Jim McLennan – Page 7 – nastassja.kinski.us

The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century: Hatred and Hunger (1996)

Posted on September 29, 2014 by Jim McLennan

Dir: Margaret Koval
Star (voice): Salome Jens, Ian Richardson, Nastassja Kinski, Leslie Caron

This eight-part documentary series focuses on the period of World War I, from 1914-1918, and also covers the period leading up the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand which kicked things off, and also the chaos which followed the official cessation of hostilities in November 1918. It won two Prime-Time Emmys in 1996, one for Outstanding Informational Series, and the other going to Jeremy Irons for Outstanding Voice-Over Performance. He was just one of a host of famous names who did voice work in the series. Liam Neeson was Adolf Hitler, for example, with Ranulph Fiennes, Helena Bonham-Carter and Gary Oldman among many others involved. Narration was provided by Dame Judy Dench – well, except in the US, where she was replaced, for some reason, by Jens.

The seventh episode takes up after the guns fell silent, and starts by covering the ongoing struggle in Russia, where the new Bolshevik government was fighting a civil war against the White Russians. They also captured the ruling Romanovs, and uses the words of Czarina Aleksandra Romanov (Caron) to tell the story, leading up to the family’s execution. It then switches to Germany, a nation in hardly any less chaos, to tell the story of Rosa Luxemburg (Kinski), a revolutionary socialist whom the documentary says was “the equal of Lenin or Trotsky.” Imprisoned for the last two and a half years of the war, she resumed her political activities on her release. Despite misgivings, she supported the Spartacist uprising promoted by her lover, Karl Liebknecht, After the rebellion was ruthlessly crushed, she was captured, interrogated and, eventually, shot, her body dumped into a canal.

I recognized Kinski’s voice immediately, which is more than can be said for just about anyone else in this episode – and that includes other well-known names, including Martin Sheen, Martin Landau and Ned Beatty. Of course, Kinski had, more or less, cornered the market on German actresses known outside their native land – at the time of the documentary, it was probably her or Hanna Schygulla. Though having the very French Leslie Caron play the Tsarina, suggests true authenticity was not perhaps required. The rest of the documentary discusses the civilian toll due to famine, disease, etc. in post-war Europe, some of which was inflicted on the losers, to encourage them to accept settlement on the victors’ terms. There’s also discussion of the difference in approach to the negotiations taken by America and the colonial powers like Britain in France; the United States wanted self-determination for all, while the European nations were more interested in preserving their empires. My, how times have changed…

And that is as close as you’re going to get to political commentary on this site. It’s not an era with which I have much familiarity, so I certainly learned a lot, though the production falls a bit on the dry side. Not sure things really benefit much from the celeb voice-cast; while good enough, I can’t say I was blown away by any of them in terms of emotion: I also might have preferred Dame Judi doing the narration, but then she is a National Treasure. Definitely a nice change of pace for NK though; if they ever do a biopic version of Luxemburg’s life, maybe they could get Nastassja to play her? Below you can find the audio of the relevant section from the documentary, so you can enjoy her sultry tones.

Terminal Velocity (1994)

Posted on September 14, 2014 by Jim McLennan

Dir: Deran Serafian
Star: Charlie Sheen, Nastassja Kinski, Christopher McDonald, James Gandolfini

Watching this for the first time in 20 years has a whole new set of resonances that weren’t present originally. I now live in Arizona, where this film is set, rather than London. Co-villain Gandolfini is now inextricably linked to his role as patriarch of The Sopranos, a show still more than four years from making its debut. And Sheen’s subsequent, well-publicized antics act as a amusing backdrop to lines such as “I’m much more than a walking penis – I’m a flying penis!” At least his portrayal of a loudmouthed, arrogant womanizer seems rather more plausible than, say, Sheen as a radio astronomer in The Arrival (coincidentally, written by David Twohy, who also penned this script). One does have to wonder how this might have played if, as originally intended, Tom Cruise had played the role.

