the film is the remarkable ease in telling the story without a hint of condescension or manipulation, no preaching, no moral crusading, no underlying political message, and never resorting to caricature or exaggeration for added emphasis.  Instead it just tells it like it is.  Never once do we hear music swelling to emphasize a poignant moment and the end credits play without a sound.  There’s not a false step anywhere in this landmark picture, beautifully directed with an assured, understated style that reeks of authenticity and serves as a time capsule that holds up unusually well even after 50 years.  With no sympathetic white figures in the film, it was misunderstood and undervalued by white critics, largely ignored at the box office, with viewers finding it underwhelming, but the film was years ahead of its time, with Ebony magazine listing the film among their Top Ten Black Films of All Time in a 1995 poll, revealing essential truths about being black that other films ignored, effortlessly conveying a poetic depiction of everyday black realities, a predecessor to small black independent films like Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep (1979) and Billy Woodberry’s Bless Their Little Hearts (1983), which received greater acclaim, largely due to their accessibility, part of an academically studied movement, the LA Rebellion, catalog (pdf), while this harder-to-find film has continually been relegated to the obscure.  Ivan Dixon as Duff Anderson gives one of the great unheralded performances in American film, smart, proud, a sexy swagger to his step, extremely dignified, never overreaching, usually calm and quiet, a strong, silent type, but his life is a neverending series of exasperating events, continually referred to as “boy” and “trouble” while being goaded into unwelcome confrontations from racist taunts where he refuses to buckle under the patronizing humiliation of ignorant whites who expect him to “act the nigger” and play the subservient game of bowing down to white authority, as that’s what’s always been expected in this neck of the woods. 

It ain’t pretty, but it’s real, where the film does an excellent job laying a foundation of his well respected and confident demeanor working and joking among fellow black men as a nomadic railroad worker, making good money, a loner out on his own not beholden to anybody.  But when he falls for a preacher’s daughter at a church social outside Birmingham, Alabama, Josie (jazz singer Abbey Lincoln), a proud and irresistibly beautiful woman, their romance is accompanied by a backdrop of contemporary Motown songs playing on a jukebox or the radio, like Martha and the Vandella’s “Heat Wave” Martha & the Vandellas - (Love Is Like A) Heat Wave YouTube (2:43) or Little Stevie Wonder - Fingertips. (Part 2) - YouTube (3:13), adding an overall sense of upbeat optimism, like seeing the couple develop an interest in one another dancing on a crowded dance floor, which predates the use of culturally relevant rock music in movies like Easy Rider (1969) or early Scorsese movies like Mean Streets (1973).  When they decide to get married, there’s little fanfare, as her father (Stanley Greene) is openly suspicious of a man who never went to college and doesn’t go to church, believing that his daughter deserves better.  But they’re happy in an easy going kind of way, despite the objections of her father, developing a low key relationship not usually shown in motion pictures, with a distinct class difference, as she grew up in a middle class background and teaches elementary school, having gone to college.  But their marriage suffers as he experiences a series of job setbacks where he’s forced to endure local insults, always being labeled a troublemaker for refusing to shuffle and jive for the white man, losing one job after another which puts them in desperate straits financially.  Usually he’d just hit the road, but now he’s part of a marriage.  Each time he runs off, he comes face to face with his seldom seen father (Julius Harris) who abandoned him at a young age, a bitter, broken down alcoholic who has nothing but rage against the world around him, unfortunately maimed by an industrial accident, no longer able to work, who would probably be dead were it not for the care of the strong woman beside him, Lee (Gloria Foster), continually railing against his own son as well, telling him to “get lost.”  He also visits a little 4-year old boy born out of wedlock, whose mother has taken off and left the child behind with another woman, viewing his father with that sad, fearful look of distrust.  Yet when he’s angry, he denies that’s even his child, but he nonetheless sends money regularly.  Interesting that Josie’s father gives Duff a word of advice, suggesting he “act the part,” calling it a form of psychology to “make ‘em think you’re going along and get what you want.”  Duff has a few words of his own for the preacher, “You’ve been stooping so long, Reverend, you don't know how to stand straight.  You’re just half a man.”  Like De Niro in a Scorsese film, Duff’s refusal to compromise his pride is what distinguishes his character, and his strong sense of self-respect is precisely what Josie finds so remarkably attractive about him, though he’s tested to the limits, behaving atrociously at times when his back is against the wall, undermined by generations of black passive indifference to the demeaning arrogance of white supremacy that has ruled since slavery days, exploiting black work aspirations and destroying family lives, refusing any suggestions of blacks aligning together, as that means losing their livelihood, leaving him singled out and isolated, placed on a do not hire blacklist around town for similar jobs, Nothing But a Man YouTube (2:32). 

