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My Friend Ivan Lapshin
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Wikipedia article
'My Friend Ivan Lapshin' is a 1985 Soviet crime drama directed by Aleksei German and produced by Lenfilm, based on a novel by Yuri German adapted by Eduard Volodarsky. It was narrated by Valeri Kuzin.
Background
In March 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev was elected General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union. Gorbachev opened the country to Western influence with his reforms glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring). The Filmmakers Union, the most liberal creative organization at the time, was the first to support Gorbachev. The glasnost period became distinguished by the rediscovery of cinematic hidden gems, the censored films, which were officially known for Stagnation-era artistic talents. These films informed the history of Soviet cinema. Films of this period also depicted modern social and economic deterioration, the loss of ideals, and disillusionment in Communist ideologies.Vida Johnson and Elena Stishova, Perestroika and Post-Soviet Cinema 19852000s Academic Studies Press (2013)
Plot
Set in 1935 in the fictional provincial town of Unchansk (filmed in Astrakhan), the film is presented as the recollections of a man who at the time was a nine-year-old boy living with his father in a communal flat shared with criminal police investigator Ivan Lapshin and a number of other characters. The film begins at Lapshin's 40th birthday celebration. Babooshka Patrikeyevan serves food, cleans, and grumbles over sugar consumption. Later in the film, Vasili Okoshkin mentions leaving with Lapshin for the gold fields. In another scene, Lapshin confronts newcomers in the town square and scares off a horse-driven cart trafficking stolen firewood. There are several other plot strands: a provincial troupe of actors arrive and put on a play without much success; a friend of Lapshin's, the journalist Khanin, shows up, depressed after his wife's death, who attempts to commit suicide. He later joins Lapshin's communal home. Lapshin investigates the Solovyov gang of criminals. Lapshin falls in love with the actress Natasha Adashova, but she is in love with Khanin. Lapshin is turned down by Natasha, and later recuperates after suffering a bullet wound. It is "a film about people 'building socialism' on a bleak frozen plain, their town's one street a long straggle of low wooden buildings beneath a huge white sky, leading from the elegant stucco square by the river's quayside out into wilderness".
Themes
A central theme in the film is nostalgia. The film switches between black and white and color to accentuate the feeling of nostalgia. The scattered and de-centered narrative structure emulates a dream-like recollection of memories, underscoring the fragility of memory. Another theme is carnival. The carnivalesque rhythm is apparent in the scenes of plays as well as in the festive tone of scenes taking place in the communal house. In this way, the film is a meta-dramatic and surreal. The film also plays with an edge of realism; there are series of shots of ordinary people living their ordinary lives. Moreover, there is theme of idealism: Lapshin exclaims, "We'll clear the land of scum and build an orchard."
Reception
According to Tony Wood,
IMDB Review: "A small-town man lives a normal homelife where he puts on appearances of respectability for his family and friends, but at work he's a brutal KGB enforcer. My Friend Ivan Lapshin is heavily reminiscent of Andrei Tarkovsky's The Mirror - half-memories told as a series of random disjointed vignets, in both black-&-white and in color, with very loose handheld camerawork lending it a naturalness easy to get lost in. Unfortunately, that's also a crutch. I couldn't help but keep comparing it to the Mirror the entire time I was watching the movie; albeit Ivan Lapshin's a very solid imitation, pretty damn good in its own right. Let's call this one a slightly overshadowed companion piece to Tarkovsky."
Walter Goodman (New York Times): "Beneath the camouflage of the look of time past, 'Ivan' is makeshift melodrama."
Laura Clifford (Reeling Reviews), "The film is challenging, German playing with time, film stocks and shooting styles, his cinema fractured to give the abstract impression of distant memories...once what German's trying to do sinks in, Lapshin becomes a potent symbol of the Stalinist era."
ngel Fernndez-Santos (El Pais (Spain)), "A beautiful and complex film. [Full Review in Spanish]"
Jeremy Heilman (MovieMartyr.com): "As "fifty years and five blocks" would imply, memory is viewed here as something slippery; almost tangible yet just out of reach."
New York Times article: Scene after scene, shot for the most part in the sepia of old photographs, catches the poverty and confusion of a hard time - the crowded apartment, the beat-up cars, the dreary town and its shabbily dressed people, the outbursts of desperation and nuttiness. In his treatment of a troupe of actors and some musicians jangling along on a flag-festooned little trolley, the director seems to have picked up some tricks from Fellini, but the spirit is very different. 'We'll clear the land of scum and build an orchard' - was taken by the Kremlin as a dangerous piece of irony.
Production
* 'My Friend Ivan Lapshin' was filmed in Astrakhan, Russia, in 1983. The film was produced by Lenfilm Studio and Pervoe Tvorcheskoe Obedinenie.
* Budget: $8,000,000 (estimated)
Distribution
Distributors include:
* Artkino Pictures (1988) (Argentina) (theatrical)
* International Film Exchange (IFEX) (1987) (USA) (theatrical) (subtitled)
* Nihonkai Eiga (1989) (Japan) (theatrical)
* Niwa Film (1989) (Japan) (theatrical)
* Polfilm (1988) (Sweden) (theatrical)
* I.V.C. (2011) (Japan) (DVD) (Aleksey German DVD-BOX)
Technical specifications
* Runtime: 1 hr 40 min (100 min)
* Sound: Mix Mono
* Color: Black and White | Color
* Aspect Ratio: 1.37 : 1
* Laboratory: Lenfilm, Leningrad, Soviet Union
* Film Length: 2,719 m (Sweden)
* Negative Format: 35 mm
* Cinematographic Process: Spherical
* Printed Film Format: 35 mm
Awards
Locarno International Film Festival 1986 - Winner of the Ernest Artaria Award
Trivia
* The 'Urka' (Criminal) personage who stabs Khanin and then later is shot and killed by Ivan Lapshin was played not by a professional actor, but by a real criminal. Aleksey German made this decision to add more realism to these scenes.
* This film was shot in the early 1980s, but was not released until the perestroika reforms because it took an ironic look at Soviet idealism.
* Nikolay Gubenko auditioned for the role of Ivan Lapshin, yet the director chose to work with Andrei Boltnev because "there was some sort of 'doomed' quality about him - it was clear he'd be shot and killed".
* Shot in 1983, this movie was not released until 1985.
* The film was based on novellas written by the director Aleksei German's father Iurii P. German (1910-1967).
Cast
* Andrei Boltnev as Ivan Lapshin
* Nina Ruslanova as Natasha Adashova
* Andrei Mironov as Khanin
* Aleksei Zharkov as Vasya Okoshkin
* Zinaida Adamovich as Patrikeyevna
* Aleksandr Filippenko as Zanadvorov
* Yuriy Kuznetsov as Superintendent
* Valeriy Filonov as Pobuzhinskiy
* Anatoli Slivnikov as Bychkov
* Andrei Dudarenko as Kashin
* Semyon Farada as Jatiev
* Yuri Pomogayev as Solovyov
*Nina Usatova as Solovyov's wife
* Yuri Aroyan as artist of the local theater
* Natalya Laburtseva
* Anna Nikolayeva
* Anatoli Shvedersky
* Vladimir Tochilin
* Boris Vojtsekhovsky
References
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