Alexander Sokurov told a terrible “Tale” about the afterlife of Stalin

The International Film Festival “An Example of Intonation” has ended in St. Petersburg, inspired by Alexander Sokurov. In Sevcable Porto, a screening of his new film “Fairy Tale” took place, and this took place in a section of cable packaging adapted for a cinema hall. The afterlife of Comrade Stalin through the eyes of Sokurov once again makes it clear that everything in this world is decay, no matter what someone thinks about himself.

The path to the Russian audience was long. The world premiere of “The Tale” took place in August last year at the International Film Festival in Locarno, Switzerland, followed by other foreign festivals and distribution. Once Sokurov called his picture almost a cartoon. Partly so it also is. The “Fairy Tale” is based on a newsreel, from which the figures of world leaders are removed and immersed in a fantastic otherworldly space, referring to Dante’s Divine Comedy, which has long excited Sokurov’s imagination. With the help of computer graphics, historical figures come to life. I would like to ask the author about how this was done, but Alexander Nikolayevich did not come to the announced meeting with the audience, because he felt unwell.

In “The Tale” he continues the conversation started in his documentaries, feature films “Taurus”, “Moloch”, “The Sun”, the heroes of which were Lenin, Hitler, the Japanese Emperor Hirohito. Sokurov’s theme of man and power has long occupied. The “Fairy Tale” begins with Stalin lying on his deathbed, drowning in flowers. He starts moving, scratching, opens his eyes. On the next bed lies Jesus Christ. He, like a child, trusts in God the Father, who is somewhere nearby, hidden behind a huge gate, where the heroes of Sokurov have no way. The massive door just barely opens, and there …

Everything takes place in the afterlife, where the leaders of the Second World War found their last shelter – Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler and the most harmless of them, Churchill. There is only Roosevelt, because he is an American. And the conversation is, as Sokurov said in Locarno, about the Old World, of which he considers himself a part, being a Russian. Whether all this has anything to do with Dante’s Purgatory is a big question. Who repented and for what? It seems no one. Bolsheviks and communists, Germans and Marxists are all around.

The afterlife is reminiscent of an old engraving with rocks as if dotted with cells. There is also a toilet bowl with three barrels resembling balloons, two urinals. It turns out that in the incorporeal world they are needed. They don’t need Stalin’s snot. When he takes out a handkerchief and begins to blow his nose, Hitler asks: “Stalin, where did you get snot from? Why are they here for you? Joseph Vissarionovich rises to the podium of the Lenin Mausoleum, but not alone. He seemed to split in two. Everything is multiplied here. If the hero is present in three of his versions at the same time, then he is dressed in different clothes. Other world leaders will rise to the podium. But the most incredible thing happens at the foot of the Mausoleum, where a sea of ​​disembodied hands rages, as if from X-rays. These are the hands of the dead, reaching out to those who decided the fate of the world. Hitler is touched by his people: “It’s a miracle, Germans, that you found me among millions.” Either the Fuhrer or Mussolini will say that in order for the people to be healthy, it is necessary to fight every 25 years. But the officers who remained lying on the battlefields send curses to Hitler in weak voices. Some soldier from nothingness will give him a bad look. But Hitler will not notice this. He is busy with other things. He sees Jews everywhere, in Stalin he also sees a Caucasian Jew.

“Paradise fog” covers the four leaders, and their faded shadows wander in his milky shroud, going crazy from her. They double, triple, keep their distance, pass as if through each other, express themselves in their own quotations. Stalin will offer to play interrogation, but no interaction is possible. This is how often the dead are shown in the movies. Among them is Napoleon on horseback, taken from Sokurov’s Francophonie, and other notable figures of the past. Everyone pronounces monologues, turns to each other, most often to Stalin, but there is no dialogue as such. Each of the characters speaks their own language. For example, Mussolini was voiced by the Italian conductor Fabio Mastrangelo, who has been working in Russia for a long time. Stalin speaks Georgian. The off-screen text in Russian is read by Sokurov himself, so that all the characters speak for us in his voice. But it is important to feel their polyphony going in the background.

“How is my beloved Russian people doing there?”, “God, how beautiful, but the Kremlin is better,” says Stalin. Many phrases could break into quotations. Stalin is called a tyrant and an atheist, his nasty clothes are discussed. Hitler regrets that he trusted Stalin, recalls his trip to the Kremlin, where he was given water, but he did not get drunk. Mussolini will say that Stalin smells like a Bolshevik. We often talk about smells here. “You smell like musty meat, and I like fresh. They shot him and ate him right away.” From Napoleon, for example, smells of Cologne water, and from Stalin, not only a Bolshevik, but also a sheep.

Boring in that world. One joy for the old people is a carousel resembling a windmill, but even that will collapse. Someone will joke: “Call Cervantes.” He knew a lot about the windmills that Don Quixote fought. “Ah, carousel! It’s a pity for the carousel, ”Stalin grieves.

There will be a sudden loud sound like an alarm. The fog will instantly dissipate, and the human sea will begin to move, starting, like waves, to break against stones. Everything will drown in the rumble of the initially faceless crowd, from which at some point the faces of the bride of a German soldier, the little daughter of a communist, will begin to emerge. Hitler will say: “Everything will be forgotten and start over.” Elderly spectators, children of the war by age, were amazed by this phrase, they discussed it for a long time after watching it. I remember one of these old women, who confessed before the beginning of the picture that she had never tasted rosé wine. Just a detail. But it is the details that are so important in life and cinema. In the polyphony of a black-and-white film with rare splashes of color, there are many of them in the lonely voices of a person and subhumans, echoes of folk songs and Wagner, whose niece Hitler could marry, the phrase: “Don’t listen to Sokurov, go ahead!”. Not everyone is ready to hear it.