Songs of Slow Burning Earth and Russians at War The last third of the Venice Film Festival brought the premieres of Todd Phillips’ Joker: Folie à Deux and Kevin Costner’s Horizon: An American Saga. However, the more passionate and important debate in the final days was provoked by the documentaries Songs of Slow Burning Earth (Pisni zemli, shcho povilno horyt’) and Russians at War, which screened side by side in the non-competitive part of the main programme. Both look at the war in Ukraine: the former presents the experiences of the Ukrainian side; the latter shows events on the front from the perspective of Russian soldiers.
Ukraine’s Olha Zhurba dispenses with main characters in Songs of Slow Burning Earth. In this darkly lyrical film, she collects fragments of human stories from places near and far from the front line. She intersperses images of scorched earth, burnt houses and charred pieces of vehicles with the poignant testimonies of Ukrainians. The thoughtfully composed shots have an undeniable power in themselves, and the montage opens them up to further metaphorical reading. After all, the woman who agitatedly recounts how Russian soldiers surrounded and attacked the passenger car carrying her parents must have a similar havoc inside her. The inscription “We are one Russian people” that we later see on a house wall somewhere in liberated territory could hardly bear more irony.
Russians at War is a Canadian-French co-production by Anastasia Trofimova. (Reportedly) without official permission, she joined a battalion of the Russian army for a year. The soldiers’ stories are transformed into a more general account of the occupying army’s failure, the bad morale of its troops, and the poorly motivated recruits who throw themselves into the fighting mostly for money. The film took away from Venice a reputation as a problematic documentary that is contestable as pro-Russian white-washing. The question over the legitimacy of showing such films was then revived with renewed vigour during a screening at the Toronto festival, which organisers suspended in response to a series of protests and threats, ostensibly for security reasons.
One of the first critical voices directed at the Russians at War was a Facebook post by Ukrainian producer Darya Bassel. “I watched a film today at the Venice Film Festival titled “Russians at War.” Since our film is in the same section as this one, I usually wouldn’t speak publicly about it. However, in this case, I cannot remain silent, because it’s not just about films and art, but about the lives of thousands of people who die in this war— a war that has instrumentalized propaganda as its weapon,” she begins her precise argument. According to her, Russians at War successfully masquerades as an anti-war film, but in reality, it is sophisticated Russian propaganda. Trofimova adopts official Russian rhetoric, for example, by using the simple term “invasion” (instead of “full-scale invasion”), marking 2014 as the beginning of the “civil” war in Ukraine, or reproducing the narrative of Ukraine bombing its own people in the east of the country. Bassel points out that the assertion by one character that there are Nazis in Ukraine who need to be eliminated remains completely without comment. The director naively interprets the socio-political situation and chooses dubious narrative tactics, such as to open the film with a Ukrainian soldier joining the Russian side. She ends her post by saying: “I could continue, but I believe it’s enough to understand that this film presents a very distorted picture of reality, spreading false narratives (calling the Russian invasion and annexation of Crimea a civil war; suggesting that the Russian army does not commit any war crimes; presenting those who are part of the aggressors army as victims).”
Personally, I can’t imagine how Russian propaganda could use such an unflattering image of the Russian war effort. The film shows a dysfunctional, demotivated, disjointed mercenary army that has suffered major casualties. It thus contradicts the desired image of a successful advance by Russian forces in Ukraine. Instead of battlefield superiority, it portrays weakness, chaos, defeats, and pervasive death. Despite these mitigating circumstances, Anastasia Trofimova’s documentary direction and rhetoric has inexcusable weaknesses that turn her film into a dangerous tool. The director adopts a participatory method, interspersing observation with on-camera statements from the protagonists and occasional personal voiceover, but in this role, she is unconvincing and weak. In the voiceover, she lacks the ability to reflect on what has been said and to place the soldiers’ false claims in the correct framework. In interviews with them, she then fails to deliver lines of stronger argument and avoids even partial confrontation.
Trofimova neglects the context and opinion of the film, but the sole slice of reality shown in observationally participative manner is of questionable testimonial value. Consequently, Russians at War implicitly says that it is impossible to determine who started the war in Ukraine. After all, “both sides did something kind of wrong” one of the soldiers bitterly mentions in the film. Consumption of such a work can only be recommended at one’s peril, only with other courses such as 20 Days in Mariupol by Mstyslav Chernov, Intercepted by Oksana Karpovych, or Songs of Slow Burning Earth providing digestibility and a counterbalance.
Martin Horyna
Edited by Alissa Simon
© FIPRESCI 2024