list http://www.spout.com/ Recent community activity around Cargo 200 on Spout Copyright 2005-9 Spout, LLC Spout RSS http://www.spout.com/images/SpoutLogoRSS.jpg http://www.spout.com/ 136 30 http://www.spout.com/films/Cargo_200/351548/default.aspx Title: Cargo 200
Year: 2007
Director: Alexei Balabanov
Plot: Brother director Alexei Balabanov takes the helm for this over-the-top black comedy concerning the clash between a sadistic police captain and an atheist university professor. The year is 1984, and power-abusing police Captain Zhurov (Alexei Poluyan) lives in a modest Leninisk home with his incoherent, alcoholic mother (Valentina Andryukova). Existing in stark contrast to the corrupt urban policeman, grain alcohol slinger Alexei (Alexei Serebryakov) lives in a remote country shack with his wife Tonya (Natalya Akimova). One night, on his way to visit his mother, local academic Artem (Leonid Gromov)'s care breaks down near Alexei and Tonya's cabin. Later, after Alexei and Artem engaged in a lively debate about communism, atheism, and religion, Leninisk youths Valeria (Leonid Bicevin) and Angelika (Agniya Kuznetsova) show up at the shack in search of some hooch. But Captain Zhurov, who has been lurking in the shadows all along, wants communist chief's daughter Angelika all to himself, and he's willing to take drastic measures in order to get her back to his place and work out his many sexual frustrations. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
Times Tagged: 15
Number of Lists: 1
Number of blog posts: 9
SpoutRating: 4
]]>Sun, 12 Jul 2009 04:21:00 GMTCargo 2002007Alexei Balabanov<a href=/films/171888/default.aspx style='text-decoration:underline'>Brother</a> director Alexei Balabanov takes the helm for this over-the-top black comedy concerning the clash between a sadistic police captain and an atheist university professor. The year is 1984, and power-abusing police Captain Zhurov (Alexei Poluyan) lives in a modest Leninisk home with his incoherent, alcoholic mother (Valentina Andryukova). Existing in stark contrast to the corrupt urban policeman, grain alcohol slinger Alexei (Alexei Serebryakov) lives in a remote country shack with his wife Tonya (Natalya Akimova). One night, on his way to visit his mother, local academic Artem (Leonid Gromov)'s care breaks down near Alexei and Tonya's cabin. Later, after Alexei and Artem engaged in a lively debate about communism, atheism, and religion, Leninisk youths Valeria (Leonid Bicevin) and Angelika (Agniya Kuznetsova) show up at the shack in search of some hooch. But Captain Zhurov, who has been lurking in the shadows all along, wants communist chief's daughter Angelika all to himself, and he's willing to take drastic measures in order to get her back to his place and work out his many sexual frustrations. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide15Tag Target (>10)194http://www.spout.com/ProductImages/s351548.jpghttp://www.spout.com/films/Cargo_200/351548/default.aspxFilm http://www.spout.com/blogs/kevynknox/archive/2009/7/12/43009.aspx Post By: KevynKnox
Post To: KevynKnox Blog
Post Date: 7/12/2009 12:21:00 AM
Body: (this review was first published at www.thecinematheque.com on 01/06/09) Positioned somewhere between the dank environs of Tarkovsky and Michael Haneke and the torture cinema of Eli Roth and his "Splat Pack" brethren, this based-on-real-events political allegory-cum-horror story of 1984 USSR, replete with Huxley's squat gray buildings and a properly proportional festooning of decaying landscapes and milky omnipresent clouds, Aleksei Balabanov's Cargo 200 is at heart, an anti-communist era diatribe, showing with a matter-of-fact realism the ugly corrupt nightmare world that was the Soviet Union (Balabanov said in a 2007 Wall Street Journal interview, "I show what filth we live in. Society was sick from 1917 onwards.") but can also feel right at home, thanks to its severing second half, as some sort of Soviet Chainsaw Massacre. Not to give away to much of the plot - the gradual build-up to the terrifying final act is part of the fun (though fun is hardly the appropriate word when describing this bleak and harrowing film) - let us just say Cargo 200 is the interconnected stories of several Soviet citizens - an atheist professor, a cult-leaning bootlegger, an enterprising and quite cocksure young capitalist dressed in instigatory CCCP tee shirt, a corrupt (and quite insane) police official and the requisite horror story scantily clad (at least eventually) teenage virgin - in small town Russia in the wake of the Soviet/Afghan war and their disparate views on politics and society. At least that is what the first half of the film is, the second half is another thing altogether, falling into a disturbing world of rape, murder and necrophilia - sometimes all three at once. And, to make things even more uncomfortable, as