“Firebird”: Film Review

The situation in the late 1970s and 1980s in the Soviet Union fire BirdArranged sex between men was a crime punishable by five years of hard labor. And if you became a high-ranking military officer and under the watchful eye of the KGB, the risk of punishment was much greater. Adaptation the story of the novelThe memoirs of Russian actor Sergei Fetisov, director Peter Reban and Tom Prior, who also acts, describe a love story that unfolds in such a difficult situation.

Telling this true story from music videos and concert films into his first full-length narrative, Reban created an old-fashioned melodrama geared towards the circus’s glitz, its lavish visuals and bright, vapor-flavored clichés. Very big potential heart and hurt. fire BirdA story of forbidden passion, whose script and cautious pace become frustrating; Due to every pain measurement and spelling, the film’s strained poetic aspiration often leaves you feeling frustrated with the prose.

Priori plays a character based on Fetisov who died in 2017, exactly 40 years after the film’s main action. In Soviet-occupied Estonia, at Haapsalu Air Base, Sergei is a soldier with only a few weeks left to complete his mandatory service. He enjoys a midnight swim with a fellow Russian soldier with Voloja (Jake Thomas Henderson) and Louisa (Diana Pozharskaya), a native Estonian who works in the Colonel’s (very good Nicholas Woodson) office. Upon breaking the curfew, the naughty trio enacts a triangle that defines the drama.

Louisa, whose romantic interest in Sergei remains unanswered, is also frustrated by his lack of military ambitions. After turning down the colonel’s offer to stay and pursue a career in the Air Force, he plans to return to his mother’s farm in Russia, his desire to become an actor an unfulfilled dream left in the background. Studying on her own, studying medicine, Louisa laughs at Sergey’s interest in theater. But he finds a cousin in the novel (Oleg Zagorodny), a brave lieutenant who has just been assigned to the base, and he shares his interest in photography. One of the film’s most compelling observations reveals that, for each of them, the camera is not just a creative activity, but also a hidden way of looking at men.

Colonel Sergei entrusts the service of lieutenant to the driver and guide, and a few hours later, yes, after a photo development session and an exchange of many glances, which was inserted as an obvious signal to the viewers, the soap opera brought sergei. Stravinsky Ballet rehearsal, after which the film is named. They make their unofficial cultural fun by walking through the woods, looking at something (“Do you have a girl at home?”), stealing, enduring a sudden downpour, and avoiding guards.

Getting back to basics, the romance becomes more daring and reckless as her flirtation with Sergei turns into love. As a fighter pilot who is incredibly tired and suddenly kind, he is the target of insults from jealous heroes and threats of suspected homosexuality from a KGB officer (Margus Prangel). According to article 121 of the Soviet Penal Code, a major threatens to destroy a lieutenant’s career.

The novel’s mission is a reminder of one of the forerunners of the drone era and, for that matter, of the geopolitical context of the region. It is tasked with ensuring that NATO aircraft (missile-laden MiGs, nuclear B52s) do not violate neutral or Soviet airspace. The film, which began showing at festivals in early 2021 before Russia’s recent invasion of Ukraine, also reminds us that citizens are not their governments. Homeland and Stalin are the butt of fake jokes that Sergei and his companions like to tell.

Roman, on the other hand, is a loyal officer who probably doesn’t appreciate humor. And yet, at his request, Sergei continues his theatrical studies in Moscow. The aspiring actor is given the plot of a real life rather than a convenient one, as he does in a benevolent debate. Romeo and Juliet Together with a classmate, the script shows that art equals truth and forms the theme of his capital T. (In contrast, Sergei Lavrentiev, who brought Fetisov’s memories to the forefront of Reban’s attention, bursts through the course of the case with weak, unbridled energy, as in the brief appearance of Sergei’s drama teacher.)

fire BirdLouisa’s unconscious role in the two-man love story sets her apart, but it doesn’t go far enough. Pozharskaya has a natural intensity that the film, in all its sincerity, could use more. Instead of repeating her obvious thoughts about Sergei and romance, she could spend more time exploring the pressures of marriage to Louisa and other women at the time and how lonely women could be viewed as suspect.

With three authorized production designers, the film has an understanding of the details of a given period, creating a sense of life with aesthetic and economic constraints. . Excitement, often in secluded seaside locations – scenes that feel dated and self-conscious. The less said about the new model aircraft, the better, but it’s worth noting that, in a bizarre twist in the Hitchcock train tunnel, an intimate encounter culminates in a photo of a fighter jet flying over water. And yet, interestingly, it’s a welcome delay in a heavy drama with little momentum.

If the battle of the novel echoes between duty and desire, it is not just because of how it is defined in time, but also because in many countries today, time has changed little. Reban’s international productions, filmed in Estonia, Russia and Malta – he is an Estonian, a British Prior, a Russian Pozharskaya and a Ukrainian Zagorodny – are a sincere, if dramatically inert, appeal to sympathy. In his polite way, fire Bird He attacks soul-destroying fanaticism and the petty, predatory supervisors among us. Offer a benevolent Valentine to a man who encouraged a man he loved to follow his heart, even if he couldn’t do the same.