Issue 190 of SOCIALIST REVIEW Published October 1995 Copyright © Socialist Review
Burnt by the Sun
Dir: Nikita Mikhalkov
For much of its length, Burnt by the Sun seems like an elegant film adaptation of one of Chekhov's plays about the Russian gentry towards the end of the Tsarist era. It follows a leisurely summer Sunday enjoyed by a family belonging to the pre-revolutionary intelligentsia in their dacha in the countryside somewhere near Moscow. As in Chekhov, the day is devoted largely to eating, drinking, humour, nostalgia, music, hankypanky, and--this being Russia--talk, talk, talk.
However, this is not pre-revolutionary Russia, but 1936, at the height of Stalin's terror. And the head of this household, Sergei Kotov (played by the director, Mikhalkov) is an Old Bolshevik, hero of the revolution, and a colonel in the Red Army. Though he has married the daughter of the family, Marussya (Ingeborga Dapkunaite), he is a man of the new regime. When his in-laws throw themselves collectively into a wild can-can, Kotov pointedly sits down to lunch on his own, declaring, 'I don't speak French.' And Sunday afternoons are now devoted to proletarian football, not bourgeois croquet.
Initially, the presence of Stalinism only makes itself felt in harmless, even comic, ways--bungled tank manoeuvres, a Young Pioneers' march, an absurd civil defence exercise against gas attacks. But as the film continues, tension grows. It is centred on the unexpected appearance of Dimitri (Oleg Menchikov), an old friend of the family and Marussya's former lover.
Dimitri is everything that Kotov is not. He is a sensitive, artistic intellectual. But from the start there is something out of kilter, almost hysterical about his behaviour.
The tone of the film rapidly darkens when we discover that Dimitri now works for the NKVD, the secret police. As the day draws to its horrifying conclusion, this cosy little home of the gentry and the Bolshevik hero who now presides over it turn out not after all to be immune to the destructive forces raging through Russia. This horror is all the greater because the story unfolds amid the glory of the Russian summer.
The concluding sequences, as the Stalinist terror brutally intrudes on this summer idyll, are strongly reminiscent of the climactic scene of Bernardo Bertolucci's great film about fascism, The Conformist. There it is Mussolini's thugs, got up like gangsters from a 1930s Hollywood movie, who pursue a fleeing woman through a snow covered forest. Here it is the men of the Stalinist NKVD who murder in a sunny wheatfield, but they look the same and are waging the same kind of terror.
Burnt by the Sun is an exceptionally powerful and interesting film. It is striking for the way in which it draws creatively on the great traditions of 19th century Russian realism. It is also remarkable for a Russian film made in the Yeltsin era in the balanced view it offers of the revolution and its aftermath.
The film is dedicated to 'All those burnt by the sun of the Revolution', but this is (intentionally?) ambiguous. In the scenes where Kotov and Dimitri confront each other, both of them flawed, both of them with dirty hands, it seems to me that it is Kotov, the man of the revolution, who emerges as the morally stronger character.
The film would not be as effective were it not for the cast's consistently first rate performances. Particularly striking is Nadia Mikhalkov as Kotov's six year old daughter, Nadia. Her scenes with Kotov (played by her real father) have an emotional spontaneity that brings home the larger tragedy with almost unbearable force. Burnt by the sun indeed.
Alex Callinicos
Dolores Claiborne
Dir: Taylor Hackford
Dolores Claiborne is not the usual nail biting Stephen King film, but it certainly is a horror story. From the moment she opens her mouth, to answer back to a cop, you can't help but warm to Dolores. By this time you're already acquainted with her. The first time you see her she is standing, arms raised, club in hands, ready to smash the skull of a frail begging old woman.
Did she or didn't she? From the first few minutes of the murder scene and the departure of one of New York's top female reporters to delve into the sudden death of super-rich Vera Donovan, the plot seems fixed and straight forward. But this is, after all, Stephen King. Dolores Claiborne is no whodunit. For a start it seems 'who done them' is more appropriate. For Dolores Claiborne is, apparently, a serial killer.
Woman serial killers have recently become sexy in Hollywood. Fortunately, Dolores breaks the mould. Brilliantly portrayed by Kathy Bates, half crippled by arthritis in her legs and with her huge meaty hands, she's certainly no postmodern Hollywood bimbo killer. What makes this a film worth watching is that the alleged crimes of Dolores Claiborne are not random motiveless explosions of violence. They have a context. Her alleged killings have a motive born of the interaction between her harsh fighting character and the small town in which she lives.
Dolores has a history, and the film is as much about that history as it is about the investigation into her employer's murder.
Claiborne's history is ordinary--almost. She grew up an unremarkable girl in an unremarkable New England resort. Like the other girls, she married early to a boy from high school. Like the other girls, she started work early as a skivvy for the rich who made their way from Baltimore or New York for the summer. One look at the lines on her face and you know that, like the other girls, she came early to misery and disappointment.
Like most of those around her Dolores both accepted and resented her fate as servant to the rich. For 40 years, starting as a young mother and working right up until Vera's skull was smashed, Dolores skivvied for and battled against her employer. Like so many working class women, Dolores's hopes of escape and a better life are pinned on her daughter. So week in week out, through back breaking labour, she puts aside her pay so that her beloved child might grab herself a little of the American dream in the shape of a college education.
If the scrimping and saving and non-stop work are not enough, Dolores has an added burden in the shape of an alcoholic and violent husband. But Dolores, with her sharp tongue and fighting talk, is not cut out to be one of life's victims.