desolate as anything coming out of the Romanian Black Wave with that nation's iron-curtained anti-sentimentality, Cargo 200 also manages, inexplicably enough, to play out as black comedy, with much of its laughter held in nervously stilted inner chuckle. Disallowing any sort of cathartic denouement, or at least teasing us with such only to pull the rug out at the moment just before, we watch as society, already rotted to the bureaucratic and spiritual core, falls deeper and deeper into an abyss that is also the allegory for not just a corrupt aging Communist system in wintry decay, but for most of Western society as a whole. There is a scene midway through this film of coffins being taken off one side of a military plane (the "cargo 200" of the title) while fresh-faced new soldiers march on to the other, like a tragic cartoon factory cycle. This is a world where the weak are preyed upon and never saved, and though the forces of evil may eventually fail at times, the more conniving forces of indifference and injustice are ultimately triumphant. Though lacking in any real originality save for its odd juxtaposition of genres (the dark, dank Eastern Bloc thriller has been done to death, but at least here there is a twist - and that is what makes the film) Cargo 200, with its strange melange of sociopolitical allegory and black comedy B-terror may be a warning of what we might become one day. Or have we already become it?
]]>Sun, 12 Jul 2009 04:21:00 GMTKevynKnoxKevynKnox Blog7/12/2009 12:21:00 AM(this review was first published at www.thecinematheque.com on 01/06/09) Positioned somewhere between the dank environs of Tarkovsky and Michael Haneke and the torture cinema of Eli Roth and his "Splat Pack" brethren, this based-on-real-events political allegory-cum-horror story of 1984 USSR, replete with Huxley's squat gray buildings and a properly proportional festooning of decaying landscapes and milky omnipresent clouds, Aleksei Balabanov's Cargo 200 is at heart, an anti-communist era diatribe, showing with a matter-of-fact realism the ugly corrupt nightmare world that was the Soviet Union (Balabanov said in a 2007 Wall Street Journal interview, "I show what filth we live in. Society was sick from 1917 onwards.") but can also feel right at home, thanks to its severing second half, as some sort of Soviet Chainsaw Massacre. Not to give away to much of the plot - the gradual build-up to the terrifying final act is part of the fun (though fun is hardly the appropriate word when describing this bleak and harrowing film) - let us just say Cargo 200 is the interconnected stories of several Soviet citizens - an atheist professor, a cult-leaning bootlegger, an enterprising and quite cocksure young capitalist dressed in instigatory CCCP tee shirt, a corrupt (and quite insane) police official and the requisite horror story scantily clad (at least eventually) teenage virgin - in small town Russia in the wake of the Soviet/Afghan war and their disparate views on politics and society. At least that is what the first half of the film is, the second half is another thing altogether, falling into a disturbing world of rape, murder and necrophilia - sometimes all three at once. And, to make things even more uncomfortable, as desolate as anything coming out of the Romanian Black Wave with that nation's iron-curtained anti-sentimentality, Cargo 200 also manages, inexplicably enough, to play out as black comedy, with much of its laughter held in nervously stilted inner chuckle. Disallowing any sort of cathartic denouement, or at least teasing us with such only to pull the rug out at the moment just before, we watch as society, already rotted to the bureaucratic and spiritual core, falls deeper and deeper into an abyss that is also the allegory for not just a corrupt aging Communist system in wintry decay, but for most of Western society as a whole. There is a scene midway through this film of coffins being taken off one side of a military plane (the "cargo 200" of the title) while fresh-faced new soldiers march on to the other, like a tragic cartoon factory cycle. This is a world where the weak are preyed upon and never saved, and though the forces of evil may eventually fail at times, the more conniving forces of indifference and injustice are ultimately triumphant. Though lacking in any real originality save for its odd juxtaposition of genres (the dark, dank Eastern Bloc thriller has been done to death, but at least here there is a twist - and that is what makes the film) Cargo 200, with its strange melange of sociopolitical allegory and black comedy B-terror may be a warning of what we might become one day. Or have we already become it? http://www.spout.com/blogs/karina/archive/2009/1/2/39039.aspx Post By: Karina
Post To: Karina on SpoutBlog
Post Date: 1/2/2009 11:00:56 AM
