Issue 83 (2024) |
Sergei Ursuliak: The Righteous (Pravednik, 2023) reviewed by Assel Uvaliyeva © 2024 |
Sergei Ursuliak’s The Righteous is a rare World War II story for Russian cinema as the film attempts to depart from narratives about protection of the motherland and, instead, redirects its attention to the Holocaust in Belarus. Based on true events, the film recounts Nikolai Kiselev’s experience of evacuating 218 Jews from the occupied Belarusian territories. A departure from Ursuliak’s television work, the film proved popular with audiences in Russia and Israel, although the box office was not able to exceed its production budget. The film is set in 2005; the World Holocaust Remembrance Center has discovered Kiselev’s story and, in their search for more information, come across Moshe Tal (Mark Eidelshtein). Tal, however, does not want to talk about Kiselev, as the officer did not return his familial treasure, a golden astrolabe (Kiselev had exchanged it for medical supplies). The plot shifts back and forth between 1942 Belarus and 2005 Israel. The film was shot in Zabrodje, a village in the Minsk Region of Belarus, as well as in St Petersburg, Vyborg, and Leningrad Oblast in Russia, with additional footage done in Israel. The film concludes when the aged Moshe Tal, in an attempt to find the astrolabe, stumbles upon another treasure: his grand-niece, who looks just like his little sister that he thought he had lost during the War. The film emphasizes that Kiselev made it possible for these people to have a future, glorifying his deed. The Righteous ends up being just that, another film about a “perfect” Soviet hero, that does not after all provide its own interpretation of the historical past.
The Righteous heavily draws upon Hollywood portrayals of the Holocaust in its aestheticization of the atrocious events and character development. The film, like Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List (1993), focuses on survival and attempts to capture the characters’ resistance against dehumanization of the Jewish people. The central villain of the film, a sadistic German Hauptsturmführer Ernst Rudolf Schmücker (Dietmar König), is presented to us through the eyes of a Nazi collaborator, Liuba (Iuliia Vitruk). Schmücker resembles in many ways Amon Goeth, the antagonist of Schindler’s List, yet his villainy is arbitrary and is driven solely by his megalomania. Schmücker proclaims: “I am God’s vicar, or, maybe, God himself”. His voyeuristic obsession, the desire to capture his victims on photographs, sends us back not only to Goeth but to Hans Landa from Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds (2009) as well. An overt sexualization of Liuba sets up expectations about her relationship with the Nazi officer: is she another Helen Hirsch? However, while in Schindler’s List, “character psychology and relations among [these] characters tend to be predicated on masculinist hierarchies of gender and sexuality,” (Hansen 1996) Liuba does not serve to shed light on or explain the villain’s motivation. Schmücker’s villainy is performative and taken for granted, his proximity to his Hollywood counterparts imposes a second-degree recognition on the spectator and invokes an immediate antipathy. The film often uses camera angles and lighting to suggest his intimidating character, but the character development does little to substantiate his image.
The film weaves different genres and plot lines into one. The part about the young Moshe Tal (dressed like Oliver Twist) and his little sister Miriam (Katie Salway), seems to belong to a film about children’s adventures. Their dexterity and purity allow them to survive first in a “cinematic” Minsk and then in Belarusian forests. Their parents, played by Konstantin Khabenskii and Chulpan Khamatova (Khamatova, a “foreign agent,” is not mentioned in the film credits) make a difficult decision to send them to the Soviet border. The parents decided that, among all their children, Moshe is the fittest for survival, which consequently proves to be true. Yet from another genre stems Moshe’s enigmatic and underexplored relationship with Liuba. The two appear in eroticized scenes, even though Liuba allegedly reminds Moshe of his older sister Dina. Liuba washes Moshe and discloses to him that she is also Jewish. The conflicted Liuba betrays the children but rejoices when she finds out that they have managed to escape. It seems as though the filmmakers wanted to pay an homage to another film but could not decide on the source of inspiration, thus interweaving various generic elements in their film.
The scenes featuring the main character, Nikolai Kiselev, present to us a Soviet hero destined to glory. The film attempts to fit grim and messy historical events in a comprehensible narrative of human determination, in which one person was able to shift the course of events. The real-life Kiselev received an order to evacuate Jewish people and followed it until he completed his mission. His cinematic portrayal strives to present a humble and righteous Soviet man, reminiscent of Andrei Sokolov from Sergei Bondarchuk’s Fate of a Man (Sud'ba cheloveka, 1959) or Titarenko from Leonid Bykov’s Only “Old Men” Are Going to Battle (V boi idut odni stariki, 1973), although Ursuliak’s character is less charismatic. The officer successfully leads people through Belarusian forests and in the process saves a child from his own father, who has attempted to drown his son to silence his cries; saves a young woman from sexual assault; helps to cure those who fall ill; and never fails to display a deep concern for the people under his charge. Kiselev is a straightforward and flat character, whose motivation to save the people stems from an order. His inner compass tells him how to do things right.
