Holy Martyr Abraham of the Volga Bulghars

Saint Abraham of Bolgar

Today, the calends of April, is the feast-day in the Holy Orthodox Church of another Turkic martyr for the Christian faith, Saint Abraham, a Volga Bulghar (that is to say, the ancestors of today’s Tatars and Bashkirs) merchant who was convicted of apostasy of Islâm and executed for his faith in the year 1229. His relics were primarily venerated in Vladimir, where they were translated on the fourth of March the following year.

Abraham [or Avraamii, or ’Ibrâhîm] was from the state of Idel Bolgar, the polity of the Volga Bulghars. He lived, in fact, in the city of Bolgar, which had been the main capital of the Volga Bulghars from the eighth to the tenth centuries – though by Abraham’s time, most of the administrative functions of the Bulghar khans had been transferred to the settlement of Bilyar. At first, Abraham was a devout and sincere Muslim of the Hanafî school, noble-minded and generous-hearted. He inherited great wealth from his parents; his father was also a wealthy merchant. It is said of him in his hagiography that even before his conversion:

Although having many possessions, he gave to poor beggars [money], the hungry food, the thirsty drink, the naked clothing; he visited the sick, and met all sorts of needs among the needy.

Although mercantile pursuits are not particularly compatible with the spiritual life (or indeed, with morality in general), and pecuniary securities seem more to stifle the longings of the spirit than to satisfy them, they do not seem to be a barrier to one who sees and seeks beyond the temptations of worldly riches. This Abraham seems to have been one example, and the more of his own wealth he gave away, the more the Lord multiplied his treasure in heaven. Abraham also studied the Scriptures on his own, and grew dissatisfied with the faith in which he had been raised. Curious about other faiths, and having been in contact with merchants from the petty duchies of Rus’ bordering Idel Bolgar – that is to say, the Principalities of Vladimir-Suzdal and Murom – he gradually came to be convinced of the truths of Christianity. He asked his friends among the Rus’ merchants to bring him to a priest to be baptised.

Once he took baptism, Saint Abraham, who was taken with a fiery passion for his newfound faith, for the purposes of asceticism began to wear heavy iron bands around his wrists. Unlike, for example, Saint ’Abu al-Tiflîsi, our Bulghar saint went through no period of secrecy as a confessor of Christ, but instead began to profess his belief openly among his people. He redoubled his gifts to the poor, needy and sick; and he began to preach Christianity openly in the great bazâr in the middle of the town of Bolgar. His fellow-tribesmen were amused with him at first, and some of them went to the bazâr to debate with him on the merits of Islâm.

At length, they grew bewildered and frustrated with him: how could such a man, they wondered, blessed with every lawful benefit in the world by the grace of God, turn his back on the faith of his youth and the faith of his people? They brought his family to exhort him and plead with him to renounce Christ, but he would not. When this failed they began to threaten him, and then to beat him – and this they did so harshly that not a single part of Saint Abraham’s body that they did not wound or bruise. They delivered him up to a magistrate in Bolgar, and before him too, Abraham boldly confessed the risen Christ. The magistrate lost no time in convicting Saint Abraham of apostasy, and sentencing him to death. Then his countrymen took him outside the city to a spot on the bank of the Volga on the first of April, and had him quartered and then beheaded with the sword. Thus the martyr received his heavenly crown.

The same merchants of Rus’ from Vladimir and Murom who had brought him to be baptised, had also witnessed his execution, and were granted leave to take the severed body of Saint Abraham. They did this and they laid him in an Orthodox cemetery nearby. At once the tomb of the holy Bulghar martyr began to show signs of divine favour, and he began to be venerated locally as a saint. Not even a year later, on the ninth of March, it so happened that emissaries from the Principality of Vladimir-Suzdal made a successful bid to have the relics of Saint Abraham translated from his tomb in Bolgar to Vladimir.

When the saint arrived in Vladimir, Saint Yuri II Vsevolodovich, the third son of Vsevolod III ‘the Big Nest’ and the prince of Vladimir, came out with his wife Agata and his son Vsevolod, along with Bishop Mitrofan and all the assembled clergy, to meet the relics. These relics were interred in the Princess Monastery of the Holy Assumption in Vladimir, with great ceremony and celebration. It is said in the akathist to his memory, that his relics gave off a sweet fragrance when they were borne up. It is a testament to the universality of the faith, and its precedence over national, cultural and political forces, that a Bulghar – who at the time on account of the border violence between the Bulghars and the Rus’ was counted a bitter enemy among all but the Rus’ merchants – could be met with hospitality and love and reverence by everyone in Vladimir from the prince to the peasantry.

From his reliquary in the Princess Monastery, the Lord granted that the prayers and intercessions of Saint Abraham would work many wondrous healings. The Bulghar martyr showed a particular affection and care for children and infants down the centuries. Parents would bring to him infants who were born feeble, or young children who were sick or even on the brink of death, and the children would leave his relics living, healthy and happy. He was also known to restore the sight of those afflicted by blindness, and the iron fetters that he wore were able to heal those suffering from mental illnesses, when they put them on. He is held in particular reverence by the majority-Orthodox Chuvash people as well as the minority of Bashkirs and Tatars who confess Christ – all of whom claim descent from the Bulghars of the Volga.

The veneration of Saint Abraham was largely a local affair to Vladimir for the first few centuries after his martyrdom. Only starting in the latter half of the 1600s did Saint Abraham’s cultus take on a broader national importance. In 1711 his relics were transferred from a small outer chapel to the main altar at the Church of the Assumption in the Princess Monastery; in 1785 a large procession was held in his honour; and in 1807 his old reliquary was replaced by a much grander one, wrought from silver. The relics of Saint Abraham were taken from the monastery by the Bolsheviks in 1923 and placed in a museum, and then decommissioned from museum storage in the 1950s; the Church has as yet not been successful in locating and recovering them. A particle of his relics is still kept in the altar at the restored Princess Monastery, and pilgrims still visit there to ask for his intercessions.

In addition, at the place of his execution – similar to many of the Welsh martyrs – there sprang up a holy well of clean water, at which a chapel was built in later centuries by the Orthodox people of Tatarstan. This chapel and well can be found on the Volga’s south bank, northwest of the city proper. This well is visited and held in reverence by both Muslims and Christians, in significant part because a Muslim was the first person to be healed there by the water from the spring, and in part because the Hanafîs were willing to show courtesy and honour to a brave and virtuous man despite their religious differences. The chapel was later destroyed, and the well boarded up, by the Bolsheviks. In 1993, the chapel was rebuilt, and once the boarding and other detritus were cleared away, the well source was found to be unpolluted. Today it continues to be a place of pilgrimage for both Orthodox Christians and Hanafî Muslims. Holy martyr Abraham, bold confessor of Christ and patient sufferer on the Volga banks, pray unto Christ our God for us sinners!