It’s probably not a bad thing, particularly because the plot here is so ludicrous, it may well benefit from having someone as the lead who can play it with a self-knowing wink. It involves a bunch of disgruntled former Soviet agents, who hijack a plane full of gold, land it in the Arizona desert, and have plans to return to Russia and use it to fund a coup. Fighting to stop that is “Chris Morrow”, real name Krista Moldova (Kinski), who apparently plunges to her death in what appears to be the latest in the long line of mishaps involving parachuting maverick Richard “Ditch” Brodie (Kinski). With the authorities, in the particular shape of local DA Ben Pinkwater (Gandolfini), Ditch seeks an escape, sure he did everything he should have. He eventually discovers Krista faked her own death because…. reasons…. and she enlists him to help with the battle against her former allies. Which, fortunately, will involve a lot more sky-diving, most notably at the end when they hurtle out the back of a plane in a red Cadillac: he in the driver’s seat, she locked in the boot.

I’ve a lot of time for Twohy, not least for his work on the Riddick franchise, and also A Perfect Getaway, which is far more enjoyable than I should admit. But this one barely deserves to be considered a script, and is much more a paper-thin excuse to link some admittedly spectacular action set-pieces, sprinkled liberally with sexual tension between Ditch and Krista. Though, with this being the nineties and he being Charlie Sheen, it comes over less as tension, and more as harassment. But I was surprised how much of this had apparently stuck in my subconscious. The line “Pack your bags, we’re going on a guilt trip,” used by Ditch, has become one of my go-to phrases over the past two decades, even if I’d forgotten entirely where it came from, and the same goes for the three-legged dog to which Krista refers, that he says must be called “Tripod”. I used that a while back when one of our dogs broke her paw and had to cope with a cast, but similarly, forgot its origin.

Given the barking insanity of the storyline here, Kinski keeps an admirably straight face through it all, whether parachuting on to a building because… reasons… Or whizzing through the desert on an entirely gratuitous two-seater rocket sled, equipped with a tandem ejector seat – purely, it appears, for that overhead shot of the seat coming towards the camera while a giant fireball explodes beneath it. Once things get going, she is asked to give less a performance, more of a series of reactions to things going boom. But she did get some kind reviews, Gary Thompson of the Philadelphia Daily News saying, “It’s awfully nice to see Kinski pick up an automatic pistol and blast away at villains after being cooped up in obscure art pictures all those years. She does quite well, bringing to Terminal Velocity a little of the spunk and sexy chemistry that Sandra Bullock brought to Speed.” Though the New York Times disagreed, saying she “gives a thin, jittery performance that is lacking in both sensuality and feeling.”

Perhaps that was a reflection of the relationship between the two stars: I read vague whispers that was a bit “jittery” as well. Still, in comparison to Crackerjack, which immediately preceded this, Kinski’s character is at least a great deal more pivotal to the plot, although Velocity is likely a good deal less coherent. However, in 1994, $50 million was a lot of money – it was only that year Hollywood made its first ever $100 million film, in True Lies, and for entertainment purposes, it’s much better to be spectacular and dumb, than cheap and dumb. There’s no denying the aerial unit certainly earned their slice of the pie, and considering its age, this aspect has stood up well: you can almost believe Sheen and Kinski are hurtling through the sky, especially when you remember this was made before CGI could be used to make anyone appear to do anything.

However, it wasn’t enough to stand out, particular in a year that, as well as the aforementioned True Lies and Speed, also gave us a plethora of great action films that have remained much more well-regarded, including The Crow, Leon: The Professional and Natural Born Killers. Charlie and Nastassja failed to depose Time Cop, in its second week, from the top slot when Velocity hit American cinemas over the last weekend of September. It ended up not even being the most successful parachuting action movie of 1994, even though this beat to the cinemas Drop Zone, which starred Wesley Snipes as another maverick skydiver who battles criminal activities. Neither came close to recouping their (simlar) budgets, but Drop Zone did earn about 50% more; whether it’s any better, I don’t know, Velocity may simply have prematurely entered the American market for wisecracking free-fall.