The film does not provide a profound reflection on the past—a disappointing fact, given that there have recently been numerous discussions and articles on World War II history of the region. The depicted Jewish community is based on previous cinematic representations, and their culture as is presented on screen does not go beyond common knowledge. A guileless Kiselev asks the people to renounce their cultural practices for the time being as it would increase their chances of survival, offering them stew meat and asking not to pray. The film operates on the level of simple black-and-white oppositions. The topic of the Holocaust in Belarus invites and deserves more reflection. The recent scholarship emphasizes the complex nature of relationships between people in Belarus at the time, and how atrocities, committed against Jews, resulted in arbitrary violence. Thus, Leonid Rein writes that “the Germans were not concerned if errors were made. For example, in Baranovichi, southwest of Minsk, all of the inhabitants—both Jewish and non-Jewish—of one of the city’s streets were executed because, to the Germans, they all looked Jewish” (Rein 2006). In The Righteous, we have Soviet heroes, Jewish victims, and German villains, and a minimal degree of nuance in those rare moments when it fits the overarching narrative. One such example is when a German character Gretha (Karolina Hubert) tells a Nazi officer that she is Jewish even though she knows this will result in her death.
The treatment of the identity question in the film, as well as the film’s casting choices contribute to a lesser credibility and impact of the narrative overall. An ethnically Tatar Chulpan Khamatova, for example, is cast as a Jewish mother. However, all the German characters are played by ethnic Germans. While talking to his commander about the mission, Kiselev artlessly tells him that for him Jews are just people, but Germans are enemies: “I do not distinguish people by their nationality [ethnicity]. What matters is whether they beat the Germans”. His commander replies: “Good, Kiselev, that’s what matters”. It appears as if the filmmakers could not decide what matters to them in this question.
The attempt to represent the Jewish community leads to an off-putting plot line that attempts to pass off stalking for a great love story. The wedding of Tova and Ferz allows people to take a pause and detach themselves from the group’s constant efforts to escape. Tova is covered with a white veil with a circlet of flowers on her head, walking as a nymph in a forest. Everyone is singing in sync, celebrating life and joy. The film then cuts to black-and-white footage featuring normal daily life, the life that was taken away from these people. However, the righteousness of this scene is in conflict with the scene where Ferz harasses Tova by laying her on the ground and attempting to kiss her against her will. Tova protects herself with a stick, and the young woman naturally does not want to have anything to do with the soldier after that, at least for a while. The minute he proclaims to her that he is willing to be circumcised, the young woman hesitates no more and agrees to marry him. The wedding scene demonstrates a communal spirit, but the problematic courtship that precedes the wedding makes it lose all its charm.
Nominally a film about the Holocaust, The Righteous places the Russian officer Kiselev at the center of the narrative and tells a story about Soviet heroism. While the film presents a previously untold story, it fails to reconceptualize the genre of the war film, successfully becoming yet another historical drama for mass consumption. At the end of the film, when Miriam’s granddaughter meets Moshe Tal, the spectators receive a happy ending that celebrates life and family. But that is all the film does. The Nazi officers are archetypal villains. An archetypal Soviet soldier proves a hero as he saved 218 Jews from the villains and refuses to seek recognition for his deed. The Righteous creates a dichotomous world, where the truth and virtue are on the side of those who were entitled to save and order the lives of the vulnerable.
Assel Uvaliyeva,
University of Southern California
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Works Cited
Hansen, Miriam Bratu, 1996. “‘Schindler’s List’ Is Not ‘Shoah’: The Second Commandment, Popular Modernism, and Public Memory.” Critical Inquiry 22(2): 292-312.
Rein, Leonid, 2006. “Local collaboration in the execution of the “Final Solution” in Nazi-occupied Belorussia.” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 20(3): 381-409.
The Righteous, RF, 2023
Color, 163 minutes
Director: Sergei Ursuliak
Scriptwriter: Gennadii Ostrovskii
Producers: Anton Zlatopolskii, Timur Weinstein, Leonid Vereshchagin, Nikita Mikhalkov, Mariia Ushakova, Vadim Vereshchagin, Iuliia Sumacheva
Cast: Aleksandr Iatsenko, Sergei Makovetskii, Fedor Dobronravov, Evgenii Tkachuk, Mark Eidelshtein, Liubov’ Konstantinova, Konstantin Khabenskii
DoP: Mikhail Milashin
Music: Vasilii Tonkovidov
Production Russia One, Central Partnership, Moskino Film Studio, Studio TriTe, WeiT Media
Distributor: Central Partnership
Release: 16 February 2023
Sergei Ursuliak: The Righteous (Pravednik, 2023) reviewed by Assel Uvaliyeva © 2024 |