Courage and Affection in Moscow

I always think ‘idiots’ when I hear of people who take their vacations and leave Moscow in summer. The summer of Russia’s capital – ludicrously short as it is – stands as the only time of the year when living in Moscow is not just tolerable, but even fun.

Of course, one of the massive attractions of Moscow’s summer is the Film Festival, which, apart from hundreds of film screenings, includes a dozen ‘parties of a lifetime’ and numerous related events.

A documentary on Hunter S. Thompson's life was featured at the festival

The movie-geeky types confine themselves to the screenings, while the aces of socializing eagerly watch their city transformed into a resort for a fortnight. For one reason or another, adept Muscovites do their best not to miss a second of the festival.

Anyway, enough with the tourist gibberish. As I am in the process of working on two major movie projects, I chose to ignore the social part and join the geeks in the dimly-lit cinema halls (though even with this kind of attitude it was hard to ignore the number of pretty girls surrounding me).

Some of the known programs of the festival fell short of previous years’ standards, including Moscow Euphoria. Others were more impressive than ever, like Free Thought and Films Around the World.

Free Thought, a documentary cinema program, was full of pleasant surprises as usual.

Visually stunning (so DON’T watch it on YouTube, though it’s available) and informative, Encounters at the End of the World by famous German Werner Herzog portrayed people living literally at the end of the Earth – on an Antarctic island.

If the prize is this kind of footage, a journey to Antarctic is not too far

Like a magician, Herzog played with human emotions, carefully choosing the soundbites of his heroes and bringing up a deep philosophical idea between the lines. Overall, the movie provided the perfect insight into the world of ‘professional dreamers’ – those whose restless and adventurous personality enables them to endure the trials and tribulations of living at the South Pole.

Less visually impressive, but still with a nice and neatly-working chemistry of facts and personality was the French Ne Me Libèrez Pas, Je M'en Charge.

At times it might seem that director Fabienne Godet was too carried away by the amazing charisma of Michel Vaujour – the notorious French prison escapee, but overall the movie was good. The only question that remained unanswered was what Vaujour could have accomplished had he devoted his creative flair and indomitable vitality to something other than fleeing from custody.

Another hero of a documentary – Slovenian endurance swimmer Martin Strel – personally appeared at the screening of Big River Man in Moscow, as if to let everyone feel his power of will, which helped him to swim the deadly Amazon River.

For years Martin Strel, 53, drank beer and wine on daily basis, but he's still one hell of swimmer

The never-boring subject of Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter Thompson along with Ralph Steadman’s drawings and an appearance from Johnny Depp ensured the success of Alex Gibney’s documentary. However, one might think that it wasn’t ‘Gonzo’ enough, and that Thompson, had he been alive, would consider the movie rather dull.

A bit too anti-Soviet in its message, Prokofiev: the Unfinished Diary, had a very promising subject, but failed to dig out anything new on the fate of the composer. Not missing the opportunity to tackle the Soviet regime, director Yosif Feyginberg still suffered from one of the most controversial regulations of capitalism: copyright laws. Having no clearance for the use of Prokofiev’s music, the movie looked terribly crippled without this powerful backdrop, of which only small parts were used in the soundtrack.

To be continued…

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The Moscow Film Festival came to an end on Sunday, having its official awards assigned.

Being someone who spent a whole ten days in the cinema – thankfully Moscow’s weather was not sunny at all, so I didn’t waste much from our scanty summer – I still managed to watch not more than 10% of the festival.

Overall the MIFF featured little less than 400 works. Many of those films – for better or worse – don’t deserve to go unnoticed.

I will dwell upon the details and the trends of the festival in my future posts, now some alternative awarding is in order:

Voltaire’s award for the most sarcastic movie language (Russia is the country of Eisenstein so we use expressions like “movie language” a lot, sorry) – $9.99;

James Joyce’s prize for the most unencrypted of the failed attempts to set up a communication between an author and his audience – A Lake;

Vinnie Jones’s prize for the most outstandingly seamless celebrity appearance in a movie – Eric Cantona in Looking for Eric;

Bea Arthur’s award for the most charming female actress that might, with any luck, avoid appearing nude in male magazines – Martina Gedeck in Geliebte Clara;

Trainspotting’s memorial pellet for the most remarkable movie centered around drugs – Skrapp út;

The Passion of the Christ’s award for the most suffering that had to be endured by the protagonist – Kaméleon;

Chuck Palahniuk’s prize for the most sober view on corporate world – Tutta la vita davanti;

Hideo Kojima’s award for most innovative and dramatic assessment of war – Bonded Parallels;

Andy Warhol’s lifetime achievement award for the most undeservedly popular artist who doesn’t deserve any mentioning whatsoever, as all his work does nothing apart from taking advantage of cultural immaturity of most of his audience again and again – someone whom I will not mention here (as he doesn’t deserve any mentioning – see above), confining myself to an observation that Danish culture can do better than this ridiculously overrated director;

Adam Lambert’s relic for the most pathetic attempt to replace artwork with a fashion and/or political statement – Ivan Vyrypaev for Kislorod.