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Crackerjack (1994)

Posted on August 4, 2014 by Jim McLennan

Dir: Michael Mazo
Star: Thomas Ian Griffith, Christopher Plummer, Nastassja Kinski, Richard Sali

It was certainly an interesting career move. There can’t be many people who have gone from a Wim Wenders philosophical meditation on what it means to be human, to playing the love interest in one of the more shameless Die Hard ripoffs, which seemed to come out every week in the nineties. But that’s what Kinski found for her return to Hollywood cinema, this just beating the similarly commercial Terminal Velocity to movie screens by about a month. She plays “KC”, the activities director at an upmarket ski resort, supposedly in Colorado though the film was actually made in British Columbia – she won’t tell the hero what her name stands for, saying “I’m afraid that information is reserved for relatives and close friends.”

Needless to say, it’s revealed by the end of the film, though I won’t spoil the surprise here (not least because there isn’t one – I’d have been far more impressed if it had stood for “Kraut Chick” or something). Still, it’s a bit creepy the way she sets her sights on said cop hero, Jack Wild (Griffith), since he is still clearly suffering from what his partner calls “post-traumatic shock syndrome” – must be a variant of that well-known Helsinki Syndrome. It’s a result of a previous case, where he was working undercover, and his wife and children were blown up in a car-bomb intended for him. Since then he has become that most cliched of characters, the Loose Cannon, who yells things like “Keep that sonofabitch pinned down, and I’ll get you back to your little lady!”

Now, one could say that a heavily-armed, twitchy freakazoid might not be the best person for whom to throw a surprise birthday party. But his older brother, Mike (Sali) do just that, so he and his wife Anne can give Jack tickets to come along on their trip to the mountain resort previously mentioned. What could possibly go wrong? Well, what else, except for the visit coinciding with a plan to steal tens of millions in diamonds, then blow up a glacier so it falls on the hotel and obliterates all trace of the crime. This is the concept of Ivan Getz (Plummer, who must also have had a mortgage payment due, more or less re-useing his Captain Von Trapp voice), and so you can understand why he was fired by the East German Stasi for being too loony.

crackerjack2 After parachuting his guys in, for no readily apparent reason [I’m fairly sure Jack, Mike and Anne didn’t get to the resort by jumping out the back of a plane. Well, Mike and Anne, anyway – Jack’s a wild and crayzee guy], Getz kicks his scheme into action. Jack is out on the balcony enjoying a quiet perv at a couple in a neighboring room, so manages to avoid the room-to-room sweep of the terrorists. From there, you would be entirely better off removing this video-cassette from your VCR [kids, ask your parents!] and slapping in Die Hard instead. I’ve no problem with taking the concept and giving it a new twist, but the makers don’t bring anything new to the party here. Plummer is actually not bad, but Alan Rickman was just so good as the Euro-villain, it renders every effort to go down the same route pointless. But at the risk of stating the obvious, the biggest difference is that Griffith is no Bruce Willis. with a career apex probably marked either by this or John Carpenter’s Vampires. It isn’t much of a contest.

KC more or less vanishes from proceedings entirely in the middle portion, as Jack is rampaging around the resort, offing henchmen and exchanging banter with Getz over walkie-talkies, when not trying to convince the authorities of his bona fides. [Like I said: shameless] But she returns with a vengeance later in the film, first attempting to seduce a terrorist and stab him, then, when that fails, whacking him upside the head with a pan. She also blasts the sole female terrorist with a shotgun, a bit later. Hey, it’s not Wim Wenders angst, but even stars have to stock the fridge somehow. It ends with things blowing up – in the interests of maintaining suspense, I’ll remain vague on the details of which specific things -and the hostages escaping through a convenient if painfully artificial cave. This was foreshadowed earlier in the movie, when we saw it feeding the hotel’s hot spring, and in which we also saw KC frolicking, albeit chastely (above left).

