I stumbled on this at my local video store one day; I'd seen Muratova's "Asthenic Syndrome" about a decade ago which was totally mind-blowing and once or twice since then made small inquiries into the availability of it or other films - and low and behold this adaptation/compression of a couple of lesser-known Chekhov works shows up.
Like the earlier film, this has two distinct sections which refract on and relate to each other only obliquely; unlike that film, it doesn't strike me as a masterpiece, at least not on first glance. The overstuffed, almost baroque imagination at play in "Asthenic" is muted here, which is too bad because it really makes the overall irritating nature of the characters and the "storyline" such as it is stand out in high relief. Which is perhaps Muratova's point: she presents us with two situations, first a young impoverished man trying to escape his awful family and return to school (in the first and last quarters of the film) and next a wealthy, bourgeoisie Orthodox wedding taking place at a church out in the country near where the young man lives, the only link being that the student gets a lift from someone who promises to take him into town or to the train station if he'll stop off at the wedding.
Essentially in both milieus we are presented with loud and obnoxious people - screaming at each other in the case of the family, whispering behind and to each other without regard for the "sacred" proceedings in the case of the wedding. In both cases there is a brief moment of quiet near the end of the scene, though only in the case of the family scene does it seem like any positive resolution can result. Muratova's world view seems profoundly cynical, the film is railing against our modern world - while at the same time intimating that the church and old family traditions have lost their purpose - but she offers little in the way of hope. Not that this is necessarily a criticism - but it's a very unpleasant and difficult film to watch in many ways.
Filmed in gorgeous high-contrast black and white, with some unquestionable nods to the grotesqueries of Fellini and perhaps Bunuel, this is definitely not a film I'd recommend to most, but it is like nothing else except the other Muratova I've seen, and I found it...interesting, at the least. Watched on Ruscico DVD which also has a nearly 1-hour documentary on the director.
Like the earlier film, this has two distinct sections which refract on and relate to each other only obliquely; unlike that film, it doesn't strike me as a masterpiece, at least not on first glance. The overstuffed, almost baroque imagination at play in "Asthenic" is muted here, which is too bad because it really makes the overall irritating nature of the characters and the "storyline" such as it is stand out in high relief. Which is perhaps Muratova's point: she presents us with two situations, first a young impoverished man trying to escape his awful family and return to school (in the first and last quarters of the film) and next a wealthy, bourgeoisie Orthodox wedding taking place at a church out in the country near where the young man lives, the only link being that the student gets a lift from someone who promises to take him into town or to the train station if he'll stop off at the wedding.
Essentially in both milieus we are presented with loud and obnoxious people - screaming at each other in the case of the family, whispering behind and to each other without regard for the "sacred" proceedings in the case of the wedding. In both cases there is a brief moment of quiet near the end of the scene, though only in the case of the family scene does it seem like any positive resolution can result. Muratova's world view seems profoundly cynical, the film is railing against our modern world - while at the same time intimating that the church and old family traditions have lost their purpose - but she offers little in the way of hope. Not that this is necessarily a criticism - but it's a very unpleasant and difficult film to watch in many ways.
Filmed in gorgeous high-contrast black and white, with some unquestionable nods to the grotesqueries of Fellini and perhaps Bunuel, this is definitely not a film I'd recommend to most, but it is like nothing else except the other Muratova I've seen, and I found it...interesting, at the least. Watched on Ruscico DVD which also has a nearly 1-hour documentary on the director.