Anna Muraveva's recommended Russian films

The return / Vozvrashchenie (2003), at the public library

Having a fatherless childhood, young brothers Andrei and Ivan have grown closer than most siblings. But when they least expect it, the father the boys have never known returns. Under the cool midnight sun of a coastal Russian summer, the boys eagerly hop into a car for a fishing trip with a complete stranger they absolutely need to believe is their father. As they travel deep into the wilderness, their journey devolves from vacation to boot camp to father-son love triangle and ultimately to a test of wills that pushed to the brink of violence.


Paper Soldier / Bumazhniy Soldat (2008)


- Celebrity bloopers here


Kazakhstan, early 1961. Daniel Pokrovsky, a medical officer, currently works for the first Soviet cosmonauts' troop. There Daniel, already married, finds himself in an incredibly complicated and yet tender relationship with a young girl, called Vera. Later Daniel goes back to Moscow where is in charge of the health of the future cosmonauts. He tries not to be just a doctor for the cadets, but also their friend. He can't agree with the fact that these young men could have to sacrifice their lives for the country. His wife Nina feels the same: she doesn't accept him participating in a project that could put human lives at risk, therefore she keeps asking Daniel to leave his job. Daniel decides to leave his wife. Then one of the cadets dies and the medical officer ends up breaking down. This doesn't stop him from leaving for Kazakhstan in order to prepare the launch of the first man into space. Nina follows him to Kazakhstan, where she learns about his involvement with Vera; however she decides not to leave Daniel alone, understanding how ill he is. Giving up attempts to handle the stress, Daniel escapes the day before the launch, but dies on his getaway. Nina takes Vera with her to Moscow, accommodating the girl in her apartment. Time goes by and both women keep living together: none of them will ever get married again, being both still in love with Daniel.


Wild Field / Dikoe Pole (2008)





The doctor, a handsome young man trying to give a hand to the people living around in this deserted place, seems to be calm and more communicative. We do not know at first the reason why he is there , nor how he happens to work in this harsh place, but we understand that he works there comfortably as he receives each day patients from around his home. Yet, what strikes most is when the doctor cures a peasant from dying, because this latter has been drinking vodka for forty days, I said what strikes most is that choice of an intelligent montage nicely cut by Michel when the doctor goes to check if he gets something from his letter box around his ranch.

The Island / Ostrov, NTSC version with English subtitles (2006)


 
 
Winner of 5 Nika Awards (Russian Oscars) including Best Film. Somewhere in Northern Russia in a small Russian Orthodox monastery lives a very unusual man. His fellow-monks are confused by his bizarre conduct. Those who visit the island believe that the man has the power to heal, exorcise demons and foretell the future. However, he considers himself unworthy because of a sin he committed in his youth. The film is a parable, combining the realities of Russian everyday life with monastic ritual and routine.


72 Meters / 72 Metra - with ENGLISH subtitles (2004)



The navy lieutenant captain Peter Orlov and Ivan Myraviev have been serving in the Slav submarine for quite a time. Young and mischievous against time, they used to be best friends. In 1986 they both were assigned to Sevastopol for future service. There they met a pretty girl and fell in love with her at first sight. Nelly chose Ivan and their great friendship cracked. Later on, in the early 90s, after the Soviet Fleet division, the Slav crew refused allegiance to the Ukraine and was assigned to Severogorsk. The crew is preparing for a regular military exercise. The commander, Captain 1st Rank Gennady Yanychar announces the assigned mission. The submarine is to torpedo the maneuver enemy, then leave the area and make itself undetectable with any device at all for a certain time. Nobody in the Exercise Center knows where the submarine might go. And nobody knows it s facing a catastrophe.

Night Watch / Nochnoi Dozor (2005)




This first installment of the trilogy based on the best-selling science fiction novels by Russian writer Sergei Lukyanenko plays upon the tension between light and dark, pitting the superhuman Night Watch patrollers (known as the "Others") against the shadowed forces of the night. But the biggest fear of all stems from the lines of an ancient prophecy, which warns of a renegade Other whose betrayal could bring chaos to the land.


