Koktebel (film)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Koktebel |
| Original title | Koktjebjel: Коктебель |
| Country of production | Russia |
| original language | Russian |
| Publishing year | 2003 |
| length | 102 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director |
Alexei Popogrebski , Boris Chlebnikow |
| script | Alexei Popogrebski, Boris Chlebnikow |
| production | Roman Borisevich |
| music | Chick Corea |
| camera | Michail Kritschmann, Sándor Berkesi |
| cut | Ivan Lebedev |
| occupation | |
| |
Koktebel (Коктебель) is a film by the Russian filmmakers Boris Chlebnikow and Alexei Popogrebski . It was created in 2003.
It tells of the father-son relationship of a widowed, but above all broken man, and his precocious, eleven-year-old son on a trip to the town of Koktebel on the Crimean peninsula , where a sister of the father lives , who was widowed in the post-Soviet era . The two homeless people who only eat from their rucksacks are hoping for a new beginning there. They are connected by love, distrust and irony. The son bears his fate stoically, his thoughts are always more foresighted than his questions seem to be, which are too often (not only by the father) treated "flippantly". He never went to school, but nevertheless acquired a lot of knowledge through his father, who studied aircraft construction. Once the father doesn't know the answer to the son's questions, he “improvises”. Here lies an important reason for the son's distrust of the father - the son who is a student at the school of life.
Stylistic devices
Especially at the beginning Koktebel is a tribute of the young Russian directors to Andrej Tarkowski . Among other things, with the slow zoom in the train on the boy, they show their respect for the late Soviet super-director. In the following, the film team will find their own multi-layered but self-contained style. In addition to the static camera (partly in top view), camera movements from the side, but also handheld cameras and photo series are used.
In addition to two (Italian and Russian) hits and a few other pieces, piano themes in particular form the musical framework of the film: children's songs by Chick Corea .
action
On the trip
Father and son spent the night in an underpass. When the son asks whether they want to walk to Crimea, the father reacts sarcastically. They continue their journey by driving in a freight car. During a stopover, the father tries to pick up apples from under a few distant trees and almost misses the train that is starting again. The always responsible son immediately thinks of his father's rucksack - he would have needed it if he couldn't jump up because of the early winter cold that set in. The (then standing) train will also be the sleeping place for the two of them that night.
During the night the two are discovered by a guard. The boy's certainty that they would be handed over to the police, however, turns out to be unfounded, not without the father's amusement at his son's fears. The guard leads them to his house (the train would not have continued on its way in any case) and entertains them, only the offered vodka is rejected by the father (still).
The next morning the father sends his son to get cigarettes. He buys two boxes, a cheap one for his father from his money and an expensive one for himself from his money, which he always seems to have enough of, but whose possible source is only indirectly revealed.
As a day laborer
Father and son move on. In pouring rain they come to a lonely, almost completely dilapidated house. They were told that the owner needed someone to fix his roof: the father often hired himself as day laborer to earn money. The situation is not without its comedy: while they are talking about the roof to be repaired, the homeowner is holding a completely broken umbrella. The owner accepts, keeps the father's ID and immediately announces that he does not want to pay much.
From the next day, father and son repair the roof of the house. During the evening meal, the owner puts the inevitable vodka on the table. This time the father lets himself be persuaded to drink the five drops of heart medicine , even though he knows very well that his son is clearly against it: the father seems to have had a serious alcohol problem for a long time and is currently just dry. After the meal, the innkeeper approaches the boy, recites "The Drowned Man" from Pushkin's and sends the boy upstairs to read while the two men drink vodka.
The next day the landlord picks up the father from the repair shop on the pretext that he should repair the refrigerator. Now, too, he quotes from the same poem by Pushkin to show the boy that he should stay away. While the two men are drinking again, the boy goes to read in the attic. He is leafing through a book about birds, the mumbling voice of the landlord mingles with the texts and becomes a reader in his head.
One evening the drunken landlord tries to show how well he is together: in front of the boy he "makes an elephant" by first turning a trouser pocket as an elephant ear outwards and then pulling the tip of a shirt out of his trouser fly as an elephant trunk. The confusion of the vodka and the absurdity of the situation make the host laugh like crazy, while the "ears" flicker. The fact that the boy doesn’t change a face finally confuses him and suddenly lets his hyperbole die out. Now the boy has to grin first, then smile until just before laughing: for the first and last time.