Like its inspiration, Crackerjack started a franchise, though it’s probably at least somewhat meaningful, that neither Kinski nor Griffith were involved in any way with the sequels which followed. Still, despite my grumblings about the lack of original thought that went into this, it came as a refreshing change after slogging through the entries in Kinski’s filmography during her retreat to Europe. Simply not being based on a book by a depressed Russian is enough to make it seem like a refreshing cinematic sorbet. And, let’s face it, if you’re going to steal, you might as well steal from the best, and Die Hard is perhaps the greatest action movie of all time. Even a pale imitation of it, as we have here, remains entertaining enough to pass muster, and if both Kinski and Plummer look vaguely embarrassed to be involved, I’ve seen far bigger stars slumming it in far worse pictures.

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Faraway, So Close! (1993)

Posted on July 2, 2014 by Jim McLennan

Dir: Wim Wenders
Star: Otto Sander, Horst Buchholz, Willem Dafoe, Nastassja Kinski

You, whom we love, you do not see us, you do not hear us.
You imagine us in the far distance, yet we are so near.
We are messengers, who bring closeness to those who are distant.
We are messengers, who bring the light to those who are in darkness.
We are messengers, who bring the word to those who question.
We are neither the light, nor the message.
We are the messengers. We are nothing. You are, for us, everything.
— Opening voice-over

Kinski hasn’t appeared in many sequels. I’m not sure if this is a conscious choice, or one dictated for her by the market – there didn’t appear to be much demand for Revolution 2. This was a rare, perhaps unique, exception, her third collaboration with Wenders being a sequel to Wings of Desire from six years earlier. It’s not as highly regarded generally: by IMDb rating, Wings is #3 of the 42 titles for which Wenders received a directorial credit, while Faraway comes in at #10, though the 7.3 grade for the latter is still one many directors would kill for. [It’s also the lowest of the three Kinski films, with Paris, Texas at #2] The main criticism appears to be Wenders’ efforts to bolt aspects of a thriller onto a more contemplative approach. It just isn’t a genre with which he seems comfortable, either writing or directing.

The star is Cassiel (Sander), an angel who roams the streets and skies of Berlin, listening in on humanity’s troubles, yet still yearns to experience all life has to offer. After he intervenes to save a child falling from a balcony, he loses his wings, and is helped by another former angel, Daniel (Bruno Ganz) – now a pizza-maker, he was previously an angel too, whose transformation into a human was the main focus of Wings. Cassiel still struggles to come to terms with the more earthy aspects of life, and unwittingly falls in with shady gangster Tony Baker (Buchholz), not knowing that Baker’s business involves trading bootleg porn for guns. Shocked when he discovers this, Cassiel vows to destroy Baker’s facility, with the help of a group of circus performers and Colombo. Yep, Peter Falk. I’ll get back to him in a bit. However, a rival of Baker hijacks their barge, taking hostage both Cassiel’s friends and the girl whose rescue ended his divine status.

Kinski plays Raphaela, an angel who remains in that form, so serves a similar purpose to the film, as the one Cassiel did in Wings. She is just one of a selection of supporting characters who populate the fringes of the movie, and damn, she looks the part with a pair of wings, almost as much as another Euro-starlet, Emmanuelle Beart, did in Date With an Angel. If Raphaela serves no real purpose except giving Nastassja that once per decade paycheck from Wenders, her mere presence is enough to justify the character’s existence. She’s a good deal less jarring than some of the others, notably Dafoe as “Emit Flesti”, which is one of those names which is nowhere near as clever as Wenders thinks it is, there solely to push events along as necessary – or bring them to a grinding halt, at one point. There’s also Lou Reed, who shows up, for little or no reason. Peter Falk also seems incongruous, both playing himself as an artist, and playing himself playing Colombo, though he played himself in Wings as well, where it was revealed he too was a former angel.

