I have to mention one of my favourite books in recent years: Philip Marsdens Spirit-Wrestlers: A Russian Journey. There's a particular bit at the beginning which I go back to continually in my thoughts:
Each morning in the yard below my flat, there now appeared a woman with a broom who replaced the wintry scrape-scraping of snow shovels with an odd litany of shouting. 'May the devil take you! The devil dance on your grave! Jokers! Criminals! This isn't a country, it's a prison!'I bought the book on the back of a review in a newspaper, I really didn't know what to expect and was completely fascinated and moved by Marsdens encounters with the people he met along his journey through Russia and the Caucasus.
Such was the vitriol of her cries that it occurred to me that she swept the yard not because she had to, but out of some desperate need for self-expression. When I talked to her, it turned out she was the widow of a former Soviet ambassador to Brazil.
What seems to connect everything I have read so far, things that I've caught on to, is the reassuring presence of humanity no matter where you are, it seems absolutely intrinsic to us. Even in the worst circumstances (the earthquake in Haiti recently). On the other hand, the cynic in me would think of it in terms of human selfishness (instinctual need to survive?) as an absolute guarantee balanced by human compassion and altrusim. Maybe that's what makes us human, no wonder we get ourselves into so much trouble!
--thought break--
Two moving war films come to mind here.
One surprisingly from 1985 Russia: Come And See (Idi i Smotri). A disturbing, dream-like film, capturing the disbelief, confusion and insanity of terrible events through the eyes of a Russian peasent boy. I've read a few reviews for this and some have complained about the acting being wooden and the Nazi characters being OTT stereotypes. I don't see it personally. Maybe it's our moderate, cosy, polite democracy trying to keep things level headed and objective. 'Overly emotive' I hear them say, 'Russian propaganda'. Knowing what happened to these people, I don't think they have the right to tell them how to feel. It is a kind of revenge film. Expressing the utter outrage and misery of a people treated with such brutality, they are the only ones who could make a film like this. I've never been so angered by a film, and maybe that was the point.
The other is a Polish one from 1957 called Kanal. I loved the people in this film, it was a kind of last chance ditch rallying cry before the madness and eventual dispair of the inevitable. Set in Warsaw it tells of a group of resistance fighters who find themselves in the sewers of the city trying to escape the Nazis. Part of a triology, I haven't managed to get hold of the other two films yet.
