Russian films about Soviet collapse
...made in the 1990s about the 1990s.
The first decade after the collapse of the USSR was very tough for most people — entire industries were wiped out or were sent into steep decline. For example, my mom had for many years worked at a publishing house called Raduga, where she was an editor of Mongolian translations of Russian literature. She went on maternity leave after I was born in 1989 and when it was time to return to work, her division at the publishing house was no longer there. There was no job to go back to. You see, Raduga was not a profitable publishing house, it was a state-funded cultural project that brought Russian literature in translation to other countries — not just other Soviet Republics, but all over the world: to Europe, Asia, Africa. And once the Soviet Union was no more, it made no sense to fund this project, so Raduga fell apart and a few industrious people who were running it privatized its luxurious historical building in the very centre of Moscow.
My mom officially had some shares in this newly privatized business, so in theory, she should have profited from the sale. But the director of Raduga — a real cunt of a woman — swindled her, and she got nothing. It was a common story repeated all over Russia at the time. The Red Directors got rich off privatization…some even became oligarchs…and everyone else was screwed over.
Anyway, publishing was not the only cultural industry that took a hit. The film industry, which had been generously funded by the state, barely survived. There were few movies — and very few that were memorable — made in the 90s.
The director who probably captured the ethos of the 90s Russia best was Alexei Balabanov. With his film Brother, he unwittingly predicted that a Vladimir Putin type of character would come to power — or some say that Putin’s PR people molded his image after Balabanov’s main character, Danila Bagrov. Western cinephiles usually don’t know about Balabanov. His films are too “Russia coded”. They’re not perfectly tailored for export, not tuned to the aesthetics of the indie “foreign film” market that get screened at Cannes…like the movies of the widely beloved Andrey Zvyagintsev, who is sort of perceived as the heir to Tarkovsky (which is something I’d strongly argue against but I’ll save that for later).
I do believe that Balabanov is the main filmmaker and a dark poet of 90s Russia. He captured the aftermath of collapse so poignantly. No one could compete with the god’s fool, alcoholic genius Balabanov. But there were a few interesting — almost still social realist films — made in the 90s about the 90s.
Here are two of my favorite ones:
