RUSSIAN RESURRECTION FILM FESTIVAL: The Conductor (Дирижер), from famed Russian maestro Pavel Lungin, starts off as a backstage melodrama and ends deep in metaphysical territory. This shift in dramatic intent and momentum shouldn’t be any surprise to punters who’ve seen his recent pictures The Island (2006) and Tsar (2009).
Its incidental pleasures are tremendously exciting
The Conductor isn’t as severe and gob-smackeningly downbeat as either of those (and indeed, insensitive souls could deride his last two films as simply depressing). Its incidental pleasures are tremendously exciting: its dark look is seductive, the music is gorgeous from Russian Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev (and deftly manipulated for maximum drama and meaning throughout), and all the acting is excellent – Vladas Bagdonas in the title role won best actor in Venice last year.
But The Conductor is mystifying. It’s maddeningly obscure at times; progressing as a model narrative where clarity, purpose and momentum are primary values, until at a certain point, Lungin introduces a series of digressions late in the piece that give the film thematic focus, yet at the same time had me going 'who, what, when, how?’
Abounding with religious imagery, bold symbolism and literary references, the story is all about guilt, death and remorse and asks, with all the solemnity of a sermon, how does one atone for one’s sins? Without commitment to a God, what sort of penance is possible? (And a clue as to where this movie stands on this metaphysical point is that it assumes penance must be made!) It has to be said that in the context of the story this is not some theoretical conceit, but a concern of the utmost gravity. Indeed, it is a matter of life and death: How do we live with the knowledge that we cause pain? How do we respond to a fact of life? That is, what do we do once we come to realise that we cannot help but contribute to shortening the lives of our loved ones by virtue of our selfishness and neglect?
These questions plague the cast here, but for the film’s title character they are the stuff of nightmares. Vyacheslav Petrov (Bagdonas) is the archetypal capital 'A’ artist and he dresses the part (some wicked types might call him a movie cliché); with his shaved head, grey beard, piercing eyes and gruff manner, he cuts a forbidding figure. In the story, he is a major conductor, and we meet him and a handful of his key players as the film begins as they are prepping a tour to Jerusalem where they are to perform an oratorio of St. Matthew’s Passion.
With just a few short scenes, Lungin and co-screenwriter Valery Pecheykin sketch in character stakes with great economy: Petrov is a sublime technician, the kind that strikes fear and intimidation into the hearts of his subordinates. (But is he connected to the music he has mastered in a soulful way?) Meanwhile, there’s a subplot about two of the singers: Sergei (Karen Badalov) and Alla (Inga Obol’dina) are married. Sergei, an atheist, is a serial flirt (and most certainly a philanderer), which makes Alla, a believer, try that much harder to grab his attention.
On the plane out to Jerusalem, Sergei hits on an attractive Russian woman who is making the trip to the Holy City for spiritual reasons. She reciprocates his moves by casually agreeing to come see the group’s performance.
It turns out that the trip is a trial for Petrov. His son has killed himself. A would-be painter and bohemian, the young man had run away to Jerusalem and found only hardship and poverty. Once, he had asked his dad for money, but Petrov had refused. So Petrov’s mission in the Holy City is two-fold: play the concert and claim his son’s body.
Lungin and Pecheykin make Petrov’s encounter with his son’s mates a scene of punishment. In a bunker-like setting, with the dead body under a white cloak, the young people, all ragged 'bohemian types’, attempt to crucify Petrov with accusations of neglect. As Petrov leaves, he claims a painting; his son’s last. It is a figure prostrate, lying in state, and it is Petrov. I’ve read that this little bit of plot business is both a reference to religious art (the painting is a parody of Holbein’s Christ lying in state) and Dostoevsky – and I have to confess, I missed the significance of both. Still, I liked what follows; the canvas is long and narrow and hard to hold and carry. We see Petrov struggle with it, as he strides away from this scene through darkened streets. Eventually he throws off this 'cross’; he tosses the painting off a ledge into the darkness. But Lungin and Pecheykin 'punish’ Petrov with further trials: a young woman who, like an angel, sees and understands his pain and offers mercy"¦ and, of course, he must endure his son’s actual funeral.
The Holy City thus becomes a place where all the characters find themselves. Lungin and Pecheykin turn it into a crucible of pain and redemption; by the movie’s end, there’s a terrorist act, a betrayal and, of course, mercy. And just as in a Biblical story, somehow all the pain affords clarity and offers purpose for these characters, so bewildered by the circumstances of their very existence.