Despite the bleak and unforgiving landscape for blacks in the Jim Crow South, described in great detail by American novelists William Faulkner and Richard Wright, or adapted movie novels like To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), blacks remained subject to white-controlled work places in town, along with a constant reminder that a lynching occurred in town eight years ago, perhaps a reference to the horrific 1955 murder of Emmett Till in nearby Mississippi, yet what’s ultimately so revealing is the discovery that Duff is living in a world that belongs to others, who set the rules and conditions, and define the allowable parameters of his existence.  This has never been so plainly and so sensitively revealed, as it defines black existence in America then and now, continually living under the thumb of white majority rule.  The film doesn’t so much tell a story as let one unravel before our eyes, conveyed with understatement, accenting naturalism and authenticity, though mostly shot on location in New Jersey, yet the images of low-down bars, streets and houses overrun by children, and rows of dilapidated tenements represent Birmingham’s poor black district, while the opening montage of a railroad section gang laying tracks was filmed during their earlier travels through the South.  Special recognition must be paid for the attention to black faces in the many close-ups, producing a depth and intimacy of images rarely seen before in filming black characters, where much of the underlying power of the film comes from the brilliant performances that allow viewers to immerse themselves in the predominately black cultural themes, like juke joints and church (featuring a brilliant gospel solo by Dorothy Hall), men getting blacklisted for standing up for themselves, where the only work available for blacks is back-breakingly hard labor that physically wears people out, where if they get injured or old, they’re of no use to anyone anymore, including themselves.  Without a job, forced to wallow in their worthlessness and self-loathing, their lives consist of sitting on their front stoops doing nothing, wasted in the mind-numbing void of alcohol abuse, where the only places blacks are allowed to live are dilapidated neighborhoods, where neglected children are the product of so many uncaring or absent fathers that a sense of worthlessness becomes synonymous with their deplorable living conditions, producing a righteous anger that eventually comes to define them.  This cycle of generational dysfunction hits Duff in the face like a ton of bricks, and he’s determined not to let it happen to him, where he chooses to be different, to be a responsible man, refusing to defer to white men, even at the cost of a job.  The film reflects the obstacles he faces, the anger, the indignation, the wretched helplessness he feels as he attempts to wade through the minefield of daily disasters waiting for him.  But never does he feel sorry for himself, or give up hope, but he does feel the sting of rebuke.  Their marriage is no picnic either and there are some rocky moments, but perhaps most significantly, this film offers no easy solutions.  Yet the profound depth of character is strikingly lucid, casting a harsh light on those blacks who do abandon their families, only making things that much more difficult for those they leave behind, perhaps removing the only hope they have, which weakens the already fragile state of broken black families and community.  Offering a dissertation on black masculinity, the film impressively reveals an inherent capacity for love while enduring endless racial threats, while also highlighting the significance and stability of female support, both emotionally and financially, becoming a brilliant depiction of a troubled life mirroring the upheaval of social change during the Civil Rights era, with details specific to the story’s time and place, which remain universally impactful, with the film being selected to the Library of Congress National Film Registry in 1993.