SYDNEY FILM FESTIVAL: This futuristic Russian sci-fi thriller is a sprawling, boldly ambitious and imaginative meditation on mortality, happiness, desire and the choice between good and evil.
Alas, as rendered by veteran director Alexander Zeldovich and co-scripter Vladimir Sorokin, it’s also self-indulgently long, pretentious, often baffling and incoherent, and ultimately pointless.
While Target borrows elements from Minority Report, The Matrix and Solaris, topped off with a surreal orgy that might have had Fellini and Stanley Kubrick salivating, what it lacks is a compelling, convincing narrative to sustain its 158 minutes.
Set in Moscow in 2020, the convoluted plot revolves around a bunch of wealthy people who fly to a remote spot in the Altai Mountains near the Mongolian border to subject themselves to doses of cosmic radiation. This bizarre treatment, they believe, will give them eternal youth.
The party includes Viktor (Maxim Sukhanov), the imperious Minister of Natural Resources, his stunning, much younger wife Zoya (Justine Waddell), Zoya’s brother Mitya (Danila Kozlovsky), the manic, motor-mouth host of gaudy TV game shows, and Nikolai (Vitaly Kischenko), a dour Customs official.
At an abandoned astrophysics facility named The Target, they encounter another seeker of eternal youth, Anna (Daniela Stoyanovich), who hosts a Chinese-for-beginners program wittily entitled 'Chinese for Dummies." By remarkable co-incidence, Mitya had been a huge fan of Anna’s and they’re soon an item.
The facility does seem to have magical powers, typified by one of the workers based there, the attractive Taya (Nina Loschinina), who says she’s 52 and looks about half that age.
Initially everyone seems energised by the radiation but signs of bizarre behaviour are soon apparent. Viktor turns aggressive, tells Zoya he dreams he’s a 'bum, an absolute nobody" and bonks a compliant Taya while his wife is changing in another room. Later he lectures Ministry officials on the dangers of digging up 'evil" minerals, an unsubtle ecological message from the scriptwriters.
Zoya and Nikolai, who barely spoke at the radiation centre, begin an affair for no noticeable reason. Mitya declares he feels old and hates everyone except Anna.
A modicum of tension finally builds in the last half hour or so, marked by outbreaks of violence including murder and a vicious rape, but much of it has no rational explanation beyond accepting that the radiation messed with these peoples’ minds and souls. There are frequent, consensual couplings, quite explicitly filmed, but it’s often gratuitous.
The performances are all pretty good but their impact is diluted because all the key characters behave more and more erratically, with few clues as to their inner workings.
I’ve never been to Moscow but the city looks cleaner, sleeker and shinier than I’ve ever seen it, thanks to the smart production design and Alexander Ilkhovski’s cinematography.
The scriptwriters introduce a few intriguing issues such as references to some form of rating assigned by the state to individuals; Viktor confiding to an unseen person named Tsao; and Viktor’s glasses which seem to have X-ray powers, but these aren’t developed. Zoya and Viktor had been trying in vain to have a baby for a couple of years but nothing comes of that. Similarly, Taya returns to Moscow with the group to renew acquaintance with an old lover of years ago but that storyline peters out without a resolution.
Just like the film, which poses many more questions than it’s prepared or willing to answer.