Easily the worst of all is Mikhail Gorbachev, who sits in a hotel room, observed by Cassiel, burbling cod philosophy about how “A secure world can’t be built on blood, only on harmony.” Coming from the former President of the Soviet Union, that’s more than faintly ludicrous. Oh, I get what Wenders was aiming for: between Wings and Faraway, the Berlin Wall had come down and Germany reunited, after 40 years of the Cold War, and the resulting uncertainty and spiritual chaos was clearly a major influence on him. Charitably, it probably had more cultural resonance at the time. But two decades later, Gorbachev’s presence now seems like little more than stunt casting of the highest order, and badly dated at that. Though I’d expect little else from the only former Russian President ever to appear in a commercial for Pizza Hut. Can’t see Joe Stalin doing that, somehow. Hell, or even Vladimir Putin.

It’s a mix of the transcendentally beautiful and philosophical, with the laughably pretentious, overblown and ludicrous. The opening shot is simply one of the best in all cinema, telescoping out to swirl and circle round the 200-foot tall Berlin Victory Column, with its angel statue on the top – on whose shoulder, Cassiel is perched. As in Wings, the film switches between black and white, for the angels’ perspective, and color for the human point of view, and the transitions are often breathtaking in their impact. The movie is generally at its best when there’s nothing much happening: Cassiel wandering the city, either listening in on the inhabitants’ thoughts, or after his transformation, coming to terms with being human, and all that entails, both good (the ability to enjoy a stuffed olive) and bad (it appears former angels have a weakness for hard liquor, and unfortunately little tolerance for it). And Sander is perfect for the role, his face capturing both the innocence and wisdom you would imagine such a character having.

But, oh dear… The more worldly aspects are just terrible, completely implausible and feeling like they strayed in from a bad pastiche of a Coen Brothers film. Witness the witless scene were Cassiel and Baker are held at gunpoint by Baker’s rival, who has Baker’s feet in a bucket of cement and is waiting by the side of a canal, for it to harden. Cassiel’s flailings somehow knock the rival into the canal, and his minions squawk about like headless chickens. It’s more or less impossible to take anyone seriously as a threat after that point, and that’s before we get to the bumbling security guards, talked by Colombo into searching for a non-existent contact lens and pretending to sleep. It’s such a sharp contrast to the more thoughtful and spiritual aspects, you are left to wonder if Wenders allowed a nine-year-old child to handle these sections of the script, and they completely destroy the atmosphere which had been lovingly created. A far greater consistency of tone is the main reason why Wings of Desire is the better movie.

La Bionda (1992)

Posted on June 22, 2014 by Jim McLennan

Dir: Sergio Rubini
Star: Sergio Rubini, Nastassja Kinski, Ennio Fantastichini, Veronica Lazar
a.k.a. The Blonde

This occupies a position somewhere between drama and thriller, and isn’t entirely satisfactory as either. The hero is Tommaso (Rubini), a young man studying watchmaking into Milan, who runs into a young woman named Christine (Kinski). Literally runs into her, when he’s pulling away from a set of traffic lights. She’s not badly hurt, but the incident appears to cause a bout of amnesia, and after being released from hospital, she turns up on his door-step, desperately seeking his help. What would you do if Nastassja rang your doorbell, saying she couldn’t remember anything? Exactly. Except, a few days later, she vanishes – either cured of her amnesia, or abandoning the pretense, the film largely avoids answering that question.

We then find out exactly what she was running from, and why the amnesia might have been faked. She’s hanging out with a highly-dubious character (Fantastichini) who is currently working with a bent cop, on a massive deal involving drugs stolen from police custody. He uses Christine as his go-between, while simultaneously denying her existence to all and sundry. But Christine is increasingly disenchanted with her position as a gangster’s moll, and has dreams of heading off to South America, to resume her career as a singer. Tommaso tracks down his temporary guest, but she initially spurns him. He won’t take no for an answer, and it this persistence that leads to the dramatic conclusion. For, while supposedly dropping off payment for the drugs in a locker, Christine is actually on her way to catch a flight abroad. An unfortunate phone-call from Tommaso blows the gaff on her scheme, alerting her “employer”, and all three sides of the love triangle head to the airport for a final confrontation on a lonely highway.

