3
Kira Muratova by Jane Taubman Review by: Helen Ferguson The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 84, No. 2 (Apr., 2006), pp. 322-323 Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School of Slavonic and East European Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4214278 . Accessed: 15/06/2014 02:04 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School of Slavonic and East European Studies are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Slavonic and East European Review. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 188.72.126.108 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 02:04:12 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Kira Muratovaby Jane Taubman

Embed Size (px)

Citation preview

Kira Muratova by Jane TaubmanReview by: Helen FergusonThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 84, No. 2 (Apr., 2006), pp. 322-323Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4214278 .

Accessed: 15/06/2014 02:04

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School of Slavonic and EastEuropean Studies are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Slavonic andEast European Review.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 188.72.126.108 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 02:04:12 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

322 SEER, 84, 2, 2006

Revolt (Proshkin, I999); 'Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk' became Katia Izmailova (Todorovskii, I994); The Idiot became Down House (Kachanov, 200I). All three films represent responses to rather than adaptations of their originals, part of what the volume overall makes clear is an ongoing and productive dialogue.

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures JOSEPHINE WOLL

Howard Universit, Washington, D.C.

Taubman, Jane. KI-ra Muratova. KINOfiles Filmmaker's Companions, 4. I. B. Tauris, London and New York, 2005. vii + I25 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Filmography. f 4.95 (paperback).

THE publication of this fourth title in the KINOfiles Filmmaker's Companions series comes only a few months after Kira Muratova's seventieth birthday and the release of her thirteenth feature, The Tuner (Nastroishchik, 2004). As such, the book is a timely celebration of the life and works of this most idiosyncratic figure. Nearly forty years after she directed her first film, Muratova's contri- bution has been recognized by the film world: she was awarded the Andrzej Wajda Freedom Prize in 2000. Internationally, however, the limited release of her films means that her voice is not heard alongside such other represen- tatives of contemporary Russian (language) cinema as Aleksandr Sokurov. Muratova's films are not easily accessible to a non-Russian-speaking audience, as only a few are subtitled and the majority of published criticism and interviews is in Russian. This survey of her career, the 'first in any Western language', will certainly help to open the works of this important director up to a wider audience.

By moving beyond the films that form the Muratova canon on university syllabi and providing detailed plot synopses for the commercially unavailable and lesser-known works, Taubman offers students enough information to make initial judgements on developments and continuities across her body of work. In addition to providing this contextual framework, translated 'tasters' of criticism, and a sampler of Muratova quotations in the final chapter, the book is also (thanks in part to the co-operation of the director herself) a good source of anecdotal information about the bureaucratic and financial obstacles encountered in making and releasing the films, their fate at film festivals, and Muratova's relationship with her troupe, including the iconic Renata Litvinova. This wealth of extra-filmic material, however, serves to highlight the limited attention Taubman offers to the films as cinematic texts. She fails to grapple with the films themselves, to penetrate their shifting aesthetic and elucidate what makes them so original, beguiling and challenging. Taubman's discussion of the films is confined largely to description of narrative 'events', an approach that is inadequate for dealing with the cinematic fullness of these sophisticated and formally experimental works.

Working under the constraints of the Soviet era, seeing her work criticized, deformed and shelved, from the very beginning Muratova embodied the anxi- eties of language and expression in her films. While Taubman is comfortable when dealing with the screenplay or teasing out Muratova's myriad literary

This content downloaded from 188.72.126.108 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 02:04:12 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

REVIEWS 323

or musical references, she is reluctant to engage with the films beyond the level of spoken expression. Yet relationships in Muratova's films are marked by interrupted communication and dialogue that obfuscates, and so meaning is articulated in the visual filmic component: in the spatial relationships between objects and characters within the frame, such as the barriers (foliage, veils, screens) and layers (make-up, wigs, theatrical gestures) that conceal them. It is only by actively 'reading' the visual elements that the viewer can fully under- stand both the intricacies of Muratova's exploration of her subjects and her formal mode.

Rather than treat the visual elements of the films as a crucial part of the semantic and structural whole, Taubman considers them merely in terms of 'aesthetic pleasure' (p. 48): Muratova, she remarks, offers the viewer 'much to please the eye' (p. 7I) and 'Ophelia' is 'beautiful to watch' (p. 8i). Regarding an intriguing sequence in the second part of Three Stories (Tri istorii, I997), a repeated shot of Litvinova tracing her finger back and forth over the detail on a marble fireplace, Taubman is nonplussed: 'There is something erotic about this sequence and its twin, though it is difficult to say what' (p. 8i). Since she is unwilling to tackle the ambiguities inherent in the works, most of the analytical insights offered by Taubman are those of the Russian critics she cites.

Taubman fails to grasp that being a 'visual artist' (p. 95) is not about simply making things 'look beautiful', but about a profound interest in the process of looking and by observing the way man relates to moves through, touches, shapes his physical and material surroundings, discerning the intimate con- nections between them. The significance of visual experience in Muratova's work is signalled by the use of longueurs (lingering shots of an electric fan turn- ing, patterned rugs, a cat on a wall); the subordination of the dramatic to the aesthetic (most obviously in Enthusiasms [Uvlechen'ia, I994]) and the emphasis on the physicality of her actors, a Kunstkammer of striking types with bizarre tics, gestures and costumes.

This first book on Muratova in English will become a fixture on Russian cinema reading lists, though one might have hoped for a more probing introduction to a fascinating body of work.

London HELEN FERGUSON

Shevtsova, Maria. Dodin and the Maly Drama Theatre: Process to Perfonnance. Routledge, London and New York, 2004. XViii + 231 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. /26.oo.

ALONG with several other Russian touring companies Lev Dodin and the St Petersburg Maly Drama Theatre have forged a considerable international reputation for their work. An audience almost cannot fail to be impressed by the sheer physical impact but evident discipline, training and commitment to ensemble of this company. They have somehow managed, despite the traumas Russia has faced in recent years, to maintain working conditions that many

This content downloaded from 188.72.126.108 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 02:04:12 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions