Language: Russian
When Soviet Union dictator Joseph Stalin died in 1953, film cameras were deployed by the Communist Party to “capture” his sombre funeral event in Moscow and the collective outpouring of grief across the nation’s fifteen republics. The mandate was clear: Frame the man’s death to define his immortality. Little did the makers suspect that their aesthetic deification of Stalin’s legacy would only come to light almost seven decades later – without quite losing its cultural symbolism. Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa (In The Fog, Austerlitz) pieces together the long-lost images to create State Funeral, a ghostly and audacious 130-minute ‘documentary’ composed entirely of archival footage. The story lies within its manner of telling.
Remarkably, Loznitsa’s dry assembly of visuals stays more or less loyal to the originally intended vision of its filming. A gloom descends in the dead of winter, grown men and women weep, citizens go numb, ministers go pale-faced, the silence in the streets is deafening, the processions are robotically reverential, the posters are unblemished, and the loudspeakers sing mournful phrases of “greatest genius in the history of mankind” Stalin’s life. There is not the slightest sign of the thousands trampled to death during the mass sighting of his coffin either. Mozart’s Requiem scores the montage of his hearse inching towards Lenin’s Mausoleum. The overall effect is haunting – and damning proof of the fact that perhaps the only way to indict history is by revealing its language.
As a result, what was then a heartfelt tribute for posterity now wears the robes of a startling satire on the doctrines of socialism. The irony of time is not lost upon Loznitsa. The “genre” of State Funeral remains open to interpretation in 2021. What Putin’s present-day Russia might regard as a serious and sincere film is, for the democratic world, nothing less than a hypnotic exploration of Stalin’s cult of personality. For some, this film is a tragedy and for others, it’s a sharp parody.
Consequently, State Funeral is both a museum and a work of art, both fact and artefact at once. This is conveyed by the film’s disorienting fusion of black-and-white and colour footage. The monochromatic shots state the makings of a land, the colour makes a statement on the landscape: the reds of communist USSR shine in the low-saturated palettes. By showing us what the regime wanted to portray, the documentary weaponizes hindsight to hint at what the regime hoped to hide. We now know that the de-Stalinization of the Soviet Union in 1956 dissolved his personality cult – shattering the mirage of his divine status and breaking the spell cast by his rule on an entire generation of brainwashed citizens. State Funeral displays this brainwash in its naked glory, lending sight and sound to an atmosphere of suppressed subservience.
Much of the film features commoners in various modes of distress, almost as though they’re struggling to exist without being told how to. A prolonged stretch shows hundreds of mourners lining up to catch a glimpse of the open coffin. The camera stays on their crestfallen faces as they pass by, but a few quick glances suggest that the shock isn’t derived from the sighting of the corpse so much as the diminutive stature of the body itself. Some of them can’t even bear to look, lest they be further disillusioned by the pathetic physicality of the man failing their perception of his image. You can almost hear them think: “He looks nothing like the man on the banners”. Others notice the cameras filming them, visibly fearful of being perceived as anything other than sorrowful. The sheer blankness of these faces makes for an oddly discerning study of the relationship between authority and obedience.
The only evidence of State Funeral being a ‘modern-day’ portrait of historical propaganda features a sly insertion of moments that might have never made it to a 1950s cut. For instance, during deputy chairman Lavrentiy Beria’s public speech, we see a fleeting shot of a minister on the podium failing to suppress a yawn. Earlier on, we see some curious locals pulling out of their march and staring into the camera, likely wondering if this is a new surveillance method. Then there’s a portion dedicated solely to the arrival of international leaders on the airport tarmac. Some of them seem a little unsure of the right etiquette, resisting a confident or optimistic handshake when welcomed by solemn Soviet officials. In these awkward moments, it’s almost as though the film-maker is winking and pulling us out of the trance, lest we misunderstand his purpose.
Most of all, the profound dissonance of State Funeral is a consequence of two things. The first one is primal and entirely incidental. It is rooted in the performative paraphernalia surrounding a high-profile funeral being watched during a pandemic-torn era where humans are denied the ritualistic dignity of dying. It feels strange and unsettling to see millions of ‘victims’ openly mourning for someone whose send-off might have best merited the unforgiving apathy of Covid protocols.
For Indians in particular, the lavish magnitude of the funeral being frequented by impoverished citizens is akin to watching a billion-dollar vanity project being constructed in the capital of a country while its citizens are gasping for breath.
The second one, however, marries context and form. State Funeral is technically a documentary, but it is inherently a dramatisation built into the narration of truth. It is the filming of the culmination of a long-running film. After all, a dictatorship often adopts the anatomy of storytelling. The staging of fiction is unmistakable. The Soviet citizens are the extras conditioned to act for the cameras and fill the frames. At one point, scores of labourers are palpably instructed to stop work and respectfully remove their hats to sync with the resounding booms of a cannon salute. The other leaders of the Communist party are assistant directors and production designers, trying to inspire the show to go on. Because the director, Joseph Stalin, is dead. If you listen really closely towards the end, you might even hear a “CUT!” echoing across the Soviet skies. Production is stalled. Soon, the script of history will be rewritten.
Rating: 4 (out of 5 stars)
State Funeral is now streaming on Mubi
from Firstpost Bollywood Latest News https://ift.tt/3hIyJSq
0 Comments