The boy spends the remaining days in solitude again. One evening when the father had forgotten about the drink, he brought him the food, very late. The son can only ignore the smiley "Mr. Omelette", which he put together from pancakes, fried eggs and pieces of sausage, as well as the shaking rhyme Ужин, каторый он нужен (free: an appropriate dinner). After being asked several times, the boy takes the plate but does not eat. The father senses how badly he has failed and goes to drown his grief.
The next morning - not yet sober - the father is desperately looking for vodka without finding it. He wakes up the delirious landlord who tells him to get vodka. When the landlord tried to give him money, it disappeared. He suspects the father of theft, and a dispute ensues, which escalates when the landlord picks up his gun. He now drives father and son across forest and field with the rifle in front of him to the next police station. When the father refuses to go on, the landlord threatens to shoot. The son stands in front of the father, who has not stolen. It never comes up, but it seems certain that the son took the wages so that the father wouldn't drink it up. The host shoots and hits the father in the shoulder, paralyzed by the shock of his own actions, he lets father and son run - without their belongings and without a passport.
With the doctor
In the forest the boy binds his father, because they are not allowed to go to hospital without papers. It is the first time that the father doesn't know what to do next. His desperation explodes against the boy, he has even lost his sarcasm. The father has to stay behind, the boy sets out to look for a doctor and finds it in the dead of night. The doctor takes care of the father and takes them in so that the father is healthy again.
One morning when the doctor is about to give the father his injection, his father is staring on the couch. When she follows his gaze, she finds him again in the mirror, through which she is now smiling carefully at him. When the father does not react, she takes a closer look: the father is watching his son through the mirror through the window behind him. When she says the son bears no resemblance to him, he says the boy comes after his mother. When she died, things went downhill for him, the son was left to fend for himself and provided his father with vodka. Nevertheless he had become a smart and good, a normal boy.
The three only seem to grow together well. A common evening watching TV looks very familiar, a weather report is watched accompanied by baroque Bach music. While the now recovered father would like to stay, the boy would like to continue. The woman stank of sweat and the father lied: he had not found Koktebel in Crimea in the atlas. Here the father gets angry, Koktebel was renamed in 1944 and the woman is very neat: her smell is the sweat of work while they both just hang around without helping. But he agrees to move on the day after tomorrow.
The following night the boy wakes up and finds his father's bed empty. On the way out to urinate, he sees his father's underpants in the living room. When he comes back his underpants are gone, the father is lying in his bed. The next morning the boy confronts his father as to whether Koktebel is still valid. The father now thinks that one should wait for spring because the journey is too dangerous, complications with the wound cannot be ruled out and Xenia has taken them both to her heart. The son accuses him of lying again and he just wants sex. The father describes his son as an idiot.
Alone to Koktebel
The son continues the journey to Koktebel without his father. The boy's feelings erupt on a muddy street: the father is the idiot, he doesn't want to stay here with this woman, he has nothing to do here. He bursts into tears, then admonishes himself that it's over, but the feelings are stronger than the will: he cries again. After laughing at the "elephant", this is the second and last time that human feelings in the boy are visible to the outside world.
In the fallen darkness, the boy sees the fire of a trucker camp in the distance. He hides nearby and watches the truckers. There he is surprised, a gigantic man of terrifying ugliness whirls the boy over himself as if apparently weightless and roars frighteningly and with a mad laugh: "Meat, meat!".
The trucker takes the boy to the Crimea. He is annoyed by the many questions asked, but he always answers. The boy wants to go to the aviator memorial that his father told us about. He wants to check whether his father lied about the wind conditions there - he hasn't. The boy finds his aunt's house in Crimea, but at least she has left for Siberia by spring. He wordlessly refuses the offer of help from a neighbor and moves on. He goes to a beach bar and spends the following night - he covers himself more badly than right with an umbrella - on a beach chair.
The next morning he sits down on a quay wall, staring into the distance with a listless look. A seagull tries to take his bread from him; when he pushes her away she starts attacking him. The boy grabs the seagull by the neck and cuts off her breath, he could break her neck. When the flapping of the wings fades, the boy lets the bird fly.
The father finds the son on the quay. You have nothing to say to each other. The almost tinny noise that the waves make is a clear reference to the rattle of the rails of the train ride at the beginning of the film. In a different time and in a different place, both have returned to the starting point of their journey: destitute and homeless as they are, there is a long way ahead of them.
Scene selection
train ride
The center of the scene is the son, shown in profile, looking out of the open car. Using Tarkowski's stylistic device, the camera moves infinitely slowly in the direction of travel and finally almost painfully close to the boy. The train noises here are loud and have an almost surreal sound. With one cut, the camera detaches itself from his face and takes on the boy's perception: the landscape passing by the side of the train.