Body: In its depiction of mid-80s Eastern European Communist social hell, Cargo 200 makes 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days look like Sesame Street. There are plenty of films that use real history as the jumping off point for genre fantasy, but Aleksei Balabanov’s brutal, fetid vision of personal sadism and political policy intermingled is the only work of serious, modern social criticism in recent memory that actually made me want to puke. This is a compliment of the highest order. It’s 1984, and a professor of Scientific Atheism (academic backup for the Communist state’s embargo on religion) leaves the home of his Army colonel brother to visit their mother in fictional Russian broken-down factory town Leninsk. Along the way, his car breaks down, and he seeks refuge in the dismal, nowheresville shack of a bootlegger. The professor and the bootlegger get into a heated, vodka-fueled argument about faith and the possibility of utopia while the bootlegger’s Vietnamese handyman fixes the car. The bootlegger is drunk and riled up from the ideological debate, but the professor is ultimately able to drive off before any non-verbal conflict ensues. The bootlegger’s next guests, the boyfriend and best friend of the Colonel’s teenage daughter, are much less lucky. To say more about the plot would spoil the excruciating experience of watching unspeakable horrors unfold in patient, matter-of-fact realism. Balabanov has crafted horror setpieces as vile (and strangely aesthetically pleasing) as anything you might see in contemporary torture porn, but Cargo’s slow-burn build (there’s a good hour of steadily mounting dread before anything remotely violent happens) give each act of rape, murder, torture and necrophilia (sometimes all on the same bed!) that much more weight. When I sat on a jury last year at Fantastic Fest, I fought hard to give an award to Cargo 200, and my biggest obstacle was convincing my fellow jurors to overcome their gag reflex and see Balabanov’s film as a twisted work of historical activism. In a Wall Street Journal story about the controversy that surrounded the film‘s release in its home country last year, Balabanov, who is known in Russia for making relatively patriotic (and sometimes anti-American) blockbusters, said Cargo is his attempt to combat a growing Putin-fueled nostalgia for the Soviet era. “I show what filth we lived in,” the director said. I can’t vouch for Cargo 200’s verisimilitude, but as a work of cinema I’d file it alongside genre classics like Cat People and Invasion of the Body Snatchers as an allegorical polemic against a toxic but increasingly common ideology. Equal parts sad, sickening and sharply critical, it puts Eli Roth’s sensational pretenses towards cultural relevancy to shame. A slightly different version of this review appeared during Fantastic Fest. Check out our interview with Balabanov here. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth
]]>Fri, 02 Jan 2009 16:00:56 GMTKarinaKarina on SpoutBlog1/2/2009 11:00:56 AMIn its depiction of mid-80s Eastern European Communist social hell, Cargo 200 makes 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days look like Sesame Street. There are plenty of films that use real history as the jumping off point for genre fantasy, but Aleksei Balabanov’s brutal, fetid vision of personal sadism and political policy intermingled is the only work of serious, modern social criticism in recent memory that actually made me want to puke. This is a compliment of the highest order. It’s 1984, and a professor of Scientific Atheism (academic backup for the Communist state’s embargo on religion) leaves the home of his Army colonel brother to visit their mother in fictional Russian broken-down factory town Leninsk. Along the way, his car breaks down, and he seeks refuge in the dismal, nowheresville shack of a bootlegger. The professor and the bootlegger get into a heated, vodka-fueled argument about faith and the possibility of utopia while the bootlegger’s Vietnamese handyman fixes the car. The bootlegger is drunk and riled up from the ideological debate, but the professor is ultimately able to drive off before any non-verbal conflict ensues. The bootlegger’s next guests, the boyfriend and best friend of the Colonel’s teenage daughter, are much less lucky. To say more about the plot would spoil the excruciating experience of watching unspeakable horrors unfold in patient, matter-of-fact realism. Balabanov has crafted horror setpieces as vile (and strangely aesthetically pleasing) as anything you might see in contemporary torture porn, but Cargo’s slow-burn build (there’s a good hour of steadily mounting dread before anything remotely violent happens) give each act of rape, murder, torture and necrophilia (sometimes all on the same bed!) that much more weight. When I sat on a jury last year at Fantastic Fest, I fought