Rubini appears to be going for an Italo-noir feel to things here. But unlike, say, the spaghetti Westerns, which developed a distinctive look and became their own animal, this seems more concerned with aping the tropes and style of the genre. Particularly early on, it’s too self-absorbed for its own good. For example, there’s a scene on a subway, where Tommaso is with Christine, and is embarrassed when a disabled passenger urges him to occupy one of “their” seats. Which came as a surprise to me, because I hadn’t realized to that point Tommaso is actually disabled himself, it only becoming clear later that he walks with a pronounced limp. Was this me, not paying sufficient attention? [Let’s face it, whiny male leads in Kinski films probably aren’t getting much of my focus] Or the film being too understated for its own good? You’re also spending a lot of time watching people who are inherently unhappy, not do much to change their situations, which I tend to find irritating. Yeah, your life sucks: deal with it.

bionda3 Things perk up a bit for the finale, though you do have to suspend your disbelief significantly. Milan is not exactly a small city, and one can presume its airport is similarly-sized. But the three protagonists here miraculously arrive at the same place at the same time, as if this was a one-gate facility in rural Montana. They then whizz off down a highway which is also so completely deserted, you wonder if the rapture had occurred. There’s not even anyone to be seen, driving past on a moped going “Ciao!” [Bonus point to you if you get that reference] Well, right up until the end, when the 16-wheeler necessary to the plot suddenly appears, like a diesel-powered deus ex machina, to tidy up the loose ends, and do what Tommaso apparently is unable to. As an aside, should mention on the copy I was watching, the audio was significantly out of sync with the video. For most of the film, that didn’t matter, because it was subtitled anyway, so that was in sync. But during the action finale, you’d have Nastassja apparently screaming her lungs out, with nothing to be heard, save the roar of the engines. It actually added a kinda surreal beauty to proceedings, like a waking nightmare.

I do have to say, the cinematography was undeniably impressive, with Alessio Gelsini Torres doing a sumptuous job of capturing all sides of Milan, to the extent that it becomes another character in the film, and also making Kinski almost luminous in some scenes. Perhaps the most memorable scene is just after she has abandoned Tommaso, during an apparently happy shopping trip through town: his increasing concern, as he realizes she has indeed gone, is captured very nicely. However, moments like that are the exception rather than the rule, and I found all the characters here too self-absorbed to capture my interest or attention.

The Lost Films of Nastassja Kinski

Posted on May 26, 2014 by Jim McLennan

These are the films I have not yet been able to track down, or have only been able to do so in unsubtitled versions, which renders reviewing them basically impossible. If you have access to such copies, please let me know…

Unizhennye i oskorblyonnye (1991)

Posted on May 22, 2014 by Jim McLennan

Dir: Andrei A. Eshpai
Star: Nikita Mikhalkov, Nastassja Kinski, Victor Rakov, Sergey Perelygin
a.k.a. The Insulted and Injured

My editor, Alla Savranskaya, was working for the Moscow Film Festival in 1988 when producer Ibrahiim Moussa was a jury member. She told him my film had just entered production. He said, “Did you know my wife is Nastassja Kinski?” She said, “Yes.” He said, “Did you know her children are named after Dostoevskian heroes and that she dreams of playing Dostoevsky?”
— Andrei Eshpai

Following up on Torrents of Spring (based on a work by Ivan Turgenev) and Il sole anche di notte (Leo Tolstoy), Nastassja completed the set of films inspired by Russian authors with this period drama, based on a novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, which was first published in 1861. And, boy, is this one a downer. By the time you reach the end, you wonder why anyone chooses to read 19th-century Russian literature, unless it is to achieve a realization that, no matter how bad your own life is, it could always be worse. That’s clear from the opening speech by the narrator, Ivan (Perelygin): “I cannot help continually recalling all this bitter last year of my life. It was a gloomy story, one of those gloomy and distressing dramas, which are so often played out unseen.” When a 19th-century Russian author starts off by telling you this is going to be “one of those gloomy and distressing dramas,” you’d better make sure all sharp objects are well out of reach before proceeding further.