Day Watch / Dnevnoi Dozor (2005)



To protect his son, who has come under the dark side's control, Anton (Konstantin Khabensky) seeks an ancient artifact that threatens to upset an uneasy peace with the light side -- putting Moscow at risk for a devastating cataclysm. Anton finds himself in the middle of a mythic conflict between the forces of light and dark in this sequel to Night Watch, the surprise supernatural hit thriller from Russia.

Anna Muraveva's recommendations of contemporary Russian literature

1. Casual by Oksana Robski (Available through the public library)
:

When her wealthy husband is shot to death by a hired killer, a wealthy widow embarks on a luxurious but precarious life of haute couture shopping, drunken orgies, gossip, red-carpet events, cocaine addiction, and torrid affairs in an exclusive Moscow suburb, in a debut novel based on the author's own life.

Some people treat life as consumption. Some, as an exploit. Some see it as a cup to be drained. To the bottom. I look at life as a partner in a game. . . . There are no rules, which make it a bit scary, but I've gotten used to that. There are no winners, either.

Moscow's exclusive Rublyovka neighborhood is the decadent playground of the Russian nouveau riche. Here, dachas come complete with steam baths, heated floors, and live-in masseurs; poodles are dyed pink to match designer dresses; days of haute couture shopping slip into nights of cocaine-fueled partying; and the city's most glamorous celebrities -- including Oscar-winning directors, world-renowned politicians, and gorgeous movie stars -- rub shoulders with its most notorious tycoons.

Oksana Robski knows firsthand the gripping reality of life in Rublyovka. Based on the author's own experiences, Casual tells the story of a wealthy young woman whose husband is mysteriously gunned down outside their Moscow apartment. Determined to avenge his murder while maintaining her lavish lifestyle, she must navigate through a treacherous labyrinth of high society and low company.


From running her own business to negotiating with hit men, the resilient widow becomes intimately involved in the corrupt and dangerous underbelly of the Russian business world. At once an entrepreneur and socialite, she and her equally rich and beautiful friends attend Moscow's wildest parties, spend thousands on plastic surgery, and stop at nothing to snag rich husbands.

A sensational bestseller in its native Russia, Casual exposes the secret lives of the country's new elite. In a world of double-crossing gangsters, torrid affairs, and truly desperate housewives, startling excess is often accompanied by violence, heartbreak, and betrayal.


2. Lives in transit : a collection of recent Russian women's writing (Available at the public library)

One of the most remarkable changes taking place in Russia after the break-up of the Soviet empire is the radical transformation of Russian women's culture. Despite a historically male-dominated culture, gender awareness has flourished in the 1990s, and is reflected in a new body of women's literature and a new concern for female experience. The prose and poetry included in this anthology examine essential issues in women's lives: women's sexuality, romantic love, motherhood, the economic and political life of women, their struggle to integrate domestic and professional roles, new family structures, physical health, abortion, rape, and so forth.

The issues covered here are common to women everywhere, but the different historical experience of Russian women in the twentieth century has created distinct understandings and values. It was a time of terrible suffering and drudgery for Russian women, who endured decades of war, political and cultural repression, and poverty. Women were given more equality in the workplace, but, as these works show, they were still expected to maintain their roles as conventional wives and mothers.

Contents:

• "Gulia" by Liudmila Ulitskaia
• "First try" by Viktoria Tokareva
• "Venetian mirrors" by Larisa Vaneeva
• "Going after goat-antelopes" by Svetlana Vasilenko
• "Wicked girls" by Nina Sadur
• "Sergusha" by Alla Kalinina
• "The chosen people" by Liudmila Ulitskaia
• "The phone call" by Tatiana Nabatnikova
• "Rendezvous" by Marian Palei
• "Slowly the old woman ..." by Nina Katerli
• "The way home" by Regina Raevskaia
• "The blackthorn" by Dina Rubina
• "Uncle Khlor and Koriakin" by Galina Shcherbakova
• "A bus driver named Astap" by Tatiana Nabatnikova
• "Rush job" by Elena Makarova
• "Life insurance" by Marina Tsvetaeva
• "The losers' division" by Marina Palei
• "Worm-eaten Sonny" by Nina Sadur
• "Vera Perova" by Nadezhda Kozhevnikova
• "Albinos" by Bella Ulanovskaia
• "The trap" by Anna Mass
• "Where did the streetcar go" by Irina Polianskaia
• "A woman in a one-room apartment" by Liubov Iunina.

