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London Film Festival
Derek Malcolm
The Guardian
Monday, 11. November 2002
No native director of any consequence has painted the corruption of
contemporary Russia with a beadier accuracy than Alexei Balabanov,
even if most of his films are weakened by commercial considerations.
War, like Brother and Of Freaksand Men, spares no one, while at the
same time shrewdly eyeing up its public.
It is set in Chechnya, where robbers and bloodthirsty clan leaders
fight Russian soldiers who don't want to be there - led, according
to Balabanov, by idiots. A vicious guerrilla leader captures two
soon-to-be-married English actors (Ian Kelly and Ingaborga
Dapkunaitel) apparently touring Hamlet, and a group of Russians. He
slits the throats of the Russians, except for Alexei Chadov's
computer operator. Then he sends the actor and the computer operator
home to raise a ransom for the fiancee. The actor can't get the
money but, with enough cash perhaps to satisfy the guerrilla leader,
he asks the computer operator to take him back to the war zone. The
Russian, who owes him nothing but is desperate to save his badly
wounded commander, consents to go. War, however, is a very dirty
business in these parts and, while the actor, in order to raise more
money, shoots the scene with a digital camera, his protector shoots
those who get in their way with his gun.
War would be little more than a slightly illogical and bloody
adventure story were it not shot and directed with such conviction,
painting the bloody mess of the war and the corruption back home
with equal frankness. It is difficult to tear your eyes from these
two men: the Russian an ordinary young man adapting to circumstances
in a way only his macho father would admire, and the Brit determined
to prove himself by rescuing his girl from rape and worse. Hollywood
would never put one of its stars in either part. But then they would
have re-edited Balabanov's starkly ironic ending, too.
Briton stars in Russian epic of war on
fanatics
By Marcus Warren in Moscow
Daily Telegraph (Filed: 08/03/2002)
As a salute to the war on terrorism - and for good timing and
symbolism - no film can hope to rival a new Russian blockbuster
pitting a Siberian thug and a doubt-torn British liberal against
Islamic fanatics. The work of Russia's most bankable production
team, War is set in the mountains of Chechnya. It has already been
billed as a guide to "killing Russian-style", outdoing earlier hit
films by the same director, Alexei Balabanov, in strident
nationalism.
War follows a young Briton as he tries to rescue his girlfriend from
the dungeon where she is held hostage. Under the tuition of a tough
but noble-hearted Russian called Ivan, the Englishman, John,
metamorphoses from a weedy victim whining about human rights into a
gunman taking bloody revenge on the kidnappers.
"If you play Dostoevsky, I go," the Siberian tells John halfway
through his transformation when the Briton agonises over the
morality of killing their Chechen foes.
"The director saw himself as grinding a Western liberal's nose into
the hard realities of what Russia thinks it is doing in Chechnya,"
said Ian Kelly, the British actor who stars in the film. He and the
Lithuanian actress Ingeborga Dapkunaite, playing his British
girlfriend, were both protected by bodyguards to deter real life
kidnappers during filming in the North Caucasus.
The cast and crew were on location in the mountains on September 11,
when the attacks on New York and Washington cast the film in a new
light. The attacks came as little surprise to Mr Balabanov. "The
numbers who died are not important," he said.
"What is important is that the terrorists wanted to kill the maximum
amount of unbelievers, that is you and me."
Recent developments in the region have made the film, to be
premiered next week and expected to be this year's Russian-produced
box office sensation, even more topical. The Chechen kidnappers
first abduct the British couple in neighbouring Georgia. Presumably,
they are smuggled into Russia via the Pankisi gorge, claimed by
America to be a safe haven for al-Qa'eda sympathisers.
According to Mr Balabanov, the plot was inspired by the fate of four
telecommunications engineers, three Britons and one New Zealander,
kidnapped, murdered and then beheaded by their Chechen captors in
1998.
The on-screen events also suggest parallels with the ordeal of the
British aid workers Camilla Carr and Jon James, seized in Chechnya
and tortured but released alive earlier the same year. Mr Balabanov
showed some of the cast videos of the executions, torture and
beatings of hostages filmed by Chechen kidnappers in order to
terrorise their families or taunt the security forces.
While Mr Balabanov's films have been seen as the cinematic
expression of President Putin's promise to "waste" Chechen
terrorists, War is a far cry from the jingoism favoured by the
Kremlin. The character Ivan is an idealist loner in a world of
corruption, betrayal and greed, with parts of the Russian state
often in league with the Chechen gangsters they pretend to be
fighting.
Despite its patriotic message and the cult status of their previous
films, if the makers of War thought that they would receive special
help from the military in shooting the film, they were disappointed.
Not only did they have to pay for all co-operation from the armed
forces, but army incompetence and bureaucracy delayed the supply of
weapons and ammunition and put filming weeks behind schedule. |
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