Beanpole – Dylda (2019)

Directed by: Kantemir Balagov | 130 minutes | drama | Actors: Viktoria Miroshnichenko, Vasilisa Perelygina, Andrey Bykov, Igor Shirokov, Konstantin Balakirev, Kseniya Kutepova, Alyona Kuchkova, Timofey Glazkov, Veniamin Kac, Olga Dragunova, Denis Kozinets, Alisa Oleynik, Dmitri Chumelas Motorkin, Khuddung Chumil Vladimir Verzhbitskiy, Vladimir Morozov

‘Beanpole’ (‘beanstalk’) starts with an abrasive, imageless soundtrack. Are they porcelain cups, is it iron on iron? We quickly switch to a hospital in Leningrad in 1945. The tones are warm and matte at the same time, voices and breathing, a ticking clock and running water are turned on sharply, traffic noises even more.

Clever stylistic devices to impress upon the viewer that post-war Leningrad beats like a vein, but is experienced in a post-traumatic manner by the protagonists Iya (Miroschnichenko) and Masha (Perelygina), two young women who must have experienced horrors as nurses in the war, and holding each other in processing.

Veterans impersonate a wolf to pass the time, laughter ensues; there is audible pain. Laughter seems like a collective medicine – even during sex, that other narcotic. When human suffering is as universal as in wartime or shortly after, it becomes integrated into life. Not silent forgetting, but joking suffering.

As an atmospheric image, ‘Beanpole’ must therefore have been successful, although in 2020 there are few eyewitnesses left alive. The film offers slices of life from a period that is very difficult to capture in all its facets, and is therefore an important time document. Because what do we actually know about the Russian way of dealing with the aftermath of the Second World War?

After half an hour, ‘Beanpole’ is an intensely exhausting experience; he who looks away doesn’t stand a chance, he is drawn to the image by sounds that don’t reveal fine things – the pursuit of effect with dramatic goals, sometimes without context. In fact, the initial sounds appear to be an announcement of more and worse. The images can be overwhelming in their serenity.

Sometimes the camera work is almost portraiture, the staging is Breughelian. We do not spoiler: the visualization is impressive. In any case, this is a film that has to be seen in the cinema, and not understood rationally. That’s something for the afterthought.