Ivan holds an unrequited candle for Natasha (Kinski), with whom he has been friends for a long time. It’s in this spirit of friendship that he helps her see her love, Alessia (Rakov) in secret. Subterfuge is necessary, because he comes from a poor but noble family, and his father (Mikhalkov) has plans for an arranged marriage to Katya, the daughter of a rich family, in order to restore their fortune. In order for this to happen, he has to wreck the relationship between Alessia and Natasha, and tries various ploys to that end, hoping either for Alessia to fall for his intended bride instead, or by using Ivan to drive a wedge between the couple. Adding to the difficulty of matters, Alessia and Natasha’s father are embroiled in a legal battle that has set them at each other’s throats. Meanwhile, Ivan has taken in a young girl, whom he saved from abuse, only to find that she has a connection to events at hand too.

As the quote at the top suggests, this was very much a passion project for Kinski, and remains the only Russian language film in her career. She is apparently “fluent” in Russian, according to the IMDb, but I’m not certain she wasn’t over-dubbed here, as her voice seems rather different from her other movies of the time. It’s not exactly much of a stretch for her to play the object of desire for two men, but she handles it well. Perhaps the standout moment is when she rises from her sickbed, to fiercely reject Alessia’s father. He has come visiting while she’s ill, and offers to give her back the money her father lost in the lawsuit, as “proof of his sympathy.” It’s just one of his many, similar schemes, and Mikhalkov is very effective in his role, playing someone who is unwilling to let any moral scruples get in the way of doing what he genuinely believes is best for the family. And he doesn’t care what you think.

The main problem here, is that none of the other characters can stand up to him, either in terms of the story or in cinematic presence. Alessia is a dim pawn to his father’s schemes, and perpetually vacillates between Natasha and Katya, burbling on to the former about the marvelous qualities of the latter: “If only you knew what a tender soul she is! When I think of her I always feel I become somehow better, cleverer, and somehow finer.” Ivan is probably worse still: I’m guessing Dostoyevsky took himself as inspiration, with Ivan being a struggling writer, but the way he follows Natasha around like a puppy, unable to voice his affection for her, is immensely irritating. It’s the behavior of a love-struck teenager, not an adult male, and the longer the film went on, the greater my urge to reach into the screen, back to the 19th century, and strangle Ivan.

Watching miserable people do miserable things to other miserable people, only to sink further into misery, all set against a historical backdrop that alternates between grinding poverty and moral disdain just isn’t my idea of entertainment. This kind of thing can work, shedding light on man’s inhumanity to man in a way that has relevance to a modern viewer, or simply creating memorable characters, that stick in the viewer’s mind. But it needs a clear goal as well as a firm hand to carry this off, and despite Mikhalkov’s solid work, Eshpai never gets very far off the ground, in either direction. Of the three adaptations of Russian literature, filmed in short order by Kinski, this is very much the least of the three. Perhaps a less apparently reverential approach toward the subject matter might have paid off better.

It was an incredible emotional drain and huge challenge because Dostoevsky is one of the deepest novelists in the history of literature, and the demands of the prose itself were enormous.
— Nastassja Kinski

Il sole anche di notte (1989)

Posted on April 25, 2014 by Jim McLennan

Dir: Paolo/Vittorio Taviani
Star: Julian Sands. Charlotte Gainsbourg, Massimo Bonetti, Nastassja Kinski
a.k.a. Night Sun

While separated by more than a century and half a continent in their settings, there are some interestingly similar resonances with Tess here. In both cases, we have a couple, engaged to be married across a class divide. However, a dalliance in the woman’s past derails the matrimony – though there’s more than a whiff of societal double-standard, with the man no less guilty of the same sort of thing. Still, stunned by the revelation, he abandons the woman in search of happiness and fulfillment elsewhere – only to discover he might well have been better off showing some more tolerance.

