Issue 81 (2023): Focus on Contemporary Ukrainian Documentary |
Vitaliy Mansky, Yevhen Titarenko: Eastern Front (2023) reviewed by Nataliia Andriushchenko © 2023 |
Eastern Front is a movie about war. Perhaps not every viewer will dare to watch it at a time when Russia's war against Ukraine is going on. Conversations, newspapers, television, the internet—one may think that a movie on the same topic may overwhelm the psyche—but Eastern Front is not an informational movie. It doesn't overload the viewer's brain with facts, figures, and analysis. Eastern Front is a product of the platform of high-quality creative documentary filmmaking, which gives you the opportunity to live your own story while watching the movie.
A movement within contemporary audiovisual art, creative documentary includes a special approach to the realization of creative ideas, artistic visual readings of story, and the author's point of view. The first director of Eastern Front, Vitaliy Mansky, a well-known master of documentary filmmaking, explains in an interview that “creative documentary is conceived as an artistic comprehension of reality. This means that the artist reigns supreme here.” (Zubtsov [2023]) In this new film, he remains behind the scenes, but his "handwriting" remains unusual and already recognizable to the viewer.
The second director, Yevhen Titarenko, joined a volunteer ambulance crew that takes the seriously injured from the battlefield to the nearest hospital. In the war, he has the call sign "Rezik," and thanks to his work, the viewer becomes a direct observer of what is happening in the war. Titarenko states:
There are those who could not sleep for three days after watching the tape. They were absolutely shocked. That is, the film immerses and shocks, and I think we managed to make people immerse themselves and understand the depth of the war. It seems to me that this gives an understanding that it is not some super team that protects Ukraine, but ordinary people, including my colleagues from film production, IT experts. These are all people who never planned to join the army or fight. But now we have no other choice. (Anon. 2023)
Of course, a few years ago, no one could have imagined that such a movie would appear on screen. But now that there is a war going on, it's hard to imagine how anyone can turn a blind eye. The war brought changes for everyone in the world. The war has shown us who we really are and whether we are ready to ethically respond. All of this is also related to psychology and philosophy. These are the thoughts that come up while watching the movie.
From the very beginning, the directors immerse the viewer in the reality of war. They do this gently. First, we meet the military, soldiers, paramedics, and their everyday lives. They are sincere and brave, with a sense of humor even in the face of heavy losses. They are as they are because there is no censorship in this movie. We trust them because they are ordinary people who have families, goals, and dreams, but had to go to war.
The first difficult scene is the death of a soldier who dies on the way to the hospital in a paramedic car. And that's it; there is no other reality for the viewer. You realize that something too terrible is happening on Earth.
At the moment when the viewer sees death and freezes in despair, the directors pick them up and turn toward the light. After the hard scenes, we see the scene of the birth of a new day, a new life, the scene of a child being baptized in church. In creative documentary filmmaking, this is called "author's vision" or "author's decision." That is, the directors objectively show life using the method of observation, but the author's mood and angle of view are always obvious. This is the director's choice.
In this case, it is obvious that the filmmakers are not trying to create fear. They only show why Ukrainian soldiers give their lives and why they do not allow evil to spread around the world. The creators of the Eastern Front also tried to convey to the viewer a sense of the value of every moment of life. Because the stories and behavior of the characters in the film inspire you to turn to your true self and stop chasing new goals. This film is not about rushing in life, but about stopping, enjoying your morning tea, and asking yourself what you really want and what choices to make in order to realize it. Thus the film breaks all the standard tropes about war documentaries. It also shows soldiers rethinking their lives. For each of them, this war becomes their own special front, where they fight not only for the land, but for the freedom to be themselves. To be free on their own land.
One of the scenes from the movie demonstrates well the value of every moment, even every detail of the moment. It happens when Titarenko is standing amidst houses destroyed by the Russians and peeling an orange. "Are you happy? I am very happy because I have an orange. I just have it and I'm happy," he says.
