"Dear Comrades" | A Continuing Dilemma
He co-wrote two scripts of Andrei Tarkovsky films, ‘Ivan’s Childhood’ and ‘Andrei Rublev’; left his motherland early in his career to continue his creative journey across the globe. Finally, after enjoying a short stint in Hollywood, he settled back in Russia. Veteran filmmaker Andrei Konchalovsky’s latest, at the age of 82 is ‘Dear Comrades’- a historical drama. The film is a vignette of a deadly event in ostensibly liberal Nikita Khrushchev regime in 1962. Soviet secret service, KGB colluding with state Army pelted bullets on the unarmed workers gathered to protest against price rise in Novocherkassk, a small city in the southern fringe of Soviet Union. The carnage took 26 innocent lives, left 80 injured. Many were arrested and were made to rot in jail. To hush up the bloody massacre, authorities hastily got the nondisclosure agreements signed by all the medical staff and other witnesses. An inquiry commission revealed the truth 30 years later.
The film begins with Lyuda, a staunch Stalin follower and party’s city committee member of Novocherkassk, untying herself after a night’s tryst with her colleague. Their immediate reaction, however, lacks the usual post-coital daze. Reminiscing Stalin’s supremacy over Khrushchev’s administration, she bellows her discontent over the chaos created by the price rise and hurriedly slips away to collect her family’s quota of food. She instead uses the backdoor to enter the premises, as if the powerful has every right to exploit them with whom they express their solidarities. Her outlandish behavior even annoys her unprejudiced teenage daughter and an aging Don Cossack father. So, being a blind partisan, she recommends severe punishment for the proletariats who refute ‘party’s instruction is the rule’ policy, in the central committee meeting. But once out on a frantic search for her missing daughter, Svetka, a mother’s unquestionable faith in communism starts crumbling. Emotionally shocked yet torn in her loyalties, she starts questioning the party’s decision.
Julia Vysotskaya as Lyuda plays an ideal anti-hero in her role of a misled, contemptible party member. Her predicament in such a great turmoil reflects aptly in her minimalistic expression, though she vacillates between her affection and disillusionment, ‘what am I supposed to believe in, if not communism?’ Actor Andrei Gusev’s cold glare as KGB agent Victor, sends a shiver down the spine. Even the patriotic tunes of Isaac Dunayevsky’s ‘Oh Comrade, my comrade…’ evokes the most distressing effect during moments of desperation.
‘Dear Comrades’ starts in a dry satirical tone but the latter half brings in a sense of confinement with gut-wrenching scenes. But Konchalovsky’s effort appears to be a projection of a clumsy ideological conflict; a revisionist project which instead of rehabilitating Stalin, rehabilitates his formalization of communism.