3. The yellow arrow by Viktor Pelevin (at the public library)

Set during the advent of perestroika, a surreal, satirical novella by a critically acclaimed young Russian writer traces the fate of the passengers on The Yellow Arrow, a long-distance Russian train headed for a ruined bridge.

4. Voices of Russian literature : interviews with ten contemporary writers by Sally Laird (at the public library)

Contents:

• Fazil Iskander
• Lyudmila Petrushevskaya
• Vladimir Makanin
• Andrei Bitov
• Tatyana Tolstaya
• Yevgeny Popov
• Vladimir Sorokin
• Zufar Gareyev
• Viktor Pelevin
• Igor Pomerantsev.

5. The Kukotsky Incident by Ludmila Ulitskaya

[This from John Clark: I don't thik The Kukotsky Incident is translated into English ... too bad, the novel won the prestigious Russian Booker Award in 2002.]


6. White Walls: Collected Stories by Tatyana Tolstaya

Some reviews of Tolstaya's book:

• Angels, imaginary friends, near-saints, shades and über-ogres fall to Earth among ordinary Russians and routinely succeed in whetting the imagination in this sparkling collection from Tolstoy's great-grandniece, a longtime New Yorker fiction contributor. It includes her two previous story collections, On the Golden Porch and Sleepwalker in a Fog, along with more recent work. The opening story, "Loves Me, Loves Me Not," presents the classic hateful nanny/spoiled kids dyad, setting it in a Leningrad full of wonders: some menacing, others joyous. In "Okkerivil River," the hapless Simeonov sets off to rescue (or so he imagines) chanteuse Vera Vasilevna, who has serenaded him from his Victrola for half a lifetime. When he does find her, she turns out to be exactly like the title river: vivid, repugnant and polluted beyond human redress. In "The Circle," Vassily Mikailovich (Tolstaya wryly leaves him without a surname) turns 60 and finds little behind or ahead of him, despite meeting the ghost of former lover Isolde. In "Yorick," a baleen whale, provider of bone for button-making and enabler of childhood fantasies, is elegized as Hamlet's nursemaid and human cairn to the narrator. Beautiful, imaginative and disconcerting, Tolstaya's Russia is a labyrinth of treasures and horrors.

• "Tolstaya demonstrates an impressive range in these 23 stories...[that encompass] political satire, flights of surrealism and realistic urban and domestic dramas, nearly all set in the Soviet era...Children, old folks and the struggling in-betweens–Tolstaya sees into all their hearts. Remarkable"

• “Tolstaya offsets layers of exquisitely constructed language with the colloquial and the idiomatic and in a similar way layers the commonplace with the supernatural. The creation of a brilliant jumble of motley metaphors is her gift – not plot, trajectory, or the arc of a story, but the plunge into the middle of dazzling verbiage, her bright universe.”

