Kira Muratova's Chekhovian Motifs

Sometime back, while browsing at a bookstore, I came across this delightful recommendation on the back of Andrei Bely's symbolist-surrealist, Russian masterpiece Petersburg (I didn't buy the book): "All people who go in for the B's--Beckett, Brecht, Bunuel--better get hold of Bely. He came first, and he is still the best." This quote again came to my mind after I finished watching Chekhovian Motifs, Kira Muratova's third film that I saw at the film center last weekend, because in this film (and indeed, her other films), she has somehow managed to fuse together all the three B's together. The absurdist, the ironist and the surrealist all fuse together in her film and the result is a delightful cocktail, although the same would not be for all the tastes.

This film continues in the same vein of dark, surrealistic satire on social and familial institutions in Russia, just like its precursors The Asthenic Syndrome and Three Stories did, although the humour is a little stronger this time. The film is based, as the title makes clear, on some obscure early works of Chekhov, which of course I have not read, but whatever little that I know of Chekhov's fiction, I can surely say that the great man would not have imagined even in his wildest dreams the kind of characters, situations and mood that Muratova has managed to create apparently from his work as if by some magical sleight of hand. The film starts with what would arguably be the strangest family dinner scene in film history. The eldest son of the family is going to Moscow to continue his studies and wants some money from his father, which his father, a penny-pincher that he is, refuses to give. His mother starts pleading, and her pleas are repeated at least half-a-dozen times all in the same words and same tone. In the meanwhile the two younger brothers start arguing about something and the youngest one falls asleep on the table! The father, as indeed the audience, gets exasperated with all this and reacts in a wildly over-the-top manner. The son then walks out of the house after giving his father a piece of his mind and sets off on the road, dreaming of dying of hunger and making it to the newspapers the next day (as her sister suggests him to do!).

On his way the son stumbles into a wedding party at a church, which is again one of the weirdest wedding scene in the film history. All the rituals of the Russian orthodox church are shown in excruciating detail while the guests, all vulgar brutes, start getting bored and continue with their gossip. After the party is over one of the junior priests sermonizes in a detached tone: "All is in vain. They keep singing, burning incense and praying, but God still refuses to hearken unto them. I've been serving here for forty years, and God has not heard them, not on a single occasion… I have no idea, where this God is..." In the end the son goes back to his home where his father gives him the money that he wanted and that's where the film ends.

The film is of course a masterpiece in the sense that the formal experimentation that Muratova indulges in, is not used for its own sake, but it is used for providing a critique of existing social and political mores, which is what all great art should do. It's a pity that Kira Muratova is not widely known. Her startling and bold vision, although too dark and pessimistic for some, still is unique among the contemporary film makers and so is worth popularising among the serious film-going public. So here are a few resources in case you are too lazy to google. This is a brief overview of her career so far by Senses of Cinema. Here is one of her interviews. Very predictably she says: "What is most important to me, is to please myself." Worth reading also are the articles by Chris Fujiwara and Jonathan Rosenbaum. Rosenbaum on Asthenic Syndrome here. And finally the film center booklet where I saw these films.