Apolytikion for Saint Abraham, Tone 4:

Днесь, благовернии людие, сошедшеся,
восхвалим добляго сего мученика и страдальца Авраамия,
сей бо, укрепляемь силою Божиею,
душу свою положи за Христа,
много пострадав от зловерных болгар.
Сего ради от Господа венец прият
и ныне предстоит Ему
и молится о граде сем
и о всех нас, чтущих память его.

Translation:

Today the people of good faith gather
To praise this worthy martyr and sufferer Abraham,
This man, strengthened by the power of God,
Entrusted his soul to Christ,
And suffered much at the hands of wicked Bulghars.
Thus for the sake of the Lord he accepted the martyr’s crown,
And now stands before Him
And prays for this city
And for all of us who honour his memory.

Chapel of Saint Abraham on the Volga

Amangeldy: Batyr and Kóterilis through a Soviet lens

Amankeldi İmanov (Elýbaı Ámirzaqov) and Balym (Shara Jıenqulova) in Amangeldy

Before, I made the claim that the Sergei Eisenstein film Ivan Groznyi (Part I) was the ‘birth of Kazakhstani cinema’. I still hold to that claim, in the sense that the logistical framework which was necessary to produce Eisenstein’s film at the tail end of the Second World War laid the material foundations for all of Kazakhstani cinema to come. Ivan Groznyi was not, however, the first feature film to come out under the Kazakhfilm label. That honour belongs instead to Moisei Levin’s and Vsevolod Ivanov’s black-and-white 1938 war drama and biopic Amangeldy, which treats the life and military career of the Kazakh national liberation fighter and peasant revolutionary Amankeldi Úderbaıuly İmanov, particularly his rôles in the Kóterilis of 1916 and the Sovietisation of Kazakhstan from 1917 on.

Amangeldy is an intriguing and multifaceted piece of Soviet cinema, in that it valorises and romanticises a particular image of the Kazakh people, and promotes them as a ‘progressive’ historical force. Though Paksoy would rebuke the later Soviet repression and censorship of the native Turkic dastanic epic literature, Amangeldy stands as a witness that the early Soviets were in fact not entirely averse to the epic. Moreover, Amangeldy can be seen as a prototype in Kazakh filmmaking, in that it lays down a template for the portrayal of the dastanic batyr on screen. Not only this, but it also demarcates the tradition of adopting the batyr for a political cause. It may thus be considered a spiritual progenitor of historical war films like Kóshpendiler, Mongol and Jaýjúrek myń bala.

It seems as though Amangeldy is also a progenitor of the Ostern and the forms of the revisionist Western that would later come out of the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and East Germany. The Kazakhs are shown as one of the indigenous peoples of Central Asia, and the main opponents of Amankeldi are the regimented, industrialised and mechanised White Army. The filmmakers clearly set out to draw a comparison and contrast to the general genre treatment of the American Indian in the Western film. Amankeldi is shown to be honest, righteous and noble (and, of course, on the side of the Bolsheviki); whereas the Tsarists are cruel and opportunistic, using their superior firepower to bombard an aul full of women and children while the men are away. Amangeldy præfigures the revisionist Western in its sympathetic treatment of an indigenous uprising against a ‘civilised’ government.

Warning: spoilers ahead.

A new governor is appointed by the Tsar for the Kazakh people, and announces a new conscription policy. A poor local bı named Amankeldi (Elýbaı Ámirzaqov) objects to conscription and is arrested by the gendarmes, over the voluble objections of his wife Balym (Shara Jıenqulova). While on the cart being transported to Siberia, he is joined by a political prisoner named Egor (Fedor Fedorovskii). Egor sympathises with the plight of the Kazakhs under the new levy, and informs Amankeldi that the Russian peasants and workers are facing similar oppression and exploitation, and dying at the front. Balym helps to organise an ambush which deals with Amankeldi’s prison wagon and releases both prisoners… and in so doing shows that she can handle a rifle as well as sew or dance.

Amankeldi returns to the capital, leading a significant crowd of poor Kazakhs and Kyrǵyz, where he confronts the local Kazakh han Jafar (Qanabek Baıseıitov) and the Tsarist official who are serving the conscription notice. Upon noticing Amankeldi among them, they back away. He tears the notice away from the clerk, and a fight breaks out. Amankeldi finds himself the leader of a full-fledged revolt against the Tsarist government, and taking to their horses they begin leading raids on the cattle of the handar who still support the Tsar. These men consult the governor, who issues a warrant for Amankeldi’s arrest and calls up the Russian Army as the Kazakh partizans arm themselves.

It becomes clear that the Kazakhs are woefully – literally – outgunned. The smithy can turn out shamshir sabres of high quality, but the rifles they produce burst at the stock when Amankeldi tries to fire one. When the Russian army arrives, the first thing they do is to attack the aul where Amankeldi’s wife is, along with the Kazakh women and children. They are interrupted and forced to wage a pitched battle when the Kazakh riders begin charging their line. The Kazakhs fight with sabres, spears, some rifles and mobile cannons made from hollow logs and fired from the backs of camels. Amankeldi comes to rely not only on Balym – who is present alongside him at nearly every engagement – but also on his lieutenants Beket (Seráli Qojamqulov) and Serik (Rahmetolda Sálmenov).

The Kazakhs under Amankeldi ally themselves with Russian working-class sympathisers and manage to triumph in battle against the armies of the Russian Army and of the other handar, and they force them to sign an agreement ensuring Kazakh self-rule. However, there is a dissension within the Kazakh movement. Some of them are unhappy with Amankeldi’s willingness to work with the Russians, and the nationalists in the movement, led by the treacherous Qarataı (Qapan Badyrov) begin plotting against him. They surround Amankeldi’s house, and he mounts a one-man stand against them with his rifle, sending Balym up through the roof and away for help. They capture him, however, and bind him. Balym stages a rescue and they ride off, with Amankeldi taking the rear against their pursuers to protect his men. Egor arrives with a Red Army contingent, but too late to help Amankeldi, who is mortally wounded by a gunshot from his fellow Kazakhs. He dies in Balym’s arms.

End spoilers.

I know that I really shouldn’t be shocked by the deftness with which some of these old black-and-white movies could be put together, particularly not after watching Eisenstein, but I confess that these older pics continue to impress me that way. In general, the acting is stentorian, full of pomp and bombast, as I suppose is all too well suited for an early Soviet flick about a revolutionary leader. (I can also see where Kuno Becker got his direction from in Kóshpendiler!) Elýbaı Ámirzaqov mounts a lively, if somewhat ham-fisted, performance in the title rôle – interesting to watch after seeing him as Bayan’s kindly old grandpa in Tuǵan jer! The hamminess leads to some instances of unintentional comedy, including the scene where Amankeldi shoots a gloating Qarataı with the pistol in his pocket, despite being hogtied.

