265. Assa

Song - Wind of Change (Scorpions)

Movie: Assa (Sergey Solovyov, 1987)

For a long time this is the kind of euphorically wonderful film that teeters on the brink of absurd, darkly funny surrealism, without ever crossing the border into full-blown fantasy. Many lesser films do make that cross, losing much of their strangeness and eccentricity in the process. Assa goes the opposite way, eventually becoming a somewhat predictable tragic youth romance. It's still good, but it's dissapointing to see a movie that was so confidently balancing so many different ideas, tones, moods, styles, and feelings go into such a conventional direction. Thankfully, Solovyov takes the long way round and though it is always evident that he is building towards some sort of plot, the first half of the film feels more like a series of loosely connected vignettes set agains the Soviet rock scene. We meet a band and their lead singer, a girl who gets infuatuated with the lead singer, an older gangster who is threatened by this infatuation, an alcoholic who is lying about his status as a Major, and a dwarf theatre actor, who is portrayed as an adult, but made up to look like a teen. 

In the film's first half Solovyov is mostly interested in showing how these characters cross each other's paths, often set to a soundtrack of (really great!) Russian rock, without bothering too much with how interactions are logically connected. The film can switch in an instant between the deeply weird and the effortlessly cool and scenes of great melancholy and romance are followed by moments of dumb goofy fun. It may not make much narrative sense, but you always feel it makes emotional sense, getting the exact mood Solovyov is going for. He sets the tone pretty much from the opening when a guy enters a stereotypically Communist-looking restaurant theatrically telling a story about Noah's Ark, only for the camera to pan to the left to reveal that the music we thought were hearing non-diegetically was actually the result of a bunch of flamboyant rock stars preparing their act. It's odd to see the musicians share a same space as the sad looking chairs and tables we saw just before, and there is no real connection between the rock stage and the story about Noah, but Solovyov makes the moment work perfectly, just as he does throughout the film. At one point the gangster starts reading a book about the assassination of the Russian emperor Paul I, and the film starts cutting between the main story in contemporary Soviet Union and the assassination plot, told as a historical costume drama, in 1801 St. Petersburg. Another highlight is the interrogation of the fake Major, who tells a bizarre monologue about how Yuri Gagarin inspired him, while on the soundtrack we hear incessantly arrhythmical guitar sounds contributing to the nervously funny mood of the scene. 

The film is as close as you'll ever get to seeing a window into an alternate, better world. It is explicitly made in the context of Gorbatchev's reforms in the Soviet Union and not only a direct expression of the hope that these would lead to a better and more attractive, democratic society, but also an expression of how that society could look. It sees rock music, and the youth counterculture developed with it, as a harbinger of what is possible. It is fully in love with the eccentric independence of its rock stars and their freedom to be who they are without conforming to dominant structures. At the same time, it is not in opposition to the Soviet Union, but it sees it as a country that can give young people the opportunitiy to be cool,interesting, have fun, and fall in love, and that has room for alternative lifestyles and views that are not necessarily aligned with the politically desired culture. 

The most charming scene of the film sees the rock star and his girl dance to a song made on a "Japanese" Yamaha computer.  It's a good example of how the film also sees the Soviet Union as a country that can adjust and become a fully functioning part of the emerging modern globalist world. And yeah, OK, the journey into the new world may meet some bumps along the way. The drummer in the band is portrayed by a white actor in (halfheartedly applied) blackface, but in the history of film there has probably never been a more wholesome or more progressive use of blackface. As one of the characters exclaims, "now there are not just black Mike's and Joe's, but also black 'Vitya's', as Vitya is the son of a Russian mother and an Angolan revolutionary. 

That's some great writing that reminded me of a moment in the 2017 film Ali's Wedding, about a Muslim family in Australia that struggles to be accepted by the white Australians, while also being harassed by the more fundamentalist members of their faith. Ali's Wedding is one of those films that got dumped onto Netflix to be forgotten, but at one point a character desires to move to America, exclaiming that 'In the US we can finally live like Australians." As far as I am concerned, that's one of the lines of the decade, one that like the point about Vitya more forcefully evokes the hope and progress that (American) pluralist multicultural society represents than many western/American films that are explicitly about that. Setting this aside, it's also worth noting that in Assa, the guy in blackface fits the broader ethos of the film. At one point the rock starr tells his girl to wear lensless glasses, "as the suggestion that you see better, will already make you see better." The film knows that the society it depicts doesn't really exist yet, but maybe it can be manifested by a sincere belief in it, and some ingenious acts of creation.  

Alas, now there is Putin. But it's good to know that the spirit behind this movie is still a little bit alive. Most of the songs here are written by Boris Grebenshchikov, who is known as the Godfather of Russian rock, and opposed the invasion of Ukraine. The lead singer is played by Sergey Bugayev, an avant-garde artist who is still working (though mostly in the US and Western Europe). The film ends with a song about how the Russian youths want change with all their hearts and all their minds. It's sung by Viktor Tsoi, a Russian with a Korean father, who was at one point the biggest rock star in the country, but died in a car accident in 1990 at the age of 28. In 2015, he was portrayed in the film Leto by Teo Yoo - the annoying hanger-on in Past Lives (yeah, not the biggest fan of that film). My favorite fact about Tsoi though is that the greatest shorttrack skater in history Viktor An, who first represented Korea and then Russia, chose Viktor as his Russian name in honor of Tsoi. It would be nice if, at some point when the Putins of the world are in the dustbin of history, these will be the Russians more of the world will remember.