Cargo 200 is set in an average Russian industrial town of Leninsk in late 1984 right after the demise of Gen Sec Andropov against the backdrop of agonizing Soviet regime's decay.
An airhead daughter of a local high ranking Communist Party official befriends a young dipsomaniac at a rural disco. After the party's over the lad offers to drive her home. But first he proposes to drop by at a nearby countryside community to replenish the supply of booze.
Eventually he leaves the girl in the car and walks to a farmhouse where dwells a family of an ex con who makes his living in trading home-brewed alcohol.
After a while the girl startled by a bystander (peeping at her through the windshield) rushes to the house only to find her stone dead drunk pal collapsing out of the table in front of the similarly wrecked host.
The (jealous) housewife aware of her husband's nasty temper locks the girl in a bath house promising to release her when the man calms down and falls asleep.
In the meantime the creepy guy that scared the girl enters the house and is offered a plate of mushroom soup. After boarding with the family's domestic helper, a Vietnamese handyman, the man requests the latter to open the bath house for him.
There they discover the poor girl paralyzed with fear hiding in the distant room.
That's where all the "fun" begins.
The next morning the sleepy little town is overwhelmed by sinister rumors of the missing apparatchik's daughter and the slaughter of the Vietnameze helper at the neighborhood's household.
That was a clever and original premise of the latest film from the acclaimed Russian director Alexei Balabanov.
In his own words - "this is just a movie about the year of 1984 as I recollect it, as I conceive it and see it. I wanted to produce a harsh film on the decline of the Soviet Union - hence I made it".
Well, in the director's notion the hallmarks of the departing Soviet era (as we see it in the movie) are:
The title of the movie refers to a military euphemism that stands for the massive deliveries of zinc coffins from the combat operations in Afghanistan. A highlight of the film is the scene where Captain Zhurov is reading out loud the letters of late Sergeant Gorbunov addressed to his sobbing fiancé. Very touchy and heartwarming. And definitely not for the faint of heart.
Honestly, it is really difficult to define a precise genre which this obscure film belongs to.
Balabanov himself is more inclined to consider it a thriller. Let us reckon on his view. But I wonder which particular chunks of the film might be regarded as thrilling or suspenseful. Well, perhaps it might be engrossing dialogs on the religious issues, drunken car / motorcycle rides across empty motorways, police raids, oh yeah - I nearly forgot those disturbing and graphic rape, torture and obsession scenes. In this meaning it delivers in abundance.
But unfortunately one essential ingredient is missing, i.e. an articulate plot that might have glued together those logically unbalanced and chronologically fragmentary bits and pieces into a solid and convincing storyline.
Yet this repetitive and irritating soundtrack is unlikely to be conducive to the overall impression.
I seriously doubt that the Russians that have so far established their own mixed feelings and attitude towards the country's past may find something useful in the film that could have helped them to refresh their memories or reconsider their views. It can also be misleading to overseas audience familiar with even worse image of Russia portrayed before in western movies and compelled to judge a book by its cover.
It may however be recommended to those curious about how executions in Soviet jails (before the death penalty ban) actually looked like.
An airhead daughter of a local high ranking Communist Party official befriends a young dipsomaniac at a rural disco. After the party's over the lad offers to drive her home. But first he proposes to drop by at a nearby countryside community to replenish the supply of booze.
Eventually he leaves the girl in the car and walks to a farmhouse where dwells a family of an ex con who makes his living in trading home-brewed alcohol.
After a while the girl startled by a bystander (peeping at her through the windshield) rushes to the house only to find her stone dead drunk pal collapsing out of the table in front of the similarly wrecked host.
The (jealous) housewife aware of her husband's nasty temper locks the girl in a bath house promising to release her when the man calms down and falls asleep.
In the meantime the creepy guy that scared the girl enters the house and is offered a plate of mushroom soup. After boarding with the family's domestic helper, a Vietnamese handyman, the man requests the latter to open the bath house for him.
There they discover the poor girl paralyzed with fear hiding in the distant room.
That's where all the "fun" begins.
The next morning the sleepy little town is overwhelmed by sinister rumors of the missing apparatchik's daughter and the slaughter of the Vietnameze helper at the neighborhood's household.
That was a clever and original premise of the latest film from the acclaimed Russian director Alexei Balabanov.
In his own words - "this is just a movie about the year of 1984 as I recollect it, as I conceive it and see it. I wanted to produce a harsh film on the decline of the Soviet Union - hence I made it".
Well, in the director's notion the hallmarks of the departing Soviet era (as we see it in the movie) are:
- Countrywide heavy drinking (the majority of the screen time is devoted to exposure of different states of alcohol intoxication);
- Total miscreance (a belief in the only creative force on earth - the Communist Party of the Soviet Union - was in fact an attribute of the Soviet society; amazingly the only apologist of the Christianity in the movie is a derelict felon);
- Miserable existence of the millions of Soviet families (the art directors of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre series may envy the cast and crew of Cargo 200 - such stunning interiors, make-up effects and myriads of those realistically looking (and sounding) flies lavishly exhibited in the movie can hardly be found in a big budget Hollywood production).
The title of the movie refers to a military euphemism that stands for the massive deliveries of zinc coffins from the combat operations in Afghanistan. A highlight of the film is the scene where Captain Zhurov is reading out loud the letters of late Sergeant Gorbunov addressed to his sobbing fiancé. Very touchy and heartwarming. And definitely not for the faint of heart.
Honestly, it is really difficult to define a precise genre which this obscure film belongs to.
Balabanov himself is more inclined to consider it a thriller. Let us reckon on his view. But I wonder which particular chunks of the film might be regarded as thrilling or suspenseful. Well, perhaps it might be engrossing dialogs on the religious issues, drunken car / motorcycle rides across empty motorways, police raids, oh yeah - I nearly forgot those disturbing and graphic rape, torture and obsession scenes. In this meaning it delivers in abundance.
But unfortunately one essential ingredient is missing, i.e. an articulate plot that might have glued together those logically unbalanced and chronologically fragmentary bits and pieces into a solid and convincing storyline.
Yet this repetitive and irritating soundtrack is unlikely to be conducive to the overall impression.
I seriously doubt that the Russians that have so far established their own mixed feelings and attitude towards the country's past may find something useful in the film that could have helped them to refresh their memories or reconsider their views. It can also be misleading to overseas audience familiar with even worse image of Russia portrayed before in western movies and compelled to judge a book by its cover.
It may however be recommended to those curious about how executions in Soviet jails (before the death penalty ban) actually looked like.