The score is just what one might expect from an adventure or war movie from the thirties. Also, the backgrounds – though they are quite pretty – are static such that they are obviously painted: clearly the film was not shot on location. There’s quite a significant deal of ethnographic local-colour framing, including a game of kók bóri and a party where Shara Jıenqulova gets to show off her dance moves. These scenes feel slightly artificial: as though they are a demonstration of Kazakhness for a largely Russian audience. In short, I can see why it has something of a mixed reputation in modern Kazakhstan. In the words of reviewer Peter Rolberg:

Its title role, performed by [Elýbaı Ámirzaqov] with physical agility, self-confidence and dignity, must be regarded as a genuine achievement of national culture, whereas the film as a whole… was filmed in Chapaev-like fashion at Lenfilm Studio and is more a hybrid than authentically Kazakh.

Amangeldy præfigures the Kazakhstani dastan film in several important ways, though. There a batyr, a righteous martial hero, at the centre of the story, with a significant love interest who is intimately involved in the batyr’s struggle. (In an interesting twist from Kóshpendiler and Jaýjúrek myń bala, though, here it’s the woman who repeatedly comes to the rescue of her captured man.) There is also an attempt to overlay the dignity and honour of the nation as a whole upon the batyr’s noble, selfless and courageous deeds. This makes the tale of the batyr, and the mythmaking surrounding that tale, the locus of ideological formation. The singer, or jyraý, of the dastan occupies the same place as Homer does among the Greeks, and bears a similar degree of mytho-political power and power over the collective emotional life of the nation. This is one reason why Plato showed such distrust of the poets in the Republic, and also one reason why Abaı disclaimed for himself any desire to become a poet.

It is also one reason why the dastan became such a fraught form of oral tradition – here converted into a cinematic tradition – in the Soviet Union. The Soviets understood the dastan to be a powerful propaganda tool, but also an art form which could potentially be politically-subversive. In attempting to set up the historical Amankeldi İmanov as a heroic batyr through cinema, they were in essence legitimising as ‘true Kazakhs’ those who held to the Soviet party line. One sees quite clearly the ‘us-them’ distinction being drawn in Amangeldy, that would be reflected and echoed in later films like Kóshpendiler and Jaýjúrek myń bala. Amankeldi is the true Kazakh: noble, honest, self-sacrificing, hospitable – and in addition, an expert rider, a tenacious fighter and a winning lover. Against him are set the foils of Jafar and Qarataı. Jafar, a physical coward, sticks to working among the Tsarist officials. He wears fine silken robes and speaks insinuatingly in Russian. Qarataı is shown as fully-Westernised, wearing military uniforms and suits with ties, sporting a trimmed moustache. These are Kazakhs who have forgotten the steppe traditions and their true national feeling: quite the damning indictment for the Kazakh nationalism of the Alash movement!

Amangeldy, the first feature of the new Kazakhfilm Studio, is therefore a critically-important film for understanding later Kazakhstani cinema, despite its having been shot in Moscow. In many respects it is a template for later Kazakh and Russian directors, from big-budget heavyweights like Aqan Sataev and Sergei Bodrov, Sr to indie auteurs and purveyors of anti-hero stories, like Dárejan Ómirbaev.

Shaman: A taiga duet for the violin and Jew’s harp

Dmitri (Igor Gotesman) and his horse in Shaman

I confess, I was a bit gun-shy of joint French productions set in northern or central Asia, after the unfortunately-pretentious Ulzhan. The 1996 French-Russian film Shaman, though, proved to be far more watchable and engaging. The film is centred around two escaped prisoners from a gulag in Siberia, and the efforts of the fish-out-of-water Dmitri to survive in a hostile environment.

The relationships between the violinist Dmitri (Igor Gotesman) and the Sakha, or Yakut, prisoner Anatoli (Spartak Fedotov), and later between Dmitri and his horse, undergird the whole of the film. As with Ulzhan, there is a journey underway with a destination at the end in mind, that never gets reached. Also as with Ulzhan, there is a mystical-spiritual element to this journey that is consonant with shamanism and which also incorporates some arthouse filmic conceits. Unlike Ulzhan, however, there are real stakes built up for the characters, and the beliefs and worldview of the Sakha are made to carry some real weight. Dmitri actually manages to be likeable in spite of his early ineptitude – in part because we can see early on that he cares about and respects Anatoli.

Warning: spoilers below.

Dmitri, a violinist from Moscow, mounts an escape from a labour camp in Siberia after discovering a prayer tree decked with flags and a herd of wild Yakut horses. He tells his fellow-prisoner Anatoli about what he discovers, and Anatoli helps him to smuggle his violin out of the camp, and rope and tame one of the horses. Anatoli advises Dmitri to take off his prisoner tag and hang it from the tree if he wants to make it far. The two of them ride off but are shot at by the camp guards, and Anatoli is hit in the back. The wound proves deadly. The Sakha believes that his fate is because of the anger of the spirits, who are punishing him for greed in taking an extra horse from the herd. The disbelieving Dmitri asks him how he knows, and Anatoli replies that he is a shaman. His dying wish is for Dmitri to place the amulets he brought out from the camp around his body.

Dmitri’s subsequent attempts to survive in the taiga range from the serious to the comical as he has to outwit and outrun cold, hunger, wolves, and his pursuers in the Red Army and Soviet police (who have helicopters and jeeps). He makes some early mistakes that nearly cost him his life and freedom – like lighting a fire in the open, or letting his horse run free before it trusts him. Everything in the taiga has a spirit. And the spirits of the taiga – so Anatoli warns Dmitri – do not come running with a baby bottle in hand. Dmitri is forced to sharpen his wits and his survival skills.

Dmitri manages to survive, however, it seems in part as a result of the intervention of the spirits. Along the way, Dmitri runs across a cast of supporting characters who are as unpredictable as the taiga itself. In some cases, the circumstances in which he meets them are so surreal that we are led to wonder if these are truly people or visions of spirits sent to help or hinder him. He meets a part-time poacher who works on a reindeer-herding kolkhoz. He meets Anatoli’s kindly but dying mother. He meets a trapper and his son who want to turn him in to the Soviet government for the reward money. And – my personal favourite – he meets a motorbicycling, leather jacket-sporting, aviator goggles-rocking, ambiguously-mad ‘Cossack to the Tsar’ who calls Dmitri ‘muzhik’ and helps him rescue his loyal Yakut horse, which he deeply admires but advises Dmitri to have shod lest it get a limp. In a rowdy Siberian bar he also meets a Buryat blacksmith to shoe his horse – who is the spitting image of his friend Anatoli. And on board one of the ice-bound lake ships he meets a pigeon-breeder who clearly doesn’t have it all together.

He eventually makes his way to Irkutsk, where he sells his horse to a travelling Roma whose daughters admire it. We see that in Irkutsk he can’t really ‘make it’ after having spent so long in the taiga. He seems shell-shocked among crowds and on streets, and he doesn’t even have the capacity to drink vodka after so long. He instinctively flees from the police on the streets, who don’t recognise him or care that he’s there. He finally avails himself of a public shower and hits on a nurse, who takes him out for dinner and a dance. He can’t decide what he wants off the menu, just saying ‘I want to eat.’ And of course it seems he’s forgotten how to properly use a knife and fork. This rather amuses his date. The nurse takes him back to her apartment in Irkutsk and asks him to stay. Dmitri opens his violin case briefly, but then puts it away. He then takes out Anatoli’s Jew’s harp and begins playing it as the sun rises over the lake. In the last scene we see Dmitri riding his horse out of Irkutsk as a train goes by the opposite way, and a Roma boy is shown playing Dmitri’s violin.