Go to the toilet
The son stands some distance from the attendant's toilet block. A passing train drowns out the entire scene. When it happened and its reverberation slowly faded away, soft techno music emerges. The camera changes to the sleepy face of the son, whose infinitely sad gaze seems directed towards a distant world. You can clearly see the overcoming necessary to start this new day. The hand-held camera is now moving excessively slowly and clumsily towards the toilet, while the techno music is getting louder and louder. In a musically well-coordinated moment - the music ebbs briefly to change to a purely rhythmic theme - the door opens, an almost grim-looking girl steps out, grabs her boom box hung on the tree and passes the boy. The slamming of the door abruptly stops the music and brings the boy back to reality.
view from above
On the way back from shopping, the boy tells the girl that he can look at everything from above. He holds his hand in front of his eyes. The girl looks at him grimly and skeptically, then a hint of a mocking smile appears on her lips. The camera changes to the top view, slowly moving away from the earth. The scene changes to a picture in the sand - the boy has drawn the top view.
lonliness
In the evening, when the father brings the son "Mr. Smiley", the camera is behind the boy, who is standing at the roof window and staring into the darkest night. When the camera takes its place, she sees the boy standing outside and looking up. Another change in perspective shows the boy from the front as he looks out of the roof window. When the camera slips into the boy's place a third time, the illusion in front of the window has disappeared - there is only emptiness and pitch-black night.
Laundry
The doctor has washed their clothes and hangs them under the boy's eyes. Always alternating (father, then son) she takes a piece of clothing: first the pants, then the sweaters, the stockings and finally the underpants. The camera is static, the scene is cut in such a way that every time a piece of clothing is picked up and hung up, it receives its own film snippet. With the last item of clothing, the boy's underpants, he jumps in between: he, who is used to taking care of himself, does not want a stranger to hang it up, but he is too small to be able to reach the leash. With a warm smile, the doctor pulls the leash down to the boy, who is completely fixated on the latter, and lets it snap up again when he has hung up his underpants (unlike the doctor, he only uses a clothespin).
Photographs
One day the boy is lying on a metal frame in the doctor's garden. He plays with a mechanical camera, which he alternately opens and releases. At first, the external observer slips the film camera into the boy's gaze position, and when the latter takes the camera in front of his eyes, it takes on the role of photo film. In the brief moments when the shutter is opened when the shutter is released, the photo objects become visible: his outstretched hand, his fist, his shoe, etc. The steady rhythm of the shutter release dies when the father in the picture helps the doctor hang up the laundry. It takes a long time for the next trigger to show the same scene again.
Flock of sheep
On his lonely way to Koktebel, the boy comes across a flock of sheep. In one shot he stands as a small but clear silhouette in front of the now almost twilight sky in the midst of the sheep that occupy the entire width. Suddenly the sheep push to the left and come to a stop in such a way that they lock on one side of the boy while the other side is completely free. Now the boy runs off and walks towards the camera. As it goes downhill, it quickly disappears into the blackness of the landscape with which it merges.
Trucker dance
From his hiding place, the boy observes a seemingly ghostly scene in the trucker's camp. Two of the truckers wrestle with each other, cheered on by the others. One of the truck headlights projects them as a shadow onto a "truck screen". There you can see two shadowy figures dancing awkwardly together. The absurd scenery is vaguely reminiscent of the death waltz in Burton's Batman .
Tourists
The boy wanders through the crowds of tourists in Planerskoye. Similar to I am not afraid, the perspective has been lowered to the child’s eye level. You can see a wave of swimming trunks, buttocks, and beer bellies through which the handheld camera fights its way.
Quay wall
The quay wall is shown from above in a static shot. Coming from the left, it ends in the middle of the picture - there the boy is sitting right in the center of the photograph. In the picture, the father comes in from the left, walks on the quay wall, slightly offset to the right, so that he can walk in a straight line to next to the son and sit next to it. From the appearance of the father, the symmetry of the attitude is sensitively disturbed.
Reviews
“The low-dialogue, highly image-intensive debut film reflects on people and landscapes, the interplay of movement and calm, down-to-earth and new search for a goal. Despite some dramaturgical uniformities, a convincing, atmospheric and philosophically grounded contribution to the new inwardness in Russian cinema. "
Awards
The film has been shown at numerous festivals. At the 2003 Karlovy Vary Film Festival , the film won the Philip Morris Award . In 2004 he won the main prize at the GoEast Festival in Wiesbaden .
Web links
- Koktebel (film) in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Koktebel. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed December 19, 2016 .