But it seems the sins of the mother are to be visited on the daughter. And behind the deaths and investigations, Dolores Claiborne is a film about relationships between women. The strength of the film lies in its portrayal of the relationships between victims and protagonists. However, it is also here that my criticisms of the film lie.
In the end all the women are bound together without regard to real differences in their lives and all the men are simply the enemy. This is a real pity and not something for which Stephen King can be blamed. King's book has a tension missing from the film.
There are two reasons for this. Firstly King is no radical feminist. In his version Dolores is both victim and fighter, a mother of sons as well as daughters, a women with male allies as well as enemies. His Dolores is involved in a relationship with a society, not just with women. Also the weakest aspect of the film, the love between rich exploitative Vera and Dolores, is missing from the book.
This is not to say that the film has no power. It is a welcome intervention into the debate about women who kill violent men and is a sharp rebuke to the 'men as victims' nonsense churned out by the likes of Michael Douglas. Not only that, it is strong enough to make you suspend dismay at the feminist politics long enough to leave the cinema crying.
Elane Heffernan
Braveheart
Dir: Mel Gibson
It would be all too easy for socialists to let down their guard when watching Braveheart. A warrior of humble origin (William Wallace) arises to lead the people of a small conquered nation (Scotland) against their oppressor (the English king, Edward I) but is betrayed by a treacherous native ruling class and dies after appalling torture with the word 'freedom' on his lips. Later his dream is realised when one of his betrayers (Robert the Bruce) realises the mistake he has made and puts himself at the head of the insurgent people, leading them to eventual victory (the Battle of Bannockburn) and independence. An inspiring yarn, yes? Well, no, actually.
Rob Roy, to which this film will rightly be compared, was at heart an unpretentious swashbuckler which gave an interesting portrayal of changing power relations in Scotland between the Union and the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745. Braveheart is superficially a much more ambitious film, but fails just as completely as Rob Roy succeeds.
Nor do the set pieces save it. The battle scenes have been praised, but these are in fact utterly ridiculous. There is no sense of the physical horror of medieval warfare.
Historical inaccuracies abound (some examples: Wallace's father is supposedly killed by the English in 1280 but the two countries were at peace then and were to remain so until 1296; Wallace is portrayed as a 'commoner', but in fact he was a lesser feudal landlord with his own tenants; 'clans' come to join Wallace's army, but the clan system did not fully develop until a century after his death). The real problem, however, is that the film embraces a completely anachronistic Scottish nationalist interpretation of its subject, a fact which the SNP has been quick to seize upon. The SNP have handed out leaflets outside cinemas.
This misrepresentation is not only a problem in Scotland, since it is possible that socialists (especially in England) may be led to believe, through inappropriate analogies with Ireland, that the Wars of Independence were some sort of early national liberation struggle. In fact, they were not and could not have been.
Edward I invaded Scotland in 1296, at the very beginning of the first great feudal crisis, in order to expand the territory under his control and increase the level of exploitation of the peasants who thereby came under his power. This was met by a typically feeble attempt at resistance by the Scottish barons which quickly petered out. The subsequent vacillations of the nobility are shown with a fair degree of accuracy as is the reason for them--namely that a majority held lands in both England and Scotland. Their divided loyalties sprang directly from their divided material interests.
Unfortunately this insight is not sustained in the portrayal of Robert the Bruce, whose hesitations are shown as resulting more from personal weakness. In fact, Bruce was a consummate medieval politician whose eventual decision to put himself at the head of the rebellion was a calculated attempt to establish a Scottish kingdom free from English sovereignty.
What the film tries to suggest is the view that, although the nobles might have been false friends of Scotland, the poor who followed Wallace were the genuine defenders of the nation. Now it is true that after the noble collapse in 1296 the rising led by Wallace did bring a layer of the lesser landowners, free peasants and burgesses into rebellion against the English. This was not a national rising, however. There are several reasons for this: the absence of urban development, the primitive nature of Scottish commerce, the fact that the majority of the population were rural dwellers unlikely to venture more than ten miles from their own village in a lifetime meant that there was no possibility Of a national consciousness developing.
The tragedy of the Scottish peasantry is not, therefore, that they failed to achieve national consciousness three centuries before the rest of the world, but that their rebellion never directed itself at the Scottish nobility but only at the English invader.
In short, Braveheart is expensive kitsch. It is a sobering thought that, 30 years on, the best film about Scottish history remains Peter Watkins' Culloden.
Neil Davidson
Spin
Dir: Brian Springer
Tales of media domination may be exaggerated but there's no denying the impact that television news coverage has on election campaigns.
Brian Springer's Spin concentrates on the 1992 US presidential election and tears into the cosy alliance between politicians and their use of spin doctors and reporters, each anxious to avoid giving offence to the other. Using untransmitted footage from satellite interviews--during commercial breaks or just before the interviews start--Springer reveals the homophobia, triviality or just plain stupidity of the leading candidates.
Spin also shows how the media obediently ignores any candidate who dares to question the policies of tax cuts and welfare attacks. In the case of the mildly radical Democrat, Larry Abrams, the media banned him from presidential debates, didn't cover his campaign and, the worst crime of all in the showbiz atmosphere of the election, didn't provide him with any make up during the few interviews he was granted.
The film also challenges the idea that satellite channels like CNN have transformed the world of political debate by making politicians more accountable to voters. Larry King's programme, where viewers phone in to speak to the candidates, is often claimed to be an example of electronic democracy. Springer, however, points out that less than 100 callers got on air during the campaign and one of them was to Vice-President Al Gore from his wife asking him out on a date!
King's programme, like the election itself, contained few of the real issues facing millions of ordinary Americans. No wonder 50 percent of Americans don't vote.
Des Freedman
Spin is touring Britain in October and November