End spoilers.

The score of Shaman, though sparse, is integrally important to this film, and much of it consists of violin playing in harmony with the Jew’s harp – representing the coöperation of the spirit of Anatoli with Dmitri, and sometimes the inner conflict in Dmitri as he tries to make his way back to Moscow through the taiga. As is to be expected, the cinematography is broad and sweeping, and deliberately dwarfs the vulnerable Dmitri and his horse against the frigid landscape, which ultimately conquers him. That includes dense evergreen forests, fathomless snowdrifts, and vast frozen lakes (including the great Baikal) stretching out every way toward the horizon in which are caught boats ranging from canoes to great modern shipping tankers, rusting uselessly in the ice. The subtext is clear: modern technology is not necessarily of avail against the elements. Not a particularly Soviet sentiment!

The film delights in shocking us out of complacency, and it does this often by contrasting the vast, bleak winterscapes of Siberia with the intrusions of modern Soviet technology. The Sakha kolkhoz features yurts with radio antennæ. The Russian village which might as well have been a seventeenth-century Cossack colony is governed from a prefab police station with a Soviet flag. And then all of a sudden we see Dmitri riding his horse in front of an industrial shipping-yard in Irkutsk. The juxtaposition is jarring and it suddenly seems like we are in a different movie: we are made to feel the same disorientation and ‘unreality’ of this urban landscape that Dmitri does as he wanders into town.

The acting ability of Igor Gotesman is exemplary here – and he can do it well without having to speak. His long, drawn face and piercing blue eyes manage to convey excellently the vulnerable ingenuousness of his early escape, and also the experience of the weather-beaten survivor toward the end. He is an excellent counterpart to the normally-jovial Spartak Fedotov, who can become convincingly commanding at the drop of a pin – their unlikely friendship is rendered believable by their shared struggle. Their friendship bolsters the thematic tension in the film between mistrust of strangers (sometimes genuinely justified) and the need for mutual assistance in the face of the harsh environment. Another thematic consideration, consonant with the shamanic relationship with the wilderness in such a marginal biome, is the thin and often permeable distinction between sanity and madness. Very often it’s the ‘mad’ ones who prove to be most benign and helpful – like the pigeon-breeder living on the ship, or the Cossack biker who helps Dmitri rescue his horse.

I’ve made several comparisons of this film to Ulzhan up front, which I feel probably isn’t fair. Shaman is a far superior film, one which is quite a bit more subdued and ‘realistic’, but actually manages to plumb deeper into its material than the quixotic meandering treasure-hunt which is left unresolved in the other film. Perhaps a better comparison would be to the Kazakhstani prison-break-and-survival film Begletsy, though Shaman is more of a buddy flick than a romance, and the questions posed and answered by the film are quite different. Shaman gets off to a glacially slow start, but it convincingly builds up the sympathy and dramatic tension one would expect from a survival film of this kind.

Beloe solntse pustyni: a deserving cult-classic Ostern

Rahimov (Musa Dudaev) and Suhov (Anatolii Kuznetsov) in Beloe solntse pustyni

Ваше благородие, госпожа Разлука,
Все мы с ней не встретимся, вот какая штука.
Письмецо в конверте погоди не рви,
Не везет мне в смерти – повезет в любви!

I had forgotten just how much I love this film – the first Soviet film I ever watched as a callow youth of twenty-two. That’s to my chagrin. Still, I can and will celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the first release of Vladimir Motyl’s directorial masterpiece in 1970. It is traditional for Soviet and Russian cosmonauts to watch Beloe solntse pustyni (White Sun of the Desert) before launch, as a good-luck charm. That has something of an ironic echo in my own case, since I first watched this movie in preparation for my ill-fated but quite formative trip to Kazakhstan in 2009. Now, over ten years later, of course I can look back on that whole episode with a smiling eye – and I can watch Beloe solntse pustyni with a bit more appreciation and grounding in the Western (and Ostern) genre’s conventions. With all due thanks, of course, to Rich Hall.

Beloe solntse pustyni takes place in the deserts of Central Asia, and follows one adventure in the life of a Red Army veteran of the Caspian Regiment ‘Ferdinand August Bebel’, Fyodor Ivanovich Suhov (Anatolii Kuznetsov) as he attempts to make his way home to his wife Katerina Matveevna (Galina Luchai) from his posting in Turkestan. On the way back he meets and rescues a man buried up to his neck in the desert – Said (Spartak Mishulin), a sharpshooter on a quest for vengeance against his father’s killer. In the next city he finds a Red Army detachment led by Rahimov (Musa Dudaev) as they’ve taken charge of nine women who were the wives of a certain cruel and vengeful Basmachi rebel captain named Abdulla (Kahi Kavsadze). Rahimov manages to convince Suhov to take the young women into his charge while he gets reinforcements, and he commandeers a local museum to shelter the women and fend off Abdulla until Rahimov returns. Suhov, and his young helper Petruha (Nikolai Godovikov) are left to their own devices, appealing – at first unsuccessfully – to the local customs officer, Pavel Vereshchagin (Pavel Luspekaev).

There’s a great deal to appreciate about this iconic film, justly considered a cult classic and beloved by generations of Russians. The premise of the film, to begin with, is Homeric in tenor: Suhov, the veteran of a great expedition to the East, finds himself wandering back home with small hope of return, yet vividly remembering and cherishing the memory of the Penelope to his Odysseus, his wife Katerina – to whom he composes mental letters, which serve as narration in the film. And on his travels he faces trials and temptations both, all of which seem to offer contemporary parallels to the monsters and beauties which grace the Odyssey. When I watched this film many years ago I lavished praises on the character of Said, whose laconic charisma and sang-froid is even now quite compelling to me. But despite his continuing ‘coolness’ as the hired gun who never misses, I’ve found that the other characters in the film, particularly Petruha and Vereshchagin, have taken on intriguing dimensions and meaning in light of a classical reference which I had little conception of on my first watch.

If there is a Greek chorus to observe Suhov’s feats, actually, it’s a silent one – but no less eloquent for all that. The four aqsaqaldar, literally white-bearded old men, who sit by the wall on the Caspian seaside hardly say a single word the entire time, but they are there watching, often with patient bemusement, all the outlandish and violent events unfold in front of them. As seems appropriate in a film like this, there is a deliberate contraposition of the bleak desert with its vast dunes and rugged stone architecture with the idyllic, green and red flower-covered meadows of Suhov’s home with his beloved Katerina standing patiently among them, only glimpsed in flashbacks or daydreams. (Suhov spends a lot of his time on screen reclining or napping on the sand, often to comic effect.) The colour schemes are entirely different, and they offer us tantalising hints into Suhov’s inner psychology and motivations.

