Yesterday, I actually felt a lot of energy for writing blog postings, but I was generally tired and the thought of writing this particular one was just too daunting. I cannot predict what is going to happen, but it’s entirely possible that I will fall asleep exhausted after writing this one. We will see.
We saw the film under harsh circumstances: It was a late screening at the International, I was horribly sick and I drove there in the cold, then drove Loris and then myself back. I almost didn’t go (in which case I would have given my ticket to Pixelmatsch instead), and while watching the film definitely did not help my sickness, I am glad to have seen it. Where else to watch a Russian movie than at the International?
Under Electric Clouds (Pod electricheskimi oblakami)
Russia/Ukraine/Poland 2015, Alexey German Jr., 138′
In 7 chapters and an epilogue, the film tells the stories of different people all somehow related to an abandoned construction site of a modern high-rise building: An immigrant who does not speak Russian who used to work on the site, the heiress whose late father held onto the building like a pet project, a girl who gets kidnapped and taken to a place on the construction site, a museum tour guide whose historical workplace is being destroyed by the workplace, the architect who designed the building oh and I almost forgot that real estate lawyer (mostly because his story is the most remote from the others, or so it felt to me). Their stories only loosely come together at the very end, but also not really. More than anything, the film is some sort of parable on life or society or existence itself.
The movie is amazingly slow, but I found myself mesmerized with its wintery photography (much fitting the weather we had in Berlin these days – the cold and the mist in the film mirrored Berlin’s perfectly), and not for a moment I was in actual danger of falling asleep. Especially in the first part, before I had a feeling for what the film was about, I was mostly confused and had a hard time understanding how the film worked. Even by the end, I don’t think I really ‘got’ the film, mostly because it simply has too many layers despite its slowness. This is definitely the kind of film I would want to watch again in order to catch more details, but it’s also not really going to be a joy to revisit. Just like how I rarely re-read Chekhov’s plays (though I have) because some of them are simply too tragic to bear, “Under Electric Clouds” is also rather apocalyptic, gloomy and ultimately depressing. Nevertheless, the film is beautiful, deep and wonderfully constructed – it’s definitely not for everyone, but it was for me.
I personally find myself revisiting the film in my mind over and over again, and I doubt I have spent as much time reflecting upon a Berlinale film ever. The beauty of its cinematography is absolutely stunning, and I thought it was a nod not only to Tarkovsky but also to Zvyagintsev’s “The Return” (I have not yet seen “Leviathan”, but I definitely plan to). Critics say the film is all about Russian society, but the Russianness of the film is much deeper than that. It’s like an exercise in film and literature history, and the spirits of some of the greatest Russian artists continue to live in these characters, especially Sasha and the tour guide. That is how I see it, without knowing all too much about those great Russian artists.
Speaking of Sasha and the tour guide, they were definitely my favorite characters. I was very amused that the architect appeared (I kept expecting that he would) and he was certainly interesting, but there was something so beautifully Chekhovian about how both Sasha and the tour guide are facing their own fall, the former in the form of her father’s death and the disappearance of the glory of her previous life, the latter in the form of losing his job which was pretty degrading to him to begin with. Both are also lovably smart and deadpan people, and I thought they were weirdly attractive too. (Mr. Tour Guide also looks like a Russian Stannis Baratheon, that litte detail made him somewhat comical.)
There is also another scene in the film that somehow continues to haunt me, which is Sasha’s scene with her horse. I kept wondering why she didn’t check on her horse first thing coming home (probably because narratively it doesn’t really make sense, so I will suspend disbelief), but other than that, this scene was absolutely terrifying. To me, it was emblematic of the tragedy she is going through, and I was deeply touched by how she cried over her dying horse. It is because of these kinds scenes that “Under Electric Clouds” feels more true to me than most other films, and which made the film one of my most memorable Berlinale films.