Living, a movie by director Vasily Sigarev that made a sensation at the 41st Rotterdam Film Festival, was declared the winner of the 12th International Film Festival goEast for Central and Eastern Europe, held in the German city of Wiesbaden. The jury, led by Romanian film-director Cristi Puiu this year, had this to say about the film: “The film dares to express the inexpressible with sheer cinematographic means.” Living is a philosophical film, whose author ponders the meaning of human life, whether it is worth fighting for survival… Soon the picture will be shown to Russian audiences, with its first showing scheduled in Sochi at the Kinotavr Film Festival.
Living is the second work of Yekaterinburg-based playwright Vasily Sigarev to hit the screen, following his debut Wolfy. The scene unfolds in the small town of Suvorov in the Tula Region. The script is based on the director’s childhood experiences. The cast includes Evgeny Sytiy, Dmitry Kulichkov, Yana Troyanova, Alexei Filimonov, Anna Ukolova and Olga Lapshina.
Whatever the director may say, the name Living is rather unfitting. Not Living would better reflect the essence of what goes on there, even though Vasily, forestalling the film release, said that however disappointing our life may be, living is still the bottom line. Death that reigns supreme on the screen in all its horrible grandeur as well as the sufferings of children are a win-win ploy anyway. The film authors are treading on the edge, risk overstepping it and do it time and again. On one occasion Mr Sigarev himself was terrified by a scene in a bus, transporting coffins with the bodies of dead young girls, although they used waxwork. Even representatives of the funeral service shuddered at what they saw on the shooting ground.
You try to blend into your seat as you see this movie and this is exactly what Sigarev wanted: to make the audience feel what his longsuffering heroes felt. He hopes this experience will force us to rethink our attitude towards other’s life and death. Sigarev’s message is that the meaning of death dawns upon us only after we lose someone we loved. Then comes real hell. Living was conceived as an apocalypse, daily entering the lives of certain individuals, and at the same time as a horror.
Unlike the Russian audience, European spectators laugh, when the hero Alexei Filimonov, having been beaten to death in a commuter train, comes back to life at some moment and stumbles into his home where he left his wife, though we know he is dead. The spouses lie in the bed, but only she is alive while he is in some intermediate state, which the viewers may differently interpret. The horror, initially sought after by the director, melts into living in earnest. The dead walk away from us, staying near nonetheless. We are unable to forget our loved ones, even if they have long been lying beneath the sod. Probably this is the meaning of Sigarev’s personages coming back to life? How can one believe that the mother of the girls who perished in a car accident would dig them out of the grave? And then firemen who come to her house that catches fire find children’s corpses in the cellar. In other words, everything is real. Before the coming of strangers the mother, frantic with grief, bathes her daughters in a very old washing tub, anoints their bruises with brilliant green, and gives them pies to eat. This resembles the canvases of old-time painters, a family portrait or a still-life. At any rate, this is “dead” life. It’s no wonder that Sigarev’s Living christened The Spookies.
Svetlana Khokhryakova