As seems to be a commonplace in Westerns, the weapons are reflections of the characters of the people who wield them. Suhov wields a Nagant revolver, while Abdulla wields a Mauser C96 – the weapons of ‘gentleman’ cavalry officers. The ill-fated Petruha wields a rifle with a bayonet attached, which never manages to fire except on accident. The Basmachi bandits all wield carbines. Vereshchagin either fights with his bare fists or hurls sticks of dynamite – both a testament to his temper and a foreshadowing of his tragicomic demise. Said, the survivor, successfully improvises with whatever is closest to hand, whether it’s stealing an enemy’s gun or throwing a knife.

The relationships between men and women are another filmic motif: Suhov’s devotion to his wife notwithstanding, his suddenly being placed in charge of Abdulla’s harem, together with a green youngster who clearly has no experience with women, places a significant temptation on him, as we are made to see through his daydreams. The fundamentally decent Suhov represents a familial ethic which is new and Soviet as far as his charges are concerned: one woman for one husband, and one husband’s affections for one wife. Suhov gains the attentions – or at least curiosity – of one of Abdulla’s burqa-wearing wives, the fifteen-year-old Gúlchataı (Tatyana Fedotova), whom Petruhov also admires despite not ever being able to see her face. Gúlchataı struggles to understand the benefits of Christian-slash-Soviet monogamy, seeing the lot of a single wife in charge of an entire household’s chores as drudgery – but it also seems she’s the most receptive to the idea. This motif of a progressive versus an Islâmic-patriarchal understanding of sexuality does not actually shy away from subtly ribbing the Soviet position. Suhov posts big red propaganda posters around the museum reading – in Russian – things like ‘Women are human beings too!’ But at the same time, Suhov does occasionally entertain the fantasy of keeping a harem, with Katerina as the chief wife and supervisor…

And then there is the relationship between Vereshchagin and his own wife Nastasya (Raisa Kurkina): the old customs officer is torn between a certain degree of domestic security, bought at the cost of compromises with Abdulla’s gang at the behest of his wife, and his formerly glorious and daring military past – which is symbolised in the film by a kind of sæcular iconostasis on one wall of the customs-house, with paintings and lithographs, maps and old photographs – these of himself with his much-younger wife in his military attire and medals. There are hints and flashes of the old fire in Vereshchagin, and these are brought out mainly by his meeting with young Petruhov, to whom Vereshchagin takes an instant liking. It is strongly implied by the film that Petruhov reminds Vereshchagin of his own deceased son, whose military grave is far-off and unattended. Vereshchagin is also the one who strums and sings the folk song ‘Ваше благородие, госпожа Разлука’ quoted above, and which forms something of a theme for the film. It reflects also something of Vereshchagin’s predicament, being estranged from his old home, being unlucky in death but lucky in love with a devoted (but somewhat smothering and overprotective) wife.

The overall tone of the film is light, however – even comic. It is brisk-paced, well-choreographed with regard to the gunfights and standoffs, and has the benefit of never taking itself too seriously, allowing for its saturnine humour and its immortal one-liners: ‘The East is a delicate matter,’ for instance; ‘His grenades are the wrong type!’; and ‘Save at least one bullet, Abdulla, to shoot yourself!’ The main locations for filming were Dagestan (on the other side of the Caspian) and Turkmenistan for a few of the desert scenes. Luga, south of Saint Petersburg, was chosen for the pastoral location for shooting Suhov’s daydreams and flashbacks with Katerina. The palette for the film is notably warm, even gaudy, when compared with other films of the time. This is counterbalanced by a certain staid realism in the cinematography: lots of slow pans and flat, static takes, allowing the audience to have the same sort of ironic detachment from the action that the aqsaqaldar have, sitting outside in the sun.

If it weren’t already obvious, I consider Beloe solntse pustyni to be fully deserving of its status among the classics of Soviet film, full stop. Not for nothing was it added to the register of culturally significant films in Russia in 1998! It can easily bear the comparison to any Western of its time. It’s shot against starkly beautiful Caspian desertscapes. Its characters are all entirely and understandably human – even the homicidally jealous villain. It hits just the right notes of comedy and melancholia, action and emotion to solidify its place in cinema, and its classical literary moorings take it just that extra step beyond into the category of high art. This one’s absolutely a keeper.

Holy Hieromartyr Markos of Arethousa, Holy Deaconmartyr Kyrillos of Heliopolis and all those with them

Saint Markos of Arethousa
القديس مرقس الرستني

The twenty-ninth of March, in the Holy Orthodox Church, is the feast day of Saint Markos of Arethousa in Syria, who was one of the fourth-century martyrs who suffered under the sanguinary persecutions of Julian the Apostate. He himself showed considerable bravery in the face of persecution, laying down his life so that his parishioners would be spared torment and death. His nobility in the face of torment so affected and moved his persecutors that many of them returned to the Christian faith.

Saint Markos [Gk. Μάρκος, L. Marcus, Ar. Marqus مرقس] was born sometime in the late third century, probably sometime before the year 270. He was already an elderly man by the time he became the bishop of Arethousa, which is today ar-Rastan in Homs Governorate in Syria. Many bishops in his time were involved in the disputes over the substance of Christ, and in controversies with the Arians. Saint Markos was, at least in this dispute, a peace-loving man and one unwilling to enter the lists in intellectual disputations. Like Saint Meletios, Bishop Markos had little taste for such disputes. He was present at Sirmium when the so-called First Creed of Sirmium was draughted, signalling to some that he was of the party in the Church that sought a ‘homoiousian’ compromise with the Arians.

However, his zeal for the Faith was not to be underestimated by such peaceable overtures. Saint Markos must have repudiated the disastrous Third Council of Sirmium and thus rejected any compromise with the Arians in the end. He also undertook a great conversion of the people of Arethousa from paganism to Christianity. He preached in the public squares, and throngs of people came to hear him speak. He also supported – or indeed may have led himself – a party that destroyed a pagan temple in Arethousa and built an Orthodox Christian church in its place.

When Julian the Apostate entered Syria to mount his bloodthirsty war against Persia, the pagans at Arethousa saw their chance to take revenge upon the hierarch who had destroyed their temple. They sought him out, and he hid himself at first, thinking perhaps to avoid a confrontation which might leave many Arethousans dead. But when he saw that the pagans were torturing and killing Christian laypeople in order to get to him, Saint Markos gave himself up and placed himself in the pagans’ hands, on the condition that they would leave the Christian flock alone.

The pagans, having no regard for Saint Markos’s advanced years, stripped him naked, dragged him through the streets, tore out his hair, and beat him mercilessly. Taunting and jeering at him, they flung him into the sewer. When they pulled him out, they invited the children to prod him with their iron styluses and cut him with their knives. They then demanded that Saint Markos deliver to them the money needed to rebuild the pagan temple, but he refused to give them anything. And so they used vices and falaka torture on the elderly bishop’s feet, and cut off his ears with linen cords. At last they smeared honey upon the martyr’s body and hung him in a basket in the sun at midday, allowing the bees and wasps and hornets to sting him.