Of course, when you are going to watch a documentary about the war, you expect to see answers to the questions why did this happen and how to stop this war? This is again a trope, because we are used to experts trying to answer these questions in television documentaries. In creative documentaries, there are no direct answers, no experts, no academics. There is just life. And we, as viewers, can draw our own conclusions—and there is a lot to draw conclusions from in Eastern Front. Mansky and Titarenko have made an extremely brave and sincere film.
Eastern Front has no singular or set ideological component and no overt bias in one direction or the other. We see guys openly talk about pro-Russian and pro-Ukrainian views in their families and how they have changed since the outbreak of the war. In most cases, people's pro-Russian views are the work of propaganda. But when people live outside of the world of propaganda and encounter the real, they are again able to experience feelings of compassion and empathy and see the world as it is. In this aspect, the film is philosophical. After all the stories you hear in Eastern Front, you realize that the choices you make every day are not trivial. They affect you, your family, and, maybe, even the whole world.
The joint work of Mansky and Titarenko can be called "cinema without editing." It seems that editing is used only for the dramaturgical construction of the story. Otherwise, life remains unadorned: direct honest stories, specific humor, emotional words, bold statements. All this remains in the plot of the movie. The directors do not correct or whitewash the image of the Ukrainian soldier through their work. This is an ordinary person who is capable of extraordinary things, but this person is not perfect: he is honest with himself and can freely express himself.
In this film, the authors treat the viewer as somebody dear to them, and most of the stories are told at a large family table behind the front line in western Ukraine. At this table, Christians are celebrating the birthday of the son of a soldier who came to visit his child for 2-3 days. Next to him are his family, relatives, friends, comrades-in-arms, but also the audience. Because the spectators become participants in everything that happens, they also experience Ukrainian hospitality. At a celebration with friends, everyone is relaxed at home and as frank as possible. Even on serious topics, everyone tries to joke, but those in the military know that tomorrow they have to go back to war. But their choice is not to be sad; their choice is to live today, to love life today, and to understand the responsibility of every step.
Of course, there are difficult scenes from the battlefield in this film. But the directors intersperse scenes of inevitable death in war with scenes of new life emerging. They give the motivation and hope that soldiers at the front are overwhelmed with. This is a kind of philosophy: after watching you want to live and act from the heart every day.
Creative documentary is not about fictional tropes, so the ending of the movie, like in life, is open-ended. Paramedics are saving their comrades under heavy fire. It is painful and difficult for them, and sometimes scary. But the feeling of something invincible permeates the whole movie. From the very beginning, we can feel the soldiers' clear decision: the decision to be happy and free on their land.
Nataliia Andriushchenko
Ludwig Maxmilians Universität München
Works Cited
Anon. 2023. “Spivrezhyser fil'mu ‘Skhidnyi front’ i veteran Evhen Titarenko pro stvorennia fil'mu ta spivpratsiu z Vitaliem Mans'kym,” Suspil'ne Kul'tura, 21 February.
Zubtsov, Iurii. [2023]. “Vitalii Manskii: ‘Dokumental'noe kino snimaiut radi emotsii’,” Psychologies, no date.
Eastern Front, Czech Republic/Latvia/Ukraine/United States, 2023
Color, 98 minutes
Directors: Vitaliy Mansky, Yevhen Titarenko
Writer: Vitaliy Mansky
Cinematography: Yevhen Titarenko, Ivan Fomichenko (Director of Photography)
Editing: Andrey Paperniy
Sound: Václav Flegl
Postproduction: Ivo Marak
Executive Producer: Kenan Aliev
Producers: Nataliia Khazan, Natalia Manskaya
Coproducers: Vít Klusák, Filip Remunda
Vitaliy Mansky, Yevhen Titarenko: Eastern Front (2023) reviewed by Nataliia Andriushchenko © 2023 |