Dovzhenko is certainly a controversial figure, especially during the 1930s and 1940s, for his ability to subjugate his Ukrainian identity to his sentiments as a staunch Stalinist. His behavior is at least suspicious, even considering the pressures he was subjected to.
Zvenigora is one of his most clearly political films, which does not exclude ambiguities in the treatment of propaganda content. Obviously it could be uncomfortable for the director, among other things, to narrate the Ukrainian civil war from the side of the red army... when he had fought in the ranks of the whites.
Dovzhenko did not hesitate to modify a script by Mikhail Johansen and Yurtyk (Yuriy) Yosipovich Tyutyunnik to suit Soviet tastes. The truth is that originally the text had to have clearly anti-Soviet overtones: written by two Ukrainians a poet and a militar who, seeing the turn that the story took in the hands of Dovzhenko, rejected any authorship of the result. It is especially cruel that Dovzhenko boasted in his autobiography that he had found a bourgeois and nationalist script, and adapted its content to Soviet doctrine, given that the two writers were shot shortly after, victims of the Stalinist purge. That Dovzhenko wrote his autobiography in 1939, obviously conditioned by the extreme political pressure of the time, is possibly no justification.
The positioning of the film is very clear considering that in 1928 a decade of the Ukrainian cultural and linguistic revival came to an end, a movement that the Bolsheviks saw as dangerous and that they were quick to repress.
The result is that Zvenigora has a clear Stalinist program, chanting industrialization, collectivization, the Sovietization of Ukraine.
An old peasant who represents traditional and outdated values, tries to unearth the trasure of Ukraine, considered in the film as a symbol of the culture and history of the country, but associated at the same time with traditional and reactionary values.
The old man has two grandchildren: the soviet hero of the day, played by the almost always disagreeable Semyon Svashenko, a hieratic, authoritanian, almost inhuman figurehead, but inevitably with the reason on his side; and a second grandson with a somewhat stupid appearance, attached to superstitions, representing the survival of Ukranian values and traditions in the young generation.
The grandfather of course trusts the foolish grandson, and tells him stories about the buried treasure, about the origin of this treasure, which is in the stories of his country's past, which are narrated in the film.
But the treasure must not be unearthed, and so a monk with a gloomy expressionist aesthetic watches over it.
Civil war breaks out and the Bolshevik hero triumphs while the nationalist son flees to the West.
The hero ends up discovering what Ukraine's real treasure is: its mineral wealth, a source of industrialization, and which the Soviet regime plundered for decades.
The nationalist son emigrates to Prague, image of the excesses of the decadent Westerners, where he tries to seek funds from reactionary governments to unearth the treasure and free Ukraine from the Soviet yoke.
The film ends with the grandfather trying to unearth the treasure again, prevented not by the gloomy monk, but by the train of modernity and industrialization. He is then won over to the cause, condescendingly accepted and forgiven in honor of his gray hair. Only the reactionary son, despicable enemy of progress, is insurmountable.
The artistic value of the film is amazing. Zvenigora is Dovzhenko's most avant-garde and complex film, with an apparently chaotic but actually carefully planned structure, with images of ashtounding beauty and expressiveness and the brilliant editing characteristic of Soviet cinema of the time. Its noteworthy too because of the allegorical tone and symbolism, because of the disconcerting changes in style, because of an ambiguity clearly the result of the director's discomfort in the suffocating framework in which the government reduced him.
Zvenigora is a clear reflection of the moral dilemma Dovzhenko faced, of his own contradictions, and the clash between his love for Ukraine and his Bolshevik allegiance.
Still, or precisely because of this, the authorities did not like the film, basically because of its complexity, its intellectualism and its defiantly avant-garde character. If Dovzhenko believed that by sticking thematically to the regime's program he would get out of trouble, he was mistaken.
It is not an easy film to watch: first of all it tells us about a social and political reality that requires familiarity with the topic, as well as about the personal situation of the director; on the other hand, the scenes may seem disjointed at first glance, the changes in style and rhythm are extraordinarily drastic, and in general there is a narrative far removed from a classic narrative. But it's no doubt a masterpiece, which rewards all efforts.