The pagans began to ask for less and less money toward rebuilding their temple, but Saint Markos would not relent to giving them one single coin. In this way, he actually earned their grudging admiration and respect, and even sympathy. At length the people of Arethousa convinced the pagans to lower the basket and let Saint Markos go free, and many of his former tormentors actually came again to listen to him speak. Many of them repented and turned to Christ, and were again allowed into the Church. Saint Markos was praised by both Saint Gregory of Nazianzus and Blessed Theodoret of Kyrrhos. Holy hieromartyr Markos, steadfast confessor of Christ before the rage of the pagans, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!

Other saints that suffered under Julian the Apostate, whom we commemorate today, are Saint Kyrillos the Deacon of Ba‘albak and those who suffered with him. Like Saint Markos, Saint Kyrillos had preached Christ for a long time in what is now Lebanon, and he had destroyed several temples to the pagan gods, including those at Heliopolis. The pagans also seized him when Julian arrived in Syria, and they disembowelled him and ate his liver. The people who committed this atrocity upon Saint Kyrillos were at once afflicted with blindness and boils. (Still, I am sure that Julian’s imperial propagandists referred to these people as ‘moderate rebels’.) During the persecutions in Ba‘albak there was a concomitant slaughter of Christians by pagans in Gaza and in ‘Asqalân, in which many were killed. Holy deaconmartyr Kyrillos and all of those with you, pray unto Christ our God for us sinners!

Apolytikion for Saint Markos of Arethousa in Syria, Tone 3:

In preparation for the contest, you anointed an assembly of martyrs
and bolstered them by your steadfastness, O glorious Markos.
You finished your course together with them
and all of you were found worthy of the joy of heaven.
Righteous father, entreat Christ our God to grant us His great mercy.

Apolytikion for Saint Kyrillos of Heliopolis, Tone 3:

In preparation for the contest, O glorious Kyrillos,
You anointed an assembly of martyrs
And strengthened them by your steadfastness.
You finished your course with them.
And you were all found worthy of the joys of heaven.
O righteous Father,
Pray to Christ our God to grant us his great mercy!

Jordanes: critic of phyletism?

Goths at the Battle of Hadrianople

One of the books I have been reading recently is De origine actibusque Getarum, a unique and precious document dating from the reign of Justinian of the Eastern Roman Empire. It is unique and precious because it is the only surviving document by a barbarian – in this case, an Eastern Teutonic Goth – about the history of his own people. Jordanes of Alania [Gk. Ιορδάνης ο Αλανός, Goth. Ïaurdaneis 𐌹𐌰𐌿𐍂𐌳𐌰𐌽𐌴𐌹𐍃] was a military secretary or notarius who was living in Byzantium at the end of the Gothic Wars. His grandfather Paria had been such a secretary to the Alan tribal leader Candac, and Jordanes had apparently continued that tradition as secretary to the Ostrogothic lord Gunthigis Baza. He had taken up residence in Constantinople and had been writing a history of Rome at the time when he was supposedly requested by a friend, Castalius, to similarly write a history of his own people. He wrote it in 551 AD, and it was apparently a politically-sensitive document, given that it was a narration of the history of a people with whom Constantinople was at war.

Jordanes has long been considered something of a second-rate hack author, a barely-literate barbarian better suited to the sword than the pen, who was completely dependent for his De origine on the now-lost history of the Goths written by Cassiodorus. A great deal of critique has been made of Jordanes’ Latin grammar, of his mistaken identification of the Thracian Getæ with the Goths, and of his ‘plagiarism’ of Cassiodorus. For much of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the chief interest in Jordanes was from Germanicists and mediævalists who used Jordanes as a source on the identity and history of the ‘barbarian kingdoms’ from which the Germans claimed descent. Even in this discourse he was considered the intellectual and academic inferior of Tacitus. Thankfully some of this reputation has been revisited, as at least some of the negativity surrounding Jordanes has been owing to the general anti-Byzantine bias of Western academia. James O’Donnell of Georgetown and Brian Swain of Kennesaw State have done some interesting work recovering Jordanes as a political voice and literary critic in his own right, with Swain in particular noting Jordanes’ evident literary interest in the Æneid and his awareness of the contemporary controversy over Origenism.

O’Donnell and Swain make a good point, though both of them voice cautions about attempts to ascribe too narrow a political view to the author. The De origine actibusque Getarum is an inescapably political document, having been written from Constantinople, in Latin, by a Goth, about the Gothic people, during a time when Goths were not the most popular subject in Eastern Rome. Obviously Jordanes had to take a bit of care when writing it, which is why he adds his exculpatory encomiums to Justinian at the end of his narration and his disavowals of adding to or subtracting from the corpus of his subject matter in the postscript.

But his history, for all that it has been criticised (particularly in Romania) for his ‘errors’ of historical fact, has a particular and significant narrative value. Jordanes – though he has other philosophical, political and theological commitments which must be heeded – attempts to in some degree defend the honour of his people through this historical treatment. In fact, he appropriates Virgil, Plato and the commentaries on Origen to argue against both the false universality of Hellenism and the ‘phyletist’ – to anachronistically deploy an analogy thirteen hundred years in the offing – understanding of the places of Greekness and Romanity in the classical world.

If there is any one firm political commitment that stands out in the Getica, it is the commitment to Orthodox Christianity. Jordanes speaks of Saint Cyprian of Carthage as ‘our own bishop and venerable martyr in Christ’, for example, and issues condemnations of Arianism. This is noteworthy in that it places Jordanes firmly in a minority position vis-à-vis his own people, most of whom were Arians following Wulfila. Jordanes is occasionally given to snark at the expense of historical figures, but he saves his bitterest polemic for Emperor Valens, whom he blames for leading the Gothic people astray from becoming true Christians:

138. When the Emperor Valens heard of this at Antioch, he made ready an army at once and set out for the country of Thrace. Here a grievous battle took place and the Goths prevailed. The Emperor himself was wounded and fled to a farm near Hadrianople. The Goths, not knowing that the Emperor lay hidden in so poor a hut, set fire to it (as is customary in dealing with a cruel foe), and thus he was cremated in royal splendour. Plainly it was a direct judgement of God that he should be burned with fire by the very men whom he had perfidiously led astray when they sought the true faith, turning them aside from the flame of love into the fire of hell.

One of Jordanes’s projects in the Getica is to build up an ancient historical pedigree for his people going back to their origins on the ‘island’ of Scandza. He accomplishes this by establishing linkages between the Goths of distant antiquity, and the peoples among whom they lived: in particular, the Scythians, the Thracians and the ‘Getæ’ (a term which Jordanes uses interchangeably with ‘Goths’). These identifications allow Jordanes to claim for the Goths the Amazon queens Lampedo and Marpesia, the Scythian warrior-queen Tomyris, and the legendary Thracian philosopher-kings Zalmoxis and Deceneus.

