Movie Review: Beanpole

Beanpole **** ½ / *****

Directed by: Kantemir Balagov   

Written by: Kantemir Balagov and Aleksandr Terekhov.

Starring: Viktoria Miroshnichenko (Iya Sergueeva), Vasilisa Perelygina (Masha), Andrey Bykov (Nikolay Ivanovich), Igor Shirokov (Sasha), Konstantin Balakirev (Stepan), Kseniya Kutepova (Lyubov Petrovna), Alyona Kuchkova (Stepan's Wife), Timofey Glazkov (Pashka), Veniamin Kac (Sasha's Friend), Olga Dragunova (Seamstress), Denis Kozinets (Sasha's Father), Alisa Oleynik (Katya), Dmitri Belkin (Shepelev), Lyudmila Motornaya (Olga). 

 

The two main characters in Kantemir Balagov’s remarkable Beanpole are not the kind of characters we have seen on screen before – at least as played by women. This is a film that takes place in the Soviet Union, in the immediate aftermath of WWII, in Stalingrad, and concentrates on two female soldiers, returned from the war, suffering from PTSD as much as any man would – but basically are told that they have to suck it up and deal with it. Much of the early action takes place at a hospital where Iya (Viktoria Miroshnichenko) works as a nurse, tending to the war wounded – who the government officials who come through make a big deal of calling “our heroes” – but little attention is paid to Iya. Even less is paid to her friend Masha (Vasilisa Perelygina), who suffered even longer as a soldier for the motherland – who returns is basically a cleaner at the hospital. It is winter, it is bleak – and the two women don’t know how to deal with their pain, their trauma – and find little help.

 

We meet Iya first – the opening scene begins in blackness, and we just here Iya’s labored breathing – before the image comes up, and someone asks if she’s still frozen – she is – and this will happen throughout the film – Iya simply unable to move, unable to do anything, but just stare straight ahead. She is raising Pashka (Timofey Glazkov), a very small boy, who looks malnourished, and perhaps has other issues as well. She lives in a communal situation – has her own room with Pashka – but shares everything else. In the first of many unforgettable scenes in Beanpole, tragedy occurs – a drawn out tragedy that goes on minute after agonizing minute in an unbroken shot that refuses to look away. When Masha returns, it is at night, Iya is in darkness, until Masha lights a candle – and the two begin to talk of Pashka, in another wonderful, unbroken take that lasts minute after agonizing minute – when what has transpired eventually becomes clear to Masha.

 

The two women are friends, but they couldn’t be more different. The film gets its name because Iya is tall and lanky – she is also traumatized beyond words, and while able to function, is clearly not quite normal. Masha is shorter, more outgoing, more outwardly cheerful – if no less traumatized. What Masha will do to deal with her own trauma will be disturbing – at times downright cruel – and yet you understand it in a way, even before the films best scene – late in the film, where she lays out everything for the wife of a government official, whose pathetic, privileged son Masha has wrapped around her finger makes everything excruciatingly clear, in all their painful details.

 

Both Miroshnichenko and Perelygina are first times actors – but they both deliver extraordinary performances, especially Perelygina, whose work will be tough to top this year, even it is so early. They are women in pain, who deal with that pain very differently. There will be a number of scenes throughout the movie where that pain is laid bare – and more often than not Balagov used long, unbroken takes to show it – whether it’s that first  death, that conversation where it is revealed, the long explanation late in the film, or in one of the most painful sex scenes you will ever see in the film – one where both women are seen, both experiencing it in radically different, painful ways. That one of them is responsible for the others suffering is undeniable – but that doesn’t make things less painful.

 

Beanpole is, as you may have guessed, a rather depressing film. For some reason, it seems like most Russian films – and Soviet films before that – that get international attention are depressing. I’m sure that’s not the entirety of their film industry – although it can feel like that at this remove. But it’s a powerful film about these two women and their trauma – about the unfeeling society they return to, and how the men are basically clueless or just don’t care. They must pick up the pieces and move forward themselves – however they can. You may even think there is some faint hope there at the end – but faint it certainly is.