Beanpole (Kantemir Balagov, 2019)

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nitin
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Re: Beanpole (Kantemir Balagov, 2019)

#26 Post by nitin » Thu Oct 24, 2019 10:09 pm

zedz wrote:
Thu Oct 24, 2019 3:21 pm
Speaking of trauma, this features one of the most heartbreaking scenes I've seen in a long time:
SpoilerShow
when Iya has a seizure and inadvertently kills the child
Masha's 'interview' towards the end is also a really remarkable scene, and something I didn't expect to see in the film.

Further to therewillbeblus' post: the opening shot of the film signals with absolute clarity that this film is doing exactly what he claims it is.
The ‘interview’ scenes was incredible and like you, caught me by surprise.

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Re: Beanpole (Kantemir Balagov, 2019)

#27 Post by nitin » Thu Oct 24, 2019 10:13 pm

Nasir, please send me a PM with your response.

For the record, I didn’t find anything offensive in your post but did find it curious as I thought it was a peculiar reading of the movie. Would like to hear more even if we disagree.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Beanpole (Kantemir Balagov, 2019)

#28 Post by therewillbeblus » Thu Oct 24, 2019 10:17 pm

zedz wrote:
Thu Oct 24, 2019 9:54 pm
Could you refresh my memory on Masha's 'interview' please?
I mean the scene towards the end where she
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meets her boyfriend's parents and counters their condescension with her very own scorched earth policy, rubbing their noses in their prejudices.
It's a weird mix of catharsis, despair and pitch-black comedy.
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Perhaps I read the scene incorrectly, but a lot of the power of that exchange for me came from the way it took unexpected turns. Masha goes to meet her fiancé’s parents, only to be met with skepticism and assumptions that she had ‘used’ men via sexual relationships throughout the war, which we (at least I) initially believed to be false and frustrating judgments. Then Masha reveals that this is true, but as a form of resilience in keeping herself safe, and alive. The twist was surprising because it transcended expectations by supporting this off-color claim and simultaneously allowing for a grey and empowering response to rationalizing the behavior as a strength, not a weakness as a lesser film might go with, or not allow for its main character to concede to such behavior in the first place. A further twist then comes when the mother acknowledges Masha’s admittance as the strength that it is and advises her not to marry her son, as he would use her too.

Of course, I suppose the scene could be read as Masha lying in her rebuttal to the condensation, but the slow reveal as she’s responding with an intensity that is angry, cathartic, empowering and also honest in supporting the judgments as truth in content but not in detail, only added to the power of the scene, defying expectations on multiple levels, along with hitting mixed tones as zedz points out.

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zedz
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Re: Beanpole (Kantemir Balagov, 2019)

#29 Post by zedz » Thu Oct 24, 2019 10:25 pm

therewillbeblus wrote:
Thu Oct 24, 2019 10:17 pm
zedz wrote:
Thu Oct 24, 2019 9:54 pm
Could you refresh my memory on Masha's 'interview' please?
I mean the scene towards the end where she
SpoilerShow
meets her boyfriend's parents and counters their condescension with her very own scorched earth policy, rubbing their noses in their prejudices.
It's a weird mix of catharsis, despair and pitch-black comedy.
SpoilerShow
Perhaps I read the scene incorrectly, but a lot of the power of that exchange for me came from the way it took unexpected turns. Masha goes to meet her fiancé’s parents, only to be met with skepticism and assumptions that she had ‘used’ men via sexual relationships throughout the war, which we (at least I) initially believed to be false and frustrating judgments. Then Masha reveals that this is true, but as a form of resilience in keeping herself safe, and alive. The twist was surprising because it transcended expectations by supporting this off-color claim and simultaneously allowing for a grey and empowering response to rationalizing the behavior as a strength, not a weakness as a lesser film might go with, or not allow for its main character to concede to such behavior in the first place. A further twist then comes when the mother acknowledges Masha’s admittance as the strength that it is and advises her not to marry her son, as he would use her too.

Of course, I suppose the scene could be read as Masha lying in her rebuttal to the condensation, but the slow reveal as she’s responding with an intensity that is angry, cathartic, empowering and also honest in supporting the judgments as truth in content but not in detail, only added to the power of the scene, defying expectations on multiple levels, along with hitting mixed tones as zedz points out.
I'm agnostic about the rival readings which you spell out so well. I think they both work on narrative and emotional levels, and they both deliver the same exhilarating slash-and-burn empowerment. Your "further twist" was a delightful and mature touch that took me by surprise and made the entire scene much more complex and powerful.

nitin
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Re: Beanpole (Kantemir Balagov, 2019)

#30 Post by nitin » Thu Oct 24, 2019 10:55 pm

Yes, the ‘further twist’ and the mother’s responses more generally as the conversation went on were organic yet completely surprising.