In Swain’s view, these identifications also allow Jordanes to set up a direct parallelism between the Goths and the Romans using the Æneid as a literary template, in which the Thracian tribes stood as foils to the Trojan adventurers at the heart of the story. This parallelism would have had profound resonances for any Greek- or Latin-speaking audience – and, indeed, profoundly subversive ones. The œconomic exploitation and enslavement of the starving Goths at the hands of Lupicinus and Maximus, and the subsequent betrayal and attempted murder of Fritigern, is placed in the centre of Jordanes’ narrative, and it deliberately echoes and parallels the episode in the Æneid in which the Thracians murder the Trojan Polydorus, forcing Æneas to flee. This episode is not only meant to evoke sympathy for the Goths under Fritigern. It also would have served to give the Goths the prestige of a culture with claims to literacy and philosophy and a disciplined soldier-tradition, and thus a more central place in the world according to Hellenistic or late-classical thought. In effect, Jordanes was deliberately blurring the distinction between ‘barbarian’ and Greco-Roman.

This distinction-blurring for the benefit of the Goths did not, however, prevent Jordanes from erecting and sharpening that same distinction between the Goths and the other barbarian tribes around them. Jordanes routinely belittles other tribes as dim-witted, crude, illiterate, undisciplined and animalistic, including the Huns, the Franks, and even the Goths’ linguistic kissing-cousins the Gepids. It also did not prevent Jordanes from criticising particular Gothic historical figures when it suited him. But the fact that his narrative set out to provide a parallel standing for the Goths alongside the Romans deserves some careful consideration.

It’s not outside the realm of possibility that in the Getica, Jordanes was issuing a thinly-veiled challenge – from a perspective that was both explicitly Chalcedonian Christian and distinguishably literate in the founding mythology of Rome – to the ideology of Justinian, which was based in the notion of reconquering the West and restoring it to a universal Romanitas. The task of Jordanes, which even as it lauded Justinian and Belisarius for their efforts in uniting the Gothic and Roman peoples, nevertheless placed the Gothic and Roman peoples on an equal footing. Even if he was unwilling to do this for other barbarian peoples, Jordanes had still thrown down a gauntlet against one of the chief unspoken prejudices of the Hellenistic mind.

And here the Orthodoxy of Jordanes, though we have no reason at all to think it less than sincere, serves him an additional purpose. Despite his political challenge to Justinianic imperial ideology, he could by no means stand accused of Arianism or any other theological aberration. His invocation and deft avoidance of the Origenist controversy in the introduction to the Getica – which borrowed a great deal in style from the preface of Rufinus’s translation of Origen’s letters into Latin – shows that he was not insensible to this possibility; and thus he takes pains to establish himself on the side of doctrinal correctness. Further: he places Christianity and the Great Commission outside the claims of nation-building in his doctrinal criticism of Emperor Valens. Jordanes does not place an overbearing finger on this point, but it’s clear that in his view that being linguistically and culturally Roman is not a necessary prærequisite for Christianity.

This is an important point to get in our day and age. Is celebrating Greek independence the priority for us, or the Annunciation of Christ to the Holy Theotokos? Are ‘barbarians’ spiritually inferior to Hellenes? Is it necessary to culturally ‘Romanise’ before adopting Christianity? These are questions which are nearly fifteen hundred years old, but even in an indirect form they were being explored by the Gothic notarius. Though belittled for being too Byzantine in our own recent past, ironically Jordanes may prove a valuable intellectual ally in our own day against the sin of phyletism.

Brat 2: ‘Are y’all gangsters?’ ‘No, we are Russians.’

Danila Bagrov (Sergei Bodrov, Jr) in Brat 2

Aleksei Balabanov’s sequel to Brat, Brat 2, is at once quite a bit more and quite a bit less than the movie which kicked it off. The first film traded heavily on having an indie-film feel, which has been totally jettisoned in this film for a million-and-a-half dollar budget, a professional film crew, international set pieces, chase scenes and lots of vintage weaponry. Brat was no blockbuster. Neither, really, is the sequel – but it comes close.

The premise of Brat 2 lies in its transplanting the main characters from the first film – who were fish-out-of-water in Saint Petersburg in a renovated Dostoevskian style – into a similar fish-out-of-water situation in Chicago. It’s a premise that seems to work fairly well, and Brat 2 does deliver us a rather tart commentary on life ‘at the bottom’ in both countries. The story takes us fairly quickly from Moscow to a much more international setting in short order, but once the characters board their Aeroflot planes events take their time in unwinding, giving the film a slow-burn, meditative and almost brooding pace around the middle.

Warning: spoilers below.

The events of Brat 2 take place about a year after the first film ends. Danila Bagrov (Sergei Bodrov, Jr) is living in Moscow with a couple of friends and fellow-veterans of the Chechen Wars, the museum guard Ilya (Kirill Pirogov), and the bank security man Kostya (Aleksandr D’yachenko). The three of them do an interview for a Moscow TV station about their experiences in the war, during which Bagrov meets the pop star Irina Saltykova (herself) and gets her mobile number. Back in Danila’s hometown, his mother and his brother Viktor (Viktor Suhorukov) watch Danila’s interview – and in a distinct rôle reversal from the first film, their mother tells Viktor to go visit Danila in Moscow and make something of himself instead of being a burden on her.

We learn that Kostya’s brother Mitya (also Aleksandr D’yachenko), an NHL hockey star playing for the Chicago Blackhawks, got himself mixed up with the Ukrainian mafia in Chicago and has been forced to pay most of his salary to the local crime boss Richard Mennis (Gary Houston). Kostya asks his boss Valentin Belkin (Sergei Makovetsky) for help, but ends up being killed by Belkin’s henchmen for his ‘request’, as Belkin and Mennis have agreed to a somewhat risky joint business venture. Danila finds his body, and he and Ilya go into hiding and start planning to get even with Belkin. Viktor arrives in Moscow and joins up with them. After outwitting, outdriving and outgunning Belkin’s henchmen, Danila corners Belkin at a recital where his son is performing and threatens him at gunpoint. Belkin lies to Danila and says that it was Mennis who had Kostya killed. Danila decides to spare Belkin on account of his young son, who recited a patriotic poem ‘Я устал, что у меня есть огромная семья’ by Crimean playwright Vladimir Orlov at his recital.

Ilya makes plans for Danila and Viktor to travel to America to deal with Mennis. He sends Viktor to Chicago and Danila to New York, from which he can drive to Chicago. This turns out to be a wise precaution, because Belkin sics his henchmen on Danila, hoping to get him at the airport. Because they aren’t expecting Viktor, they let him pass – and Danila doesn’t show on the flight he’s supposed to be on. Belkin learns about Viktor’s past in the mafia, warns Mennis about both Viktor and Danila, and has Irina’s phone bugged. (In some comic asides, Irina calls up Danila to ask where he is; Danila tells her he’s in Tula, and Belkin’s henchmen try without success to catch him on the road there.) Danila buys a car in New York from a Russian dealer who assures him it will get him ‘to San Francisco and back’, starts driving it to Chicago, and the car promptly breaks down before he can get into Pennsylvania. He ends up having to hitch a ride with a trucker, Ben Johnson (Ray Toler), with whom he strikes up a friendship, despite not knowing any English and Johnson not knowing any Russian.