7. Pushkin's Children: Writing on Russia and Russians by Tatyana Tolstaya.

Written between 1990 and 2000, the 20 essays in this collection offer a progressive, dynamic meditation on Russia's recent political and cultural climate. Many of the pieces are book reviews culled from such publications as the New York Review of Books and the New Republic, but Tolstaya, an internationally acclaimed journalist and fiction writer (The Golden Porch; Sleepwalker in a Fog), goes far beyond the task of reviewing. Her careful and succinct critiques offer original, highly informed takes on the books' subjects, ranging from political biography to cultural history. Tolstaya has little patience for writers who shore shoddy research with patronizing egotism, illustrated by such lines from this stinger of a review of Gail Sheehy's 1990 biography of Gorbachev: "You have to be quite fearless, an adventurer, extraordinarily self-assured, to offer American readers a book about a country that you yourself do not understand." In 1991, Tolstaya defends Yeltsin against criticisms that his decrees to wrest power from Communist Party leaders were undemocratic: "A man who watches a wolf devouring his child does not begin a discussion of animal rights." Tolstaya reserves particular contempt for Alexander Solzhenitsyn. In reviews of two of his works, she finds that the isolated writer and political activist idol was rendered obsolete long before his 1995 return to Russia. In the end, Tolstaya's essays in this compact, historically significant volume offer a fascinating, highly intelligent analysis of Russian society and politics.

8. Life Stories: Original Works by Russian Writers by Andrei Gelasimov, Yevgeny Grishkovets, Alexander Kabakov, Sergei Lukyanenko, Vladimir Makanin, Marina Moskvina, Viktor Pelevin (Author), Ludmila Petrushevskaya, Dina Rubina and others.

These are just some of the stories in this wonderful collection of original works by 19 leading Russian writers. They are life-affirming stories of love, family, hope, rebirth, mystery and imagination. Masterfully translated by some of the best Russian-English translators working today, these tales reassert the power of Russian literature to affect readers of all cultures in profound and lasting ways. Best of all, 100% of the profits from the sale of this book will go to benefit Russian hospice -- not-for-profit care for fellow human beings who are nearing the end of their own life stories.

A smart Russian analyst criticizes the Great Decisions Russian article

It is easy for Americans to be unaware of the cultural biases that permeate articles about other countries. Provocatrix Anna Muraveva provides the valuable service of showing how a mass audience article about Russia reads to a Russian.

Remarks on William Sweet’s “Europe’s “Far East”: the Uncertain Frontier.”



1. First of all, it is unprofessional for the political observer to use “Big Brother” (“superior to inferior”) approach to political analysis of the foreign policy of another country. To point out that Russia’s foreign policy “depends on the whims of a narrow and cloistered leadership” is to acknowledge the incapability of seeing the causes behind the political actions of Russia’s leaders. Maybe, it is worth to put yourself in the position of the government of the analyzed country to get better insight into its foreign policymaking, so it would not seem as a whim? Also, it should be understand that if some political decision of Russia’s government is widely criticized by the global community, it does not necessary mean that this decision is wrong and unwise.

2. In his article the author touches a couple of controversial moments and unproven facts while discussing Russia’s foreign policy. Who was the first to start Russian-Georgian conflict in 2008, the conflict over the transition of Russia’s gas to EU through Ukraine, and the evaluation of “the great famine” in Ukraine at the time of Stalin’s program of collectivization are among those “doublethink” issues. Such kind of facts should be given fairer overview or, at least, the author could have mentioned their uncertain or debatable character instead of showing his readers the side of the question favorable for him, and at the same time withholding the one he does not like.

3. If the author pretends to present an unbiased political analysis of some political situation, he should have avoided such clichés as “nuclear holocaust,” and comparison Russia to the beast or bear. Moreover, mentioning such dubious experts as Vladimir Zhirinovsky or Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, and the usage of the insulting language (“…there are ample opportunities for Russian leaders to fish,” “it wanted to teach country a lesson,” etc.) would be more suitable to cite in a tabloid than the issue of “Great Decisions” intended for student reading.

4. Personally, I do not share author’s opinion about “political and moral values universally shared on both sides of the Atlantic.” I see European values and American ones as two different things, while the American authors always try to pull Europe on their side while talking about democracy and how it should be implemented. I have never encountered such kind of opinion in the articles written by Europeans.

5. In overall, the purpose of the article is rather unclear for me. In my opinion, the article lacks coherent and logical structure because of its undefined purpose. Moreover, the facts, by which the author supports his ideas, have rather fragmentary character, in its turn, this selectivity conceals important information and allows the author to manipulate and to thrust his own opinion on the readers.

Anna Muraveva in front of the Kremlin