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Black Hat
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Re: Beanpole (Kantemir Balagov, 2019)

#31 Post by Black Hat » Fri Oct 25, 2019 1:28 am

zedz wrote:
Thu Oct 24, 2019 9:54 pm
Black Hat wrote:
Thu Oct 24, 2019 8:42 pm
zedz wrote:
Thu Oct 24, 2019 3:21 pm
Speaking of trauma, this features one of the most heartbreaking scenes I've seen in a long time:
SpoilerShow
when Iya has a seizure and inadvertently kills the child
SpoilerShow
are we sure that was a seizure? or that it was inadvertent? I feel like Balagov said something different on the former, but could be misremembering.
The sound design. And I think there was a black out. I don't believe there's any narrative support for it being deliberate.
Ah I totally took the sound design as something different, that is really something.


zedz wrote:
Thu Oct 24, 2019 3:21 pm
I mean the scene towards the end where she
SpoilerShow
meets her boyfriend's parents and counters their condescension with her very own scorched earth policy, rubbing their noses in their prejudices.
It's a weird mix of catharsis, despair and pitch-black comedy.
Of course! I can't believe I totally forgot about this. This scene was almost like a different movie, but yet not and really served to open the internal claustrophobia which permeated throughout the film amongst its characters.

How do we feel about...
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the mother by the end of this? Does she like Masha? A begrudging respect? Pity? Admiration? Jealousy? I feel like what's great about this scene is you could make an argument for it being all of the above and more or none.
Additionally
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Clever how the boyfriend, the film's only happy go lucky bordering on cheerful re: oblivious character would come from a privileged background.
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The whole thing with doctor was full of conflicting emotions too.
I think ultimately the point of the film was, in war and after it, we do the best we can to survive.

Definitely must get my hands on the book, I hope there's an English translation available.

nitin
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Re: Beanpole (Kantemir Balagov, 2019)

#32 Post by nitin » Fri Oct 25, 2019 3:18 am

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Re the mother, I actually thought there was mutual respect by the end of the scene and basically a motherly gesture by the imparting of experiential wisdom to Masha re what the future would hold if she married her son.

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Black Hat
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Re: Beanpole (Kantemir Balagov, 2019)

#33 Post by Black Hat » Fri Oct 25, 2019 3:20 am

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yeah I landed on that as well, even felt like what came before was a test, a hazing even then entirely genuine

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DarkImbecile
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Re: Beanpole (Kantemir Balagov, 2019)

#34 Post by DarkImbecile » Fri Oct 25, 2019 9:57 am

Black Hat wrote:
Fri Oct 25, 2019 1:28 am
Definitely must get my hands on the book, I hope there's an English translation available.
There is; Balagov brought one to the Telluride screening and explained how ignorant he had been of women’s experience of the war until he stumbled across it.

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Black Hat
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Re: Beanpole (Kantemir Balagov, 2019)

#35 Post by Black Hat » Fri Oct 25, 2019 11:04 am

Thank you! Yeah he mentioned that in New York too. He's a really humble guy, rare.


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DarkImbecile
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Re: Beanpole (Kantemir Balagov, 2019)

#37 Post by DarkImbecile » Mon Dec 09, 2019 5:46 pm


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therewillbeblus
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Re: Beanpole (Kantemir Balagov, 2019)

#38 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Dec 10, 2019 3:36 pm

I've been thinking about this film a lot lately, particularly through the lens of Nasir's comments on the characters' peculiar actions, which I had initially overlooked through a therapeutic perspective of accepting the internal logic of trauma without actually assessing the idiosyncrasies as abnormal. Now, having tried to meet the film from a slightly different place of acknowledging the actions as peculiar, I'm even more impressed. In order to really describe why this film in particular is so revolutionary, I have to think about the history of how we define trauma. Trauma has been previously and is still often recognized as solely past experience, with people saying that one "experienced trauma," in the past tense. However, today we know that people are "living with trauma." Trauma is the present experience based on "traumatic events" perhaps, but it's not something that goes away or that people are experiencing other symptoms as a result from, it is what is permeating the existence in the present. Balagov not only understands this but somehow decided to face it with a courage not even other phenomenal films have dared or chosen to do. I'm thinking of Cold War as an example of a great film where Pawlikowski uses a structure intentionally populated with blind spots to have time jumps bleed into one another as he cannot properly fill in the gaps of each behavioral path peppered with characteristic eccentricities that signify behaviors and psychologies warped by trauma. Pawlikowski's film is admirable for giving us these doses of characterization and humble for not going to depths that he doesn't feel prepared for in fleshing out and meditating on deep dynamics beyond these glimpses.