Danila has difficulty navigating Chicago with no English, and tries unsuccessfully to contact Mitya. He gets run over by a news anchor, Lisa (Lisa Jeffrey), and manages to charm his way into her apartment and her bed for a night. However, still in need of a translator, he tries to get in touch with a Russian prostitute he met on the street, Dasha (Darya Lesnikova), and ends up on the wrong side of her pimp, and (briefly) on the wrong side of racist Chicago cops. As in the first movie, Danila uses homemade weapons (a shotgun made from plywood, an old pipe, wires and matches, filled with nails) and his wits to arm himself and defend Dasha. He ultimately kills her pimp and she joins up with him. Danila runs into Viktor – who had gotten into trouble with the Ukrainian mafia and the police – and manages to connect with Mitya.

The three of them try to boil some crawdads on Lake Michigan, and the three of them get into a discussion about life in America. Viktor loves the idea that in America one can become powerful by getting money. Dasha is quite a bit more jaded. Having come to New York as a student during glasnost’, she found herself going through a bad marriage and a messy divorce, ultimately having to sell her body to make ends meet. Danila floats the proposal that she can go home, although she’s initially sceptical of the idea. They are interrupted by a black man who tries to warn them of lake pollution, and who storms off when Danila calls him a ‘negr’ in Russian, not knowing that it’s a racial slur. The man comes back with company, and Danila shoots at their feet, scaring them off.

Danila learns that Mennis operates through a nightclub, ‘Club Metro’, which he uses as a front for his criminal enterprises. He stashes an SMG in the men’s bathroom in the back one night, and then uses it the next night to kill all of Mennis’s employees, who use the back of the club to deal in drugs and snuff films. Danila steals the money from the club and learns where Mennis’s ‘legitimate’ office is. Having once been turned back at the lobby, he climbs the safety stairs (reciting Orlov’s poem the whole way up) and smashes his way through a window, gunning his way into Mennis’s office. There he confronts Mennis at gunpoint over a game of chess. Seeing his brother’s picture – the same one the Ukrainians were using to track him down – on the table, he tells Mennis he disagrees with his brother about money being power. In his view, power belongs to those in the right. Having gotten his message across, he tells a frightened Mennis to give him the money he owes Mitya.

Danila gives the money to Mitya and tells him not to worry about the contract anymore. He and Dasha visit Lisa to borrow her phone; Dasha translates for him to call Ben the trucker for help. Viktor, in the meanwhile, has been tracked down by the cops and gets arrested, though he calls out to Danila as he’s cuffed and led to a squad car that he’s staying (in America). The police put out an APB on Danila and Dasha, but Ben escorts the two of them to the airport with no one noticing. At check-in, a man examines Dasha’s passport and tells her that her visa expired years ago and she won’t be able to enter the country again; she just flips him the bird and gets on her flight. At the airport, Irina Saltykova calls Danila again and he assures her that he’s coming back to Moscow. The implication is that Belkin’s joint venture with Mennis failed, and his Russian creditors have come to ‘collect’.

End spoilers.

Brat 2 explores some of the same themes that the first movie did, including (naturally) brotherhood, national feeling and œconomic distress – and of course the question of whether money really is power. Balabanov has a markedly cynical take, both on the promise of the ‘American Dream’ and on its parallel in Russia: Belkin and Mennis are more alike than different, including in their palpable physical cowardice when confronted by Danila. And this is nowhere more fervently expressed than in the philosophy espoused by Viktor, who really does seem to think that money can buy him whatever he wants and that America is the best place to do it.

But Balabanov revels in showing the darker side of American life. He is certainly drawing deliberate parallels and equivalencies in some instances between the materialism of Russia under Eltsin and the class of new biznismen, and that of America. Girls, booze and cars accompany organised crime life in both places. The Russian cab drivers in both Moscow and Chicago both speak with such open cynicism about life (and about Russia under Gorbachev) that Danila asks them if they’re brothers. The fascism of Ilya’s weapons-dealing ‘friend’ in Moscow is paralleled by the racism of the Chicago cops. American storefronts in New York show Russian signs, and signs in Ukrainian in Chicago: the only difference is in the blatancy of the advertising in those street scenes. And of course the plight of the two brothers at the heart of the movie, the ill-fated bank security guard Kostya and the exploited hockey player Mitya, is the same. It’s noteworthy that the only two ‘good’ Americans he shows are the Midwestern working-class truck driver Ben, and the black TV journalist Lisa.

The film is accused of being Russian nationalist, even chauvinist, but this seems contradicted by the fact that in the movie, the real instances where Russian nationalism is expressed – for example, by Belkin’s son Fedya or by Danila when reciting Orlov’s poem – it is done so in a spirit of profound naïveté. Danila saves Belkin on account of his son despite Belkin using every opportunity to try to kill him. And Danila predictably gets cheated by the Russian car salesman in New York who assures him that ‘Russians don’t cheat Russians’. Literally the only in-film validation of Danila’s nationalism, is when he manages to convince Dasha to go back to Russia, and that is done in a remarkably understated way. ‘What would I do there?’ she asks; and Danila answers: ‘What have you managed to do here?’

But regarding the central question of the film, money and power – the ironic conclusion seems to be that, particularly for this director, an emphatic no. Money does not seem to equal power. In losing the ‘indie’ feel of the first movie, it also loses its emotional impetus. Brat 2 is a far less moving and far less profound film than its predecessor, despite being in every possible way more technically proficient an action movie: bigger budget, better effects, better editing, better stunts, better camera work. The music – courtesy bands like Bi-2, DDT, Agatha Christie and Irina Saltykova herself as well as Nautilus – is still excellent: a good glimpse into what Danila is playing in his Walkman (or through the stereo of Ben’s truck). In the first film, the sudden, understated nature of the mortal violence had a profoundly disturbing effect. Here, the violence loses its impact on occasion for being over-the-top: as when a laughing Viktor sprays his pursuers with machine-gun fire from a Maxim from the back of his stolen Volvo until both of their cars explode, and then Danila flings a German grenade in the back seat to destroy the evidence. Sometimes the viewer can’t tell if he’s watching a Hollywood-style crime thriller or a parody of one. Sometimes it feels like Balabanov himself couldn’t decide.

At the same time, Brat 2 is still a fun, cheeky, politically-incorrect, occasionally-cheesy action film with considerable rewatch value. Sergei Bodrov, Jr is still sterling as Danila, and his supporting cast all deliver themselves admirably of their performances, and even the two-hour runtime doesn’t feel stuffed or drawn-out at all. This one gets a recommendation from me, with the qualification that it doesn’t quite live up to the promise of the first instalment.