Nikita Mikhalkov: Between Nostalgia and Nationalism by Birgit BeumersReview by: Stephen HutchingsThe Modern Language Review, Vol. 102, No. 1 (Jan., 2007), pp. 300-302Published by: Modern Humanities Research AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20467271 .

Accessed: 03/05/2013 15:43

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Modern Humanities Research Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend accessto The Modern Language Review.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 204.52.215.8 on Fri, 3 May 2013 15:43:55 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

300 Reviews

Given the mythologizing of folklore, it was almost inevitable that it would be en rolled in the cause of the intense post-Soviet discourse about identity. The analysis of the ways in which folk song has been drafted into the service of mythic Slav, Russian, regional, group (Cossack), or Orthodox identity is both thorough and subtle. Perhaps

most interesting is the discussion of the role of folklore in Cossack revival (Chapter 6). It was folk song and dance that kept Cossack identity alive in Soviet times, but now Cossack folklore plays a major role in embodying masculinity, making folk song and dance acceptable to young males and providing a symbolic focus for a bold, in dependent, strong (male) Russian identity.

It was only a matter of time before revivalists turned their attention to revivify ing folk song and its ritual context in villages that are now largely peopled by older

women. In an account full of ironies (Chapters 7 and 8) Olson shows how in some instances villagers may resist the efforts to bring back the supposedly pure folk past, preferring their own Soviet-era songs or their own adaptations of Yuletide traditions.

In the concluding chapter, which examines the complex relationship between popular culture and folklore, the author points out folklore's ability to pass beyond folklorism. As she points out, 'all groups incorporate specific rituals, music, slang, expressions, jokes, references and material goods into their lives' (p. 229). When folk revivalists do this spontaneously, 'it is no longer folklorism, but folklore itself'. This view of folklore as a dynamic process is one generally accepted widely in the West, but only in a few places in Russia and not at all among folk-song revivalists.

Olson's eye for detail, nuanced discussion, and ability to place her material in a wider discourse about national identity make this a rewarding study. Criticisms are few. She underplays the importance of trends and schools in folklore study, which folk revivalists have generally followed. She is also prone, especially in Chapter 7 on folk revival in villages and sporadically elsewhere, to make statements about folklore in general when folk song or folk music is what is meant. The absence of a bibliography is also an irritation; the reader who misses the first full reference must either chase back through the notes, or else use the index to locate it. Scanning the range of literature on the topic is difficult, and the system leads to the occasional error in what is generally a book with a high-quality scholarly apparatus. None the less, these minor irritations are far outweighed by the strengths of the book, which offers valuable insights into post-Soviet Russian society, culture, and grass-roots political developments.

The book is completed by a useful illustrative CD, which can be downloaded using a password obtained from the author (Laura.J.Olson@colorado.edu).

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON FAITH WIGZELL

Nikita Mikhalkov: Between Nostalgia and Nationalism. By BIRGIT BEUMERS. Lon don: Tauris. 2005. ix+ I46pp. ?14.99. ISBN 978-I-86064-785-7.

Nikita Mikhalkov has been at the forefront of first Soviet, then post-Soviet, society from the I96os through to the present, and in many ways his films have served as a bell-wether for the dramatic changes that the region has seen during that period. The modulating positions Mikhalkov has adopted on the boundaries between official and dissident/intellectual discourse, and between mainstream and auteurist cinema, chart the twists and turns taken by Russian culture in its journey from the orthodoxies of

Marxism-Leninism to the vagaries of the global market. Moreover, by effectively syn thesizing three careers into one-he is an accomplished actor, a leading director, and a public figure with strongly held political beliefs-Mikhalkov represents a supreme,

modern embodiment of the Russian tradition of art as civic action whose previous exponents include Gorky, Dostoevsky, Herzen, and Solzhenitsyn.

This content downloaded from 204.52.215.8 on Fri, 3 May 2013 15:43:55 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

MLR, I02. I, 2007 30I

Given the importance of its subject, it is as well that the author of this brief but densely packed volume is the leading Western specialist on Mikhalkov. Indeed, Bir git Beumers's book never fails to impress the reader with its authoritative grasp of the facts and issues surrounding the controversial actor/director. Beumers adopts a chronological approach, dividing her work into five main chapters dealing with I 963 75, 1975-80, 1980-85, I985-9I, and 199I-99 respectively, periods which coincide with key phases in Mikhalkov's career. However, from the outset she is alert to the trajectory taken by the artist's ceuvre as a whole. Her argument, briefly stated, is that Mikhalkov traced a path from nostalgia for a past consciously acknowledged, and ironized, as myth, to nostalgia for a myth of the past presented as authentic. Thus, early films such as Slave of Love ( i975), in which the director (re)imagines the ideals of a Bolshevism untarnished by the later abominations unleashed under Stalin, eventually give way to the indulgent wallowing in a pre-revolutionary Russian past that never was which beset his last film, The Barber of Siberia (I999). Separating the two poles are Mikhalkov's sensuous and sensitive recastings of the nineteenth century literary classics of Chekhov (Unfinished Piece for a Mechanical Piano; I977) and Goncharov (Oblomov; I 979), and his chef d'ceuvre, Burnt by the Sun ( 994), where the distortions and contradictions of the Revolution's impact on Russian culture are subjected to a nuanced, yet impassioned, critique which avoids the popularized over simplifications of The Barber of Siberia.

