The Long Farewell – Studiocanal

Director: Kira Muratova
Screenplay: Natalya Ryazantseva
Starring: Zinaida Sharko, Oleg Vladimirsky, Yuriy Kayurov, Svetlana Kabanova, Tatyana Mychko
Country: Soviet Union
Running Time: 94 min
Year:1971
BBFC Certificate: PG

The Soviet/Ukranian/Romanian director Kira Muratova featured heavily in Mark Cousins’ excellent Women Make Film documentary, which I reviewed here three years ago. As such, her name has been on my radar ever since I saw it and was shamed at how few films featured in the documentary I’d seen.

As is too often the case with female directors though, Muratova’s work is sadly difficult to get hold of in the UK. Thankfully, Studiocanal are hoping to remedy that by releasing a pair of the director’s early works, Brief Encounters (a.k.a. Korotkiye vstrechi) and The Long Farewell (a.k.a. Dolgie provody), on Blu-ray, DVD and Digital.

Unfortunately, I only heard about these releases quite recently and my review schedule is filled to the brim at the moment, so I didn’t have time to cover both. Reading the marketing blurb, The Long Farewell sounded most up my street, so I got hold of a copy of that and my thoughts follow.

In the film, Zinaida Sharko plays Yevgeniya Vasilyevna Ustinova, a middle-aged single mother living with her teenage son Sasha (Oleg Vladimirsky) in Odessa. They’re usually quite close but, after Sasha returns from visiting his father, he grows distant.

Yevgeniya soon learns that Sasha is thinking about leaving her to live with his father. This plagues the mind of the loving but domineering mother. Meanwhile, the young man mulls over his decision whilst contending with the usual adolescent problem of being infatuated with members of the opposite sex.

The script to The Long Farewell had already hit problems with the authorities before eventually getting approved. The film was then promptly shelved after it was finished, as the authorities requested many changes but Muratova wouldn’t budge enough for them. It was believed to be decadent and indulgent, attributes seen as vulgar in the Soviet Union back then, as well as not showing an acceptable view of Socialist motherhood.

The Long Farwell wasn’t publicly shown in the Soviet Union for many years, due to this pseudo-ban, and Muratova was unable to direct a film for 7 years following this. However, the film proved to be influential over the years, through it being distributed among film students, who appreciated its many qualities.

The authorities were particularly troubled by The Long Farewell‘s apparent lack of plot (there isn’t much more to this than what I described above). This surface aimlessness is something that might also put off less patient viewers from the film. There is a story there, if you pay attention, but it is sparse. Instead, Muratova and her screenwriter, Natalya Ryazantseva, are more concerned with character than incident.

The Soviet powers-that-be also complained that the film didn’t fit their mandate of social realism. However, with a style that’s unusual but not outright surreal, and otherwise naturalistic performances and use of locations, the film is what you might call ‘poetic realism’. This isn’t so far detached from what the authorities expected but, obviously, they didn’t agree. It’s an approach I very much appreciated, at least.

I can find ‘offbeat’ art-house films of this era a little too cold and unapproachable. I’m not a fan of Godard, for instance. However, The Long Farewell blends unconventional filmmaking with keen observations of the lives of teenagers and mothers.

Muratova’s style is elegant but bold, using unusual, artful framing and editing techniques as well as playing with the idea of repetition. These aren’t merely stylistic flourishes though. Muratova uses devices such as pushing characters right to the edge of frame and often obscuring our view of them to emphasise the distance between our protagonists and their awkward relationships. A projector is put to good use in various scenes too.

There’s also a wonderfully tactile nature to much of the film. The scene with Sasha and Masha stroking a dog together, for instance, uses the action to such an effective degree that it creates an erotic sequence without the characters even touching each other.

The performances are perfectly realised too. Sasha and some other characters are played by ‘non-actors’ picked out by Muratova. She would continue to do this throughout her career. Oleg Vladimirsky is particularly effective as the aloof young protagonist here. Zinaida Sharko, however, was a respected stage actress and already had numerous film and TV credits to her name. This works in her character’s favour though, given that Yevgeniya is a brash, larger-than-life figure, which is partially why the quiet Sasha feels suffocated by her.

There’s much that can be read into the film too. It explores the differences between attitudes towards men and women in the Soviet Union as well as generational divides through balancing a male coming-of-age drama with its opposite, an ‘ageing’ drama, if you will, of a mother trying to come to terms with being left alone.

Overall then, whilst The Long Farewell might prove too meandering for some, it’s nevertheless a beautifully crafted and observed piece of poetic cinema.

Film:

The Long Farewell is being released on Blu-Ray, DVD and Digital on 18th September as part of Studiocanal’s Vintage World Classics series. I watched the Blu-ray version and it looks perfect, with lovely rich textures and very little damage. The audio is clear too. I’ve used screengrabs throughout this review to give you an idea of how it looks, though these have been compressed.

Disc/package:

Where to watch The Long Farewell