Zvenigora is one of his most clearly political films, which does not exclude ambiguities in the treatment of propaganda content. Obviously it could be uncomfortable for the director, among other things, to narrate the Ukrainian civil war from the side of the red army... when he had fought in the ranks of the whites.
Dovzhenko did not hesitate to modify a script by Mikhail Johansen and Yurtyk (Yuriy) Yosipovich Tyutyunnik to suit Soviet tastes. The truth is that originally the text had to have clearly anti-Soviet overtones: written by two Ukrainians a poet and a militar who, seeing the turn that the story took in the hands of Dovzhenko, rejected any authorship of the result. It is especially cruel that Dovzhenko boasted in his autobiography that he had found a bourgeois and nationalist script, and adapted its content to Soviet doctrine, given that the two writers were shot shortly after, victims of the Stalinist purge. That Dovzhenko wrote his autobiography in 1939, obviously conditioned by the extreme political pressure of the time, is possibly no justification.
The positioning of the film is very clear considering that in 1928 a decade of the Ukrainian cultural and linguistic revival came to an end, a movement that the Bolsheviks saw as dangerous and that they were quick to repress.
The result is that Zvenigora has a clear Stalinist program, chanting industrialization, collectivization, the Sovietization of Ukraine.
An old peasant who represents traditional and outdated values, tries to unearth the trasure of Ukraine, considered in the film as a symbol of the culture and history of the country, but associated at the same time with traditional and reactionary values.
The old man has two grandchildren: the soviet hero of the day, played by the almost always disagreeable Semyon Svashenko, a hieratic, authoritanian, almost inhuman figurehead, but inevitably with the reason on his side; and a second grandson with a somewhat stupid appearance, attached to superstitions, representing the survival of Ukranian values and traditions in the young generation.
The grandfather of course trusts the foolish grandson, and tells him stories about the buried treasure, about the origin of this treasure, which is in the stories of his country's past, which are narrated in the film.
But the treasure must not be unearthed, and so a monk with a gloomy expressionist aesthetic watches over it.
Civil war breaks out and the Bolshevik hero triumphs while the nationalist son flees to the West.
The hero ends up discovering what Ukraine's real treasure is: its mineral wealth, a source of industrialization, and which the Soviet regime plundered for decades.
The nationalist son emigrates to Prague, image of the excesses of the decadent Westerners, where he tries to seek funds from reactionary governments to unearth the treasure and free Ukraine from the Soviet yoke.
The film ends with the grandfather trying to unearth the treasure again, prevented not by the gloomy monk, but by the train of modernity and industrialization. He is then won over to the cause, condescendingly accepted and forgiven in honor of his gray hair. Only the reactionary son, despicable enemy of progress, is insurmountable.
The artistic value of the film is amazing. Zvenigora is Dovzhenko's most avant-garde and complex film, with an apparently chaotic but actually carefully planned structure, with images of ashtounding beauty and expressiveness and the brilliant editing characteristic of Soviet cinema of the time. Its noteworthy too because of the allegorical tone and symbolism, because of the disconcerting changes in style, because of an ambiguity clearly the result of the director's discomfort in the suffocating framework in which the government reduced him.
Zvenigora is a clear reflection of the moral dilemma Dovzhenko faced, of his own contradictions, and the clash between his love for Ukraine and his Bolshevik allegiance.
Still, or precisely because of this, the authorities did not like the film, basically because of its complexity, its intellectualism and its defiantly avant-garde character. If Dovzhenko believed that by sticking thematically to the regime's program he would get out of trouble, he was mistaken.
It is not an easy film to watch: first of all it tells us about a social and political reality that requires familiarity with the topic, as well as about the personal situation of the director; on the other hand, the scenes may seem disjointed at first glance, the changes in style and rhythm are extraordinarily drastic, and in general there is a narrative far removed from a classic narrative. But it's no doubt a masterpiece, which rewards all efforts.