Beumers manages simultaneously to remain at ease with the sweep of history writ large, yet attentive to the fine textual qualities of each film that she analyses (her deep understanding of the cinematic idiom serves her well in this regard). She is to be cre dited for ensuring that every Mikhalkov film is analysed in considerable detail, some for the very first time in Western criticism. But the individual readings do not stand in isolation from one another and Beumers displays consummate skill in identifying the

matic and stylistic continuities linking the films, enabling her to give the reader a sense of the organic development of Mikhalkov's ceuvre: for example, the use of the fairy tale motif in Slave of Love, reprised to different effect in Burnt by the Sun, the recur rence of the opening panning shot, and the enduring obsession with views of valleys.

Shortcomings are very few and far between, but one minor oversight comes when Beumers notes that Mikhalkov's assertion in the I 990S of the need for a father figure 'contradicts the contemporary trends of new Russian cinema' (p. 124). Such a state

ment seems not to take account of the numerous other post-Soviet films displaying an obsession with absent father figures: Chukhrai's Thief (I997), Khlebnikov and Popogrebskii's Koktebel' (2003), Zviagintsev's The Return (2004), to name but a few. Another comparison which would undoubtedly have helped the reader to contextu alize the nature of Mikhalkov's work and the way in which he constructs his public 'myth' is that with other Russian artists who have operated across multiple spheres of cultural activity; like Mikhalkov, Shukshin acted in the films which he directed (though he was also famous as a writer of stories); Vysotskii performed in the theatre and in cinema, in addition to achieving cult status as a semi-dissident bard; Mai akovskii served the new Soviet state as a poster artist before returning to his vocation as a revolutionary poet. But, of course, the very fact that such comparisons suggest themselves is a tribute to the scope and suggestivity of Beumers's analysis.

The book, which includes a helpful and detailed filmography, along with a generous number of film stills, is written with an exemplary clarity which will make it eminently accessible to students, while astutely avoiding the lapses into condescension or reduc tionism which often mar 'introductory' books of this sort for scholars. There are, nevertheless, a few, rare examples of sentences which are difficult to follow, or which court the danger of contradicting one another. Thus, an assertion that The Barber of Siberia is 'historically [. . .] inaccurate' (p. I I 7) seemingly jars with the statement five

This content downloaded from 204.52.215.8 on Fri, 3 May 2013 15:43:55 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

302 Reviews

pages later that the film's set designer achieves 'historical accuracy' (p. 122), though no doubt the two sentences are not completely irreconcilable. Nor does the use of the word 'indestructible' seem quite right in the sentence 'For Mikhalkov the image of Mother Russia [. . .] is indestructible because it belongs to the past while failing to acknowledge the present' (p. 127). Such quibbles, however, are trivial when set against Beumers's ground-breaking accomplishment in placing Mikhalkov so firmly on the map of contemporary Russian culture as, one hopes, to ensure a steady flow of new enquiries into the contexts, significance, and implications of his work.

UNIVERSITY OF SURREY STEPHEN HUTCHINGS

Alexander Medvedkin. By EMMA WIDDIS. (KINOfiles Filmmakers' Companions) LondonandNewYork: Tauris. 2005. iX+ 154PP. ?I4.99. ISBN 978-I-85043 405-4.

Emma Widdis's Alexander Medvedkin, the second in a series of short guides to impor tant Russian and Soviet directors under the editorial leadership of Richard Taylor, presents the basic contours of the life and career of one of the most interesting and under-appreciated Soviet film-makers. While specialists in Russian cinema will recognize Medvedkin as the director of the I935 masterpiece of Stalinist political satire, Happiness, and the subject of Chris Marker's I993 documentary Le Tombeau d'Alexandre (aka The Last Bolshevik), his films have been largely unavailable both in Russia and in the West for decades. The publication of the first general study of Medvedkin in English establishes a convenient starting-point for future in-depth studies of the director.

Born in Penza in i 900 into a working-class family, Alexander Medvedkin rose from complete obscurity to the heights of Russian cinema. Marked for life by the revolutio nary enthusiasm of his youth, he joined the Red Army in i 9 I 9, served as a propaganda specialist in Budenny's Red Cavalry, and became a lifelong Communist Party member in I 920. After directing satirical theatrical skits and propaganda films (agitki) for Bu denny's cavalrymen on topics such as personal hygiene, out-of-touch bureaucrats, and poor work habits among Soviet workers, Medvedkin moved to newsreels, feature films and, in his last decades, political documentaries. While his early short documentaries and newsreels earn high praise from Widdis for presenting 'a uniquely unvarnished document of real life' (p. 27), Medvedkin always favoured satire as the most effective tool for correcting the flaws of Soviet society. Like his ideology, Medvedkin's cine

matic style was set once and for all in these early formative years. Widdis describes how he developed his unique blend of avant-garde technique, political satire, and Stalinist propaganda out of influences that included Russian folklore and the Ameri can silent comedies of Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd, Mayakovsky's satirical plays and ROSTA windows, the theatrical experiments of Meyerhold, Kozintsev, and Trauberg, and Eisenstein's theory of the 'montage of attractions'.

Medvedkin's most important work belongs to the second half of the I930s, when, in an amazing burst of creativity, he wrote and directed three feature films, as well as writing an epic screenplay about the Russian peasantry's search for happiness. This project, The AccursedForce [Okaiannaiasila], tragically, was never approved for filming. His greatest movie, Happiness [Schast'e] (I935), is a brilliant comic parable of a collective-farm peasant who discovers true happiness when he outgrows his pre-revolutionary obsession with private property. The hero of Happiness, Khmyr, is familiar from Russian folklore: the fool who, after a series of comical adventures, stumbles into success. But Medvedkin treats the fool's victory as the result of an ideo logical transformation, which occurs when Khmyr saves the collective farm's stables

This content downloaded from 204.52.215.8 on Fri, 3 May 2013 15:43:55 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions