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Zhila-byla
Odna Baba
(2011;
Russia; aka "There Was A Simple Woman")
by Johnny Web (Uncle
Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)
This
film asks the question, "What was it like to be a
Russian peasant woman in the Tambov region between
1909 and 1921?" and answers by showing that it
sucked worse than just about anything else has ever
sucked in human existence. In that time of troubles,
Russia went through WW1, the overthrow of the Tsar,
the Soviet-Polish war, and several years of civil
war. The era was even more violent in the Tambov
region, because the locals counter-revolted against
the Bolsheviks, who then suppressed them
mercilessly. The Bolsheviks' barbaric response to
the Tambov Rebellion was a favorite subject of
Solzhenitsyn.
Even when the villages were relatively unscathed by
fighting, a woman's life could be an unremitting
hell in those days. Married to a drunk, beaten,
whipped, raped at the pleasure of her husband and
his family, the "simple woman" in the film was a
virtual slave. Life was miserable in summer,
unbearable in winter. If she thought her existence
couldn't get any worse, she was wrong. When the
soldiers came, her life was pretty much non-stop
rape, except for the occasional break for a beating
or some starvation or the deaths of her children or
for her home and village to be burned down.
And those were the good times.
In the film's climax, an entire village is destroyed
by a flood.
This is pretty much the most depressing existence
you will ever see on film. And - get this - the
Russian Wikipedia page says (translated), "According
to historians, the events in the film have a
documentary basis, although in reality it was even
worse." In other words, this film gave us the
sugar-coated version of her existence. It's
difficult for us in America to imagine how much
worse it could have been.
Writer/director Andrey Smirnov spent a good part of
his adult life creating this 2011 film. His previous
film came out in 1979, and he worked on this one
intermittently from 1987 onward. He did a vast
amount of research on the Tambov region of Russia,
having visited the region several times to study the
customs, culture and dialect of the local
Mordva-Moksha people, a distinct ethnic group. He
shot the entire film on location in the actual area
where the action took place, but didn't take off the
lens caps until he had made the principal actors
live in the area long enough to learn to mimic the
speech of the locals. One of the actors, who did not
speak English, recalled that he once had to perform
a role phonetically in English, and found that
easier than performing in the local Tambov dialect,
which is barely comprehensible to a speaker of
standard Russian.
The director himself said, "Я думаю, это кино не для
Запада." ("I don't think this film is for the
West.") I'd say he's nailed that one, in the sense
that Western audiences generally seek some elements
of entertainment as the sweet juice necessary to
swallow the bitter pill of an unpleasant history
lesson. This film offers only the pill. I can't
speak for the entire West, but I can say, "Я думаю,
это кино не для меня."("It sure ain't for me,
sparky.") I never became inured to the brutality in
the film. It's an unpleasant and uncomfortable film
to watch, and I wasn't especially interested in the
obscure Tambov Rebellion in the first place. On the
other hand, I was fascinated by the historically
accurate portrayal of village life, especially of a
wedding ceremony and the accompanying celebration.
The cinematography in this film is dazzling, so the
film may be fascinating if you want to learn about
the customs and costumes of one part of rural Russia
at the beginning of the 20th century, as portrayed
by a man who spent a quarter of a century
researching the details.
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Our Grade:
If you are not familiar with our grading system, you
need to read the
explanation, because the grading is not linear.
For example, by our definition, a C is solid and a C+
is a VERY good movie. There are very few Bs and As.
Based on our descriptive system, this film is a:
C
Heartfelt, well-researched, and competent, but
extremely unpleasant to watch.
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