Issue 75 (2022) |
Vladimir Kozlov: Three Comrades (Tri tovarischcha, 2020) reviewed by Åsne Høgetveit © 2022 |
Three Comrades is a raw and dirty portrait of young, educated, urban men in Russia. Gleb (Evgenii Zarubin), Gosha (Ivan Sharyi), and Vlad (Andrei Iasinskii) share a small office in a wholesale business in St. Petersburg. The film is a chronological tale following the three men for approximately 24 hours—presenting the viewer with what one must assume are the main events of that day. In the prologue the three young men are introduced in short documentary-style interviews, where they answer questions while looking straight into the camera. Gleb, Gosha, and Vlad present themselves with their worldview and their ambitions. Other than sharing an office, they do not seem to have much in common.
On his official web page, Belarusian Vladimir Kozlov describes himself as a film director and author. His directorial works includes both feature and documentary films, and he writes both fiction and non-fiction books. In addition, he produces and writes film, and in the past, he has worked in journalism and as an editor too. In short, he is a man of many talents.
The day starts off in the office, where the trio deal with various clients or simply procrastinate at their desks, using the breaks to complain about both clients, their jobs, and the state of the Russian economy, before they are summoned to the manager’s office where they are told off for lacking ambition and initiative. The amount of Russian mat (obscene or profane language) used up until this point in the film is simply impressive, leaving no doubt as to why it is almost impossible to watch this film in a theatre in Russia: in 2014 the Russian Duma placed a ban on the use of four of the most-used swear words in art in Russia—in effect banning swearing in all forms of art including books, film, and even blogs. After work, the guys decide to hit a bar for “a glass or two,” and they even manage to convince a female colleague to join in, despite what allegedly happened the last time they went out for a similar errand. The conversation includes various conspiracy theories, and we learn more about the characters’ nationalist, misogynist, and homophobic attitudes. Of course, they do not limit themselves to two glasses, and after the female colleague leaves them, the men continue to a punk club where they drink more, witness a concert, and end up thrashing a guy. Gleb takes the lead, with the two others tagging along.
The men still want more, and it is as if they cannot change the destructive course they have been on all day. Gleb says he knows a girl, Anya (Kseniia Pliusnina) who will have sex with all of them in turn, they just need to seduce her with a bottle of sparkling wine. After getting past the necessary pleasantries, Gleb takes Anya’s hand and leads her to the bedroom where they have consensual sex. Then Gleb asks if she will have sex with his friends too, to which Anya firmly refuses. Simultaneously, Gosha and Vlad waiting in the kitchen decide it is their turn, so they burst into the bedroom, and then all three of them participate in a rape. The viewer is stuck in the kitchen, left only with hearing Anya’s screams. When leaving the building Gosha brings up that this might in fact be considered a rape, which the two others refute. As they sit by the riverside debriefing with more vodka, Anya and two other men with wooden bats attack the trio. Gosha and Vlad are hunted down quickly, and we hear their screams as Gleb manages to escape into an empty building. Anya and her defenders search through the house, and she finds Gleb. For unknown reasons, she decides to let him get away. The next day Gleb wakes up alone, gets a taxi to the office, sits down at his desk in the otherwise empty office, and then he looks straight into the camera giving the viewer the finger while grinning.
The cinematography underscores the punk mood and documentary style of the film. The color scheme is bleak—leaving the viewer thinking that they get to see things how they truly are, not some polished, or in other ways manipulated, form. Most shots are made with a handheld camera at eye level. In several scenes the viewer is left to observe the men in lively conversation while hearing contemporary Russian punk music (by the bands Pasosh, Da Net Navernoe, More & Relsy, and Ploho) rather than the dialogue, shifting the focus from the content of their conversation to the dynamics of their relationship. In these sequences they appear to truly enjoy each other’s company.
I am altogether impressed by the actors’ individual performances and the chemistry between the three main actors. Although the story is brutal, neither the crude dialogue nor the unprovoked violence seems excessive—the actors’ performances highly contribute to this. Vadim Rutkovskii (2020) describes Three Comrades as a dirty punk-drama, where Kozlov has a punk approach to filmmaking, in the sense that he is not a trained film director. Still, he has chosen to work with professional actors.
The title is obviously a nod to the 1936 German novel Three Comrades by Erich Maria Remarque, about Germany’s lost generation of young men after World War I. Still, the 25-year-olds in contemporary Russia have not gone through anything like the collective trauma of the trenches of World War I. Perhaps Kozlov lends his voice to the office manager as he yells at the young men for having it too easy. Thus, they are lacking ambition and initiative, making them a lost generation in a different sense than in the original novel. Or else, Kozlov might be suggesting that it is not the past of this generation one should be concerned about, but the future. They are fixated on conspiracy theories they read about online and later distribute among acquaintances, they see enemies of Russia everywhere, and violent solutions come too easy for them. Perhaps not surprising, but the violence the men are capable of, without much hesitation, reflection, or seemingly remorse, is still shocking. They are products of their society, a reflection of how normalized violence, in different forms, is in Russia. The men too blame society, but they contribute to this culture through their behavior and their seeming unwillingness to take responsibility for their choices and actions.
Åsne Høgetveit
UiT – the Arctic University of Norway
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Works Cited
Rutkovskii, Vadim. 2020. Stil' griaznyi. coolconnections.ru.
Three Comrades, Belarus, Russia, 2020
Color, 71 minutes
Director: Vladimir Kozlov
Script: Vladimir Kozlov
Cinematography: Svetoslav Bolgarchuk
Editing: Kristina Sidorova
Cast: Evgenii Zarubin, Ivan Sharyi, Andrei Iasinskii, Kseniia Pliusnina, Ol’ga Serikova, Dmitrii Grishin.
Producers: Vladimir Kozlov, Natalia Bruzhnik, Leonid Kalitenia
Production company: Platzkart Productions
Vladimir Kozlov: Three Comrades (Tri tovarischcha, 2020) reviewed by Åsne Høgetveit © 2022 |