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Four years ago, on February 20, 2005, Hunter Stockton Thompson passed away from a self-inflicted gunshot, just like he promised many a time during the course of his celebrated 47-year-long career.

Most people will probably remember him as the author of Fear and Loathing in Las-Vegas, which is of course a typical case of masses grasping the simplest and the hottest – in a tabloid sense – part of any culture, but Thompson was so much more.

This blog is titled Courage and Affection in Moscow for a reason, and this date is very special for me personally, as it indeed should be for anyone, who at a certain moment in time might be called a journalist. Luckily Thompson is immensely popular among the younger generation of Russian journos, which is a good sign.

Novellist, essayist, an adept of protest culture, a die-hard gun activist and a ‘fortified-compound-dweller’ HST was a beacon of common sense in a world, where “everyone is guilty, [and] the only crime is getting caught”. Probably, the last beacon intact.

In the movie Fear and Loathing in Las-Vegas Hunter was
portrayed by Johnny Depp

Thompson had both the wit and the integrity to speak on the most complicated of issues, while keeping it simple, as if it was a minor baseball game. The vast majority of his pieces leave an aftertaste of a good talk over a bottle of whisky or whatever it is that you drink, eat or smoke.

His brilliant analogies contributed to this greatly, as well as the composition of his pieces, which is nothing short of exemplary. HST was one of the very few in the business, who always kept in mind that anyone who opens, turns on or even downloads any kind of media is essentially looking for a story. And a story he did deliver, with his ideas scattered around like sesame seeds on a Big Mac.

His vocabulary was that of power and energy, while his ideas were those of a pacifist and a liberal. Another peculiar combination in Thompson was his awareness of his social responsibility amid an array of acts of epic personal irresponsibility.

He never made a secret that politics disgusted him, with Richard Nixon his arch-nemesis, but he kept covering and covering those elections from 1972 to 2004 with his only purpose in mind to prevent America from making the wrong choices. This is the same Thompson who stole elk antlers hanging above the front door of Ernest Hemingway’s cabin and was, he claimed, a suspect for the first time at the delicate age of nine for abuse of state property following an incident with a mailbox.

But above all Hunter was the perfect cult figure: you could be a dedicated fan of his in your salad days, and then grow up and not be ashamed to admit it. He had that very rare thing indeed among writers: versatility, which made it impossible to ‘outgrow’ him in time.

At 17 you admired one thing about him, and at 21 a completely different thing, but it was still the good old Hunt doing the job. He was never a subject of “How on Earth could I have liked that mediocre idiot?!” after years, unlike the 90 per cent of other authors.

As far as favourite HST quotes go, mine are definitely mentioned here either in the main piece or in the commentaries.

When working on HST's portrayal, Depp was supervised by
the man himself

Of those not mentioned I really liked the snake story, about how he left a snake in a box overnight in an editorial office – I think it was Rolling Stone’s, but it’s been awhile since I re-read that particular book, so I might be wrong – and the snake was accompanied by its supper, which happened to be a living mouse. The snake wasn’t hungry at the moment and the mouse took advantage of the situation to gnaw a hole in the box and flee. The snake followed suit and spent the night creeping on the various floors of the editorial office, until in the early hours of dawn it was encountered by an office guard, who virtually went insane, while clubbing the poor reptile to death. Hunter naturally was made responsible and for some time his relations with the magazine soured.

(NB. after finishing this passage I spent some time trying unsuccessfully to find that story, which I’m now hundred per cent sure was in The Great Shark Hunt; the following one was in the Kingdom of Fear, but the books don’t have any Ctrl+F, and I never bothered to make any bookmarks).

Another quote I remember is from his letter to Oscar Acosta (the prototype of Dr. Gonzo from Fear and Loathing in Las-Vegas, “As your attorney I advise you” etc.), who previously wrote to him about how he was going to have a ‘collumn’ in some newspaper and thus is no different from Thompson himself. In a response letter Thompson praised his friend, but also noted that ‘column’ is written with one ‘l’, and that noting it is just one of the dirty tricks that a professional journalist can perform on an amateur one.

Of course the famous ‘wave speech’ from Fear and Loathing in Las-Vegas deserves special mentioning. When I first read it back at school I hadn’t the vaguest idea what he was talking about – mind you, San-Francisco of the 1960s is not something taught at history lessons – and my English was not that good (it still isn’t now) but I was still able to feel the ultimate nostalgia of those lines, which Hunter himself considered some of his best.

Still no quotes could match a fully-fledged Hunter Thompson experience.

As your attorney I advise you to run to the nearest bookshop and attain a copy of The Great Shark Hunt or The Kingdom of Fear.

Good luck, and Mahalo.

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