DONBASS
Germany/Ukraine, 2018, 110 minutes, Colour.
Directed by Sergei Loznitsa.
Anyone contemplating going to see Donbass needs a strong recommendation for a bit of homework about Ukraine during the last decade, the interventions of the Russians, the annexation of Crimea, the civil war in the East, the downing of the Malaysia Airlines plane. Ukraine has been in the headlines but its impact outside Eastern Europe, in western countries and other continents, may seem rather alien and distant.
This is an award-winning film. The director, born in Belarus, moving to Germany, has Ukraine as his main focus for his films, fiction and documentary. He combines both talents here.
Donbass is a town in eastern Ukraine that would not be high on the list of any tourist planning. It is not a place where the audience might like to live. And we are shown why.
The film begins arrestingly, rather of-puttingly, with a group of acting extras being made up for a television performance, some carrying on with high demands from would-be-divas, the make-up artists at work, authorities arriving, counting of the characters, herding them out into a marketplace for filming, a bus, an explosion, news or fake news? The film returns at its end to this situation with some grim comment.
What follows is a series of vignettes, episodes which seem generally unconnected, but which follow, one from the other, as the camera follows characters and takes the audience with it.
Some pompous officials are at a board meeting when a woman, protesting that she is not guilty of corruption, arrives and unceremoniously tips a bucket of excrement over the president of the meeting. That in itself makes comment about the country and its governing. There is worse when a rather large, pompous businessman rounds up the hospital staff who have complained about lack of food and equipment and points out refrigerators chock-full of food and drink, new equipment – and then goes into the next room where we see him and his associates and how they have set up fake supplies, capitalising on corruption and deals – though he is held up by Russian military on the road and is almost in danger of being exposed and imprisonment, but gets away.
Amongst the other episodes we find a businessman whose car has disappeared, confiscated by the government, leaving him bewildered and desperate. We also see a group of earnest peacekeepers with religious icons and relics approaching an official to persuade him to use these religious items – and he bewildered and criticising them behind their backs.
There is an enormously extroverted wedding sequence, a civil affair, the official trying to get through the required procedures but being overwhelmed by one of the most boisterous brides ever on screen, a seemingly subservient husband who does break out at times, a crowd drinking and cheering, letting loose.
Perhaps the most disturbing sequences involves an old man, considered a traitor, dragged through the city by military, tied to a pole, insulted and tortured, some young toughs joining in the violence, then a seemingly ordinary old lady becoming particularly abusive.
The ending is enigmatic, a camera fixed at some distance and for quite a long time from the caravan where the actors were being made up, each one of them coming out individually, facing the authorities…
A serious film for its themes rather than an entertainment.
1. Festival acclaim for the film? For world audiences? For Ukraine audiences? Russian audiences?
2. The perspective of the director, of Ukraine, civil unrest, Russia and Eastern Ukraine, the annexation of Crimea, the downing of the Malaysian Airways plane? The political background of the 21st-century?
3. The title, the town, symbolic? Its situation in Eastern Ukraine?
4. The portrait of the people, the experience of war, oppression? Hard lives? Hard attitudes? Violence? Political corruption…?
5. The visuals of Eastern Ukraine, the countryside, the towns, streets, offices, markets, hospitals? The musical score?
6. The succession of vignettes, one leading into the other, the cumulative effect of the vignettes?
7. The opening, the actors being made up, the make up staff, the tantrums of the performers? The authorities, lining them up? Taking them out, people watching, going into the square, the explosion, the bus? Issues of true news and fake news? And the impact of the ending of the film in light of this opening?
8. The public meeting, the discussions, the woman coming, her pouring the excrement over the president, the reaction of the members of the meeting? The woman shouting out in defiance about corruption? The cleaner coming in to mop things up?
9. The hospital, the staff being rounded up, the complaint about lack of food and equipment? The bluff man in charge, his assistant, everybody in the room, the amount of food in the refrigerators, pointing out the equipment?
10. The discovery of the lies, in the next room, his double dealings and business setups? Following him, his being held up at the roadblock, trying to buy his way out? The Russian guards? The unstable political atmosphere? The lies and corruption?
11. The man and the disappearance of his car, the interrogation, the documentation, the authorities taking his car, his desperation?
12. The meeting with the authority, the concerned citizens and their religious dimension, icons and the possibility for peace? The authority listening to them, ridiculing them behind their back?
13. The scenes in towns, ordinary people? The quality of lives?
14. The wedding sequence, the boisterous bride, the seemingly subservient groom, the official, trying to keep things in order, the expected rituals and forms, the drinking, everybody loud, enjoying the event, out of control?
15. The presence of the Russians, cities, roadblocks? The nature of the Civil War, those considered traitors? The finding of the man, putting him against the pole in the city, tying him up, the verbal ridicule, the beginnings of the torture, the young men and their callous attitudes, the military and the invitation to abuse, the crowds gathering, the building up of the torture, punching the man, his collapse? The grandmother and her outburst, hitting the man?
16. The return to the early scene, the van with the actors, the explosion, the fixed camera for such a long time, the range of actors coming out, their fates?
17. The cumulative effect of this visit to Eastern Ukraine?