Of course, it’s certainly not an exact parallel. The class divide here goes the other way, with promising but low-born young soldier Sergio Giuramondo (Sands) getting an arranged marriage to the noble Cristina Del Carpio (Kinski) for career purposes, at the behest of the king. And, in this case, there wasn’t any rape or coercion involved: Cristina and the king were actually lovers for a year, which is why she’s willing to consider Sergio as a match and marry below her station. Her fiancé is so upset by the revelation, he enters the priesthood (rather than heading for the colonies like Angel Clare), only to find himself the clerical equivalent of a zoo exhibit, a soldier turned priest trotted out for the amusement of his former colleagues.

Realizing it’s not the escape for which he hoped, Sergio takes the place of a hermit in a remote hovel, only to find neither the rest of the world still unwilling to leave him alone. Another aristocratic woman shows up in on his doorstep in the middle of a rainstorm, and attempts to seduce him – his resistance involves an axe and a body-part, shall we say. Sergio also is credited with restoring the power of speech to a brigand’s son, and When word of that miracle gets out, any hope he might have for a peaceful life pretty much gets up and leaves. The church moves to take advantage of its newest religious superstar, and it’s not long before there is a constant stream of supplicants awaiting his blessing – it’s a religious groupie (for want of a better phrase) that eventually proves Sergio’s downfall.

Kinski doesn’t get much more than a couple of scenes here, but they are pivotal, setting the hero on his path to solitude. When we first see Cristina and Sergio, they’re preparing for their marriage, scheduled to take place the following day. While he confesses to having originally approached her out of self-interest, saying “I was thinking of my career… I wanted to be part of the aristocratic society that excluded me,” he has now genuinely fallen for her, saying “How paltry all that seems next to you.” Their conversation is interrupted by her being requested to sing, but the audience’s attention in turn is stolen by the arrival of a gift from the king: a pair of mechanical birds in a cage. It’s this which triggers Cristina’s confession of her affair with the monarch, telling Sergio, “Everyone knew about it. That’s the only reason my family accepted you.” He leaves without another word, and we never see her again, though at times it seems every other woman he encounters, is an echo of his first true love.

In this area, I note particularly the presence of Charlotte Gainsbourg, who doesn’t just resemble Kinski, but was also the offspring of a notorious European father. In her case, Dad was a one-time lover of Brigitte Bardot, Serge Gainsbourg – of particular resonance, I note rumblings that have surrounded the Gainsbourgs ever since they released a song called Lemon Incest when she was 12. That aside, the rest of the film is largely Sands’ to carry, and I’m fine with that. I’ve enjoyed his performances in a wide ranges of films, even cheerful B-movies like Warlock, and he gives the film here a spiritual center that’s extremely solid. I can’t say I’ve seen any other of the Taviani brothers’ films, but on the evidence of this, they would seem worth checking out: they and cinematographer Giuseppe Lanci have an eye for the pastoral landscapes which, again, is reminiscent of Tess. Particular praise here should also go to composer Nicola Piovani, who seems to be a frequent collaborator with the Tavianis, and whose soundtrack here provides an excellent companion to the storyline.

Like Torrents of Spring, this is based on a work of late 19th-century Russian literature, in this case, Leo Tolstoy’s Father Sergius, although the hero in the original short story was a prince himself, rather than a career soldier. As with Torrents, I do have an issue with the ending, which sees the hero do not much more than exit, stage left, without any true sense of resolution. However, it works rather better here, as Sergio returns to his roots, and appears to discover that that the true secret of happiness is simply wanting what you have, rather than yearning or striving for some idealized existence, that can never be achieved. It’s quite poignant, in particular that Sergio has to go through so much pain, both emotional and physical, to come to the realization that the happiness he sought was probably to be found with the woman he abandoned, in pursuit of an apparently mythical Nirvana.