However Balagov, for some reason, finds a way to present a series of uninterrupted dynamics of individuals each uniquely experiencing trauma and unleashes them wild on the milieu for us to try to make sense of, which we can do through first relating to familiars in their humanity and then by engaging with the characters as surrogates given that empathetic access point, only to be swayed towards unexpected places based around their own invisible traumas we can only briefly see sparkles of underneath the blanket of resilience. It's such a bold and seemingly impossible feat, to refuse to hold our hand through some of these scenes, such as all the internal logic and playing out of the
SpoilerShow
plan for Iya to have sex to provide Masha with another child. The blurring of consent, coercion, rationale, the ethics behind this, and the sources for each party's participation in such an act is all so distanced and unexplained and yet does not sacrifice the intimacy demanded of us by these characters. We can feel why they are acting as they do throughout all the turns of the subplot even if we can't accurately dictate why with analytical means.
As a result we feel a warmth when we expect to feel cold towards action, and are not offered an opportunity to pass judgment because we don't know their distinct traumas. We are kept in an allotted space that is constricted by nature but one that is so familiar to that of taking in the actions of another outside of a movie theatre where we expect our limitations to mastery, that we feel a strange safety. This should be the most uncomfortable viewing experience due to a lack of tools to understand what Balagov is doing from our roles as spectator, other than something that should be intrusive to our abilities, but he supports them all the same with a surge of compassion, and tugs us from the sleep of viewership into participation with these characters as real people, amplifying our abilities as viewers, providing us with these tools, and allowing us to accept these characters through a new dimension of humanist empathy. I'm rambling now, but this is one of those rare movies where I can't help but look back and think, "I didn't know you could do that."

nitin
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Re: Beanpole (Kantemir Balagov, 2019)

#39 Post by nitin » Thu Dec 12, 2019 4:18 am

It is that rare modern film that doesn’t just offer a mere miserabilist view of the world in depicting what are most definitely miserable circumstances. Mainly because of that compassion and empathy towards its characters that you refer to.

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zedz
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Re: Beanpole (Kantemir Balagov, 2019)

#40 Post by zedz » Thu Dec 12, 2019 3:08 pm

nitin wrote:
Thu Dec 12, 2019 4:18 am
It is that rare modern film that doesn’t just offer a mere miserabilist view of the world in depicting what are most definitely miserable circumstances. Mainly because of that compassion and empathy towards its characters that you refer to.
I think another key characteristic of the film is that, despite the surrounding tragedy, the characters have genuine agency. (I think this is one of the reasons the 'interview' scene is so effective and surprising). In other words, this is not a Ken Loach film where everything is a downward spiral after one misstep (because capitalism).

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Beanpole (Kantemir Balagov, 2019)

#41 Post by therewillbeblus » Thu Dec 12, 2019 5:59 pm

Well put zedz, it’s that delicate attention to this agency that drives the effectiveness of what I was struggling to describe

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lzx
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Re: The Films of 2019

#42 Post by lzx » Thu Jan 23, 2020 3:40 am

DarkImbecile wrote:
Wed Oct 16, 2019 11:12 pm
Has anyone seen Balagov’s previous film, Tesnota? Curious to see whether/how much of a departure Beanpole is from that film in terms of its tone and maturity.
Looks like Kino has picked up Tesnota as well, though I couldn't find a page for it on their website. This is great news - here's hoping it'll get a proper theatrical run.

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Re: Beanpole (Kantemir Balagov, 2019)

#43 Post by DarkImbecile » Thu Jan 23, 2020 10:22 am

Very exciting; hopefully they’re able to secure some interesting features. Thanks for the heads up!

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Re: Beanpole (Kantemir Balagov, 2019)

#44 Post by DarkImbecile » Thu Jan 30, 2020 2:35 pm


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Re: Beanpole (Kantemir Balagov, 2019)

#45 Post by DarkImbecile » Wed Feb 19, 2020 2:54 pm

Bilge Ebiri interviews Balagov for Vulture:
Balagov: I never knew that I wanted to be a director, to be honest. It came spontaneously. My father bought me a DSLR camera with a video function, and I just started to make YouTube series with my friends. About 10 minutes each. It took me one year of my life, and after that I decided I wanted something new. A friend of mine advised me to write to Alexander Sokurov [the acclaimed Russian director who runs a prestigious film school]. I didn’t know anything about him. I sent him the links and he took me on the third year.

Ebiri: Was Sokurov’s film school where your cinematic tastes expanded?

Balagov: While we were studying I saw a lot of movies. Like Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Metropolis, M. Fritz Lang, Bresson. When I saw the French New Wave, especially Godard, I was blown away. And the old Godard, not the latest. Breathless made a lot of impact on me.

Ebiri: What are your favorite films and filmmakers now?

Balagov: Marcel Carné, Visconti, Bicycle Thieves. All the classics. Among recent ones, I was truly inspired by Alice Rohrwacher’s last film, Lazzaro Felice. Also, Jia Zhangke’s Ash Is Purest White I found really moving. The greatest experience I had recently was when I saw Wanda directed by Barbara Loden. I think this is my favorite female character right now, besides maybe Breaking the Waves.

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