‘Zerograd’ Blu-ray Review: Deaf Crocodile

Launched the 12 months earlier than the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Karen Shakhnazarov’s absurdist satire Zerograd captures the disorientation and terror of progressively coming to comprehend that you simply reside in a actuality you now not acknowledge. Arriving in a distant metropolis with the intention to get a substitute for his firm’s dysfunctional air con unit, atypical employee Alexei (Leonid Filatov) expects a brief, uneventful go to earlier than returning to Moscow. However when he runs right into a secretary working within the nude on the manufacturing plant and witnesses a chef committing suicide after Alexei refused to eat a slice of cake that’s a full-size reproduction of his head, our protagonist is more and more confronted with a world whose guidelines, behaviors, and morals are obviously absurd. And, it seems, he’s the one one which sees them as such.

There are actually shades of Franz Kafka on this unnerving portrait of labyrinthine paperwork and existential despair, however the dreary, deadpan comedy is equally paying homage to the dry but achingly humane comedies of Aki Kaurismäki and Roy Anderrson. The way in which Shakhnazarov holds on photographs uncomfortably lengthy and defamiliarizes the quotidian by specializing in the uncanny vacancy of areas additionally remembers David Lynch’s work. But, regardless of its similarity to the works of those nice administrators, Zerograd is distinct, and distinctly Russian, in its worldview and its representations of nationwide historical past’s malleability and the state’s energy to repeatedly reshape its residents’ understanding of homeland and their place on the planet.

Within the movie’s most pivotal sequence, Alexei stumbles upon a museum after failing to discover a method to escape the city. Trapped, and held in suspicion by the native prosecutor (Vladimir Menshov) regarding the chef’s loss of life, Alexei wanders by way of this unusual, gaudy gallery that presents a funhouse imaginative and prescient of Russian historical past. Consisting of tableaux of each actual and imagined occasions in Russia’s latest and distant previous, the quite a few shows bizarrely meld truth and fiction, historical past and fantasy, and, as the handfuls of wax figures are portrayed totally by precise actors in heavy make-up, even drive the viewer to confront what’s actual and what’s not.

Later within the movie, the prosecutor speaks to Alexei about how the “feeling of belonging to an awesome organism conjures up and creates a way of energy and immortality.” He’s proclaiming the innate worth of the Russian state and in being a small, subordinate a part of it, however Zerograd meticulously exposes the illusory and constructed nature of such immortality. An indication on the entrance of the museum reads, “The Supply of Our Energy Lies in Historic Truths,” but in Shakhnazarov’s movie these truths are revealed to be merely the tales a nation tells itself.

Shrewdly, Zerograd by no means offers its viewers the satisfaction of seeing this phantasm shattered. It as a substitute slightly doggedly stays within the liminal zone the place myths have been crystallized into broadly accepted details, however that off-kilter actuality is simply starting to point out its cracks. It’s a nightmare, and one which neither Alexei nor us ever get up from.

Picture/Sound

Deaf Crocodile have transferred Mosfilm’s lovely new 2K restoration of the movie and the outcomes are spectacular. The earthy tones of the colour palette present a variety of refined hues and shadings, whereas the occasional bursts of major colours, as within the splendidly weird wax museum sequence, seem suitably garish. Pores and skin tones are additionally fairly naturalistic and the picture element is robust and constant all through. The stereo audio boasts clear dialogue and results together with a strong presentation of Eduard Artemyev’s unsettling rating.

Extras

In her newly recorded audio commentary, movie journalist Samm Deighan shows a wide-ranging information of the historical past of Russian cinema and political absurdist satires. Masking every part from the historical past of Mosfilm and director Karen Shakhnazarov’s profession to evaluation of Zerograd’s political themes and aesthetic methods, this monitor is invaluable to unlocking deeper interpretations of the movie. There’s additionally an almost hour-long interview with Shakhnazarov, performed by Deaf Crocodile co-founder Dennis Bartok, that delves into the making of the movie and historic context inside which the director labored. The disc comes with a small booklet with an essay by Chris D. that offers an in depth breakdown of the plot and themes.

Total

Karen Shakhnazarov’s absurdist satire Zerograd paints a vivid, unnerving portrait of a nation-state whose warped imaginative and prescient of itself has begun to crack.