Bumer: a slice of the Russian nineties

Cat (Vladimir Vdovichenkov), Killa (Maksim Konovalov), Rama (Sergei Gorobchenko) and Burnout (Andrei Merzlikin) in Bumer

Following up on my reviews of Brat and Brat 2, I decided to take a look at the Pyotr Buslov film Bumer [«Бумер», or Bimmer], which was billed to me as thematically similar to Balabanov’s Bagrov saga, and as enjoying a similar cult status. It was similarly also shot on a relative shoe-string budget – not nearly as barebones as the original Brat, though – and had an acerbically critical, satirical view of Russia in the 1990s under Eltsin. Long story short: the film does not disappoint.

It has gritty road-movie stylings, but I would call this film a black ‘tragicomedy’, sometimes bordering on farce. The storyline is fairly simple, and it won’t be spoiling too much to lay it out in the broad strokes. It’s a movie about four ‘brothers’ in the same gang – low-level street criminals in Russia who steal a black BMW. They get in over their heads when they come for revenge against some slightly higher-level street criminals who trashed and then stole their previous Mercedes – and mistakenly kill an undercover FSB agent. Suddenly on the list of Moscow’s most wanted, they flee into the countryside in their stolen car and try to lay low. However, the main characters’ greed, their desire for ‘prestige’, and their acculturation into street-tough behaviour, always manage to catch up to them no matter where they go. It doesn’t help that much (but not quite all) of the society around them is as venial, as grasping, and often as eager for violence as they are.

The main characters are Konstantin, nicknamed ‘Cat’ (Vladimir Vdovichenkov); Dimon, nicknamed ‘Burnout’ (Andrei Merzlikin); Lyoha, nicknamed ‘Killa’ (Maksim Konovalov); and Petya, nicknamed ‘Rama’ (Sergei Gorobchenko). It is telling that the ‘brotherhood’ that these four young men forge with each other is the strongest social bond in the entire film – but it also arises practically entirely without context. It is irrational. It is also (self-)destructive. There is a certain touching element to the fact that these four ‘have each other’s backs’ and that their relationship isn’t purely transactional.

That separates this relationship from practically all of the rest of the male relationships shown on-screen: the ‘shock doctrine’ capitalism has torn all previously existing relationships to shreds. The symbols of the old Soviet state which we get to see and hear, the slogans of togetherness and camaraderie, are all faded, impotent, in the background – tossed off as a joke, almost.

But given the lawless, dog-eat-dog social environment they live in, there’s little left for them to bond over but ripping off, extorting, cheating or stealing from everyone else. There is a sado-masochistic element to their relationship: they don’t know any other way to demonstrate care for each other than by acting tough and daring each other to new heights of criminal recklessness. There is a tragic element to this, because it causes Cat to fall out with his girlfriend (Anastasiya Sapozhnikova), who moves out on him when she realises she can’t compete with Cat’s ‘brotherhood’ (and understands perfectly well that it will mean visiting him in prison or mourning over his grave). It also causes Petya to leave a village girl, Kat’ka (Yana Shivkova) – who ends up pregnant with his child – after making promises to return to her (which it turns out he can’t keep).

But if the rôle of women in this film seems to serve only as passive observers or as victims of the cruelty of men, then it is telling that older men seem to have no rôle to play at all. This is a film without fathers. Kat’ka has only a mother, Sobachikha (Lyudmila Polyakova), who serves as something of a Greek chorus in the film, delivering prophetic pronouncements and wise advice which the protagonists cannot or will not heed. We are shown that Kat’ka’s child grows up without a father. The young boy whom the four young men meet at a gas station is shown to have no father. And none of these young men are shown as having fathers of their own. It is a generational deprivation which is as glaring and conspicuous as that shown in Tuǵan jer or Igla.

By comparison, the significant relationships that the main characters have, seem to be primarily with technology: guns, cars, mobile phones. But the point gets driven home time and again. Every time they rely on technology to help them, it fails. Dimon’s gun fails to shoot, and the wielder gets stabbed in the gut with a screwdriver. The truck driver who stabbed Dimon with the screwdriver throws a willing, topless woman out of his cabin into the snow when she touches it. She curses him that his truck cabin will fall on him and kill him: this happens. A radio comes on at just the wrong time for a message (called into a pop music DJ) to reach its intended recipient. A cellphone keeps ringing – a musical motif throughout the film – but the owner (Cat) is never around to pick it up, and when he seemingly comes to his senses and tries to reach his girlfriend on it, he finds out she is gone. And of course the eponymous BMW is a never-ending source of trouble for the ‘brothers’. They can’t get rid of it since they need it to escape Moscow, yet it betrays them – to the police, to the local protection rackets – at every opportunity. Ultimately it gets abandoned in the woods, with the headlights left on until the battery dies. There’s something almost Biblical in the way that the characters’ possessions and tough-guy status markers always seem to turn on them.

Again, this film was shot on a (comparatively) shoe-string budget, and it shows. The lighting is dim, the sets often feel cramped and the camerawork is mostly flat and static. But the filmmakers themselves actually use their technological limitations to great effect, whether for deadpan comic and black humour moments (of which there are more than a few), or else for a shot framing which has a particular symbolic significance. This isn’t a Tarantino or a Scorsese movie – even though we can see some tip-of-the-hat homages and stylistic references to both directors in the film. Even so, it’s a worthy entry into the Russian gangster film genre, and it’s easy to see why this film continues to enjoy its cult following.