hard to give an award to Cargo 200, and my biggest obstacle was convincing my fellow jurors to overcome their gag reflex and see Balabanov’s film as a twisted work of historical activism. In a Wall Street Journal story about the controversy that surrounded the film‘s release in its home country last year, Balabanov, who is known in Russia for making relatively patriotic (and sometimes anti-American) blockbusters, said Cargo is his attempt to combat a growing Putin-fueled nostalgia for the Soviet era. “I show what filth we lived in,” the director said. I can’t vouch for Cargo 200’s verisimilitude, but as a work of cinema I’d file it alongside genre classics like Cat People and Invasion of the Body Snatchers as an allegorical polemic against a toxic but increasingly common ideology. Equal parts sad, sickening and sharply critical, it puts Eli Roth’s sensational pretenses towards cultural relevancy to shame. A slightly different version of this review appeared during Fantastic Fest. Check out our interview with Balabanov here. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2009/1/2/39038.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 1/2/2009 11:00:42 AM
Body: In its depiction of mid-80s Eastern European Communist social hell, Cargo 200 makes 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days look like Sesame Street. There are plenty of films that use real history as the jumping off point for genre fantasy, but Aleksei Balabanov’s brutal, fetid vision of personal sadism and political policy intermingled is the only work of serious, modern social criticism in recent memory that actually made me want to puke. This is a compliment of the highest order. It’s 1984, and a professor of Scientific Atheism (academic backup for the Communist state’s embargo on religion) leaves the home of his Army colonel brother to visit their mother in fictional Russian broken-down factory town Leninsk. Along the way, his car breaks down, and he seeks refuge in the dismal, nowheresville shack of a bootlegger. The professor and the bootlegger get into a heated, vodka-fueled argument about faith and the possibility of utopia while the bootlegger’s Vietnamese handyman fixes the car. The bootlegger is drunk and riled up from the ideological debate, but the professor is ultimately able to drive off before any non-verbal conflict ensues. The bootlegger’s next guests, the boyfriend and best friend of the Colonel’s teenage daughter, are much less lucky. To say more about the plot would spoil the excruciating experience of watching unspeakable horrors unfold in patient, matter-of-fact realism. Balabanov has crafted horror setpieces as vile (and strangely aesthetically pleasing) as anything you might see in contemporary torture porn, but Cargo’s slow-burn build (there’s a good hour of steadily mounting dread before anything remotely violent happens) give each act of rape, murder, torture and necrophilia (sometimes all on the same bed!) that much more weight. When I sat on a jury last year at Fantastic Fest, I fought hard to give an award to Cargo 200, and my biggest obstacle was convincing my fellow jurors to overcome their gag reflex and see Balabanov’s film as a twisted work of historical activism. In a Wall Street Journal story about the controversy that surrounded the film‘s release in its home country last year, Balabanov, who is known in Russia for making relatively patriotic (and sometimes anti-American) blockbusters, said Cargo is his attempt to combat a growing Putin-fueled nostalgia for the Soviet era. “I show what filth we lived in,” the director said. I can’t vouch for Cargo 200’s verisimilitude, but as a work of cinema I’d file it alongside genre classics like Cat People and Invasion of the Body Snatchers as an allegorical polemic against a toxic but increasingly common ideology. Equal parts sad, sickening and sharply critical, it puts Eli Roth’s sensational pretenses towards cultural relevancy to shame. A slightly different version of this review appeared during Fantastic Fest. Check out our interview with Balabanov here. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Fri, 02 Jan 2009 16:00:42 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com1/2/2009 11:00:42 AMIn its depiction of mid-80s Eastern European Communist social hell, Cargo 200 makes 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days look like Sesame Street. There are plenty of films that use real history as the jumping off point for genre fantasy, but Aleksei Balabanov’s brutal, fetid vision of personal sadism and political policy intermingled is the only work of serious, modern social criticism in recent memory that actually made me want to puke. This is a compliment of the highest order. It’s 1984, and a professor of Scientific Atheism (academic backup for the Communist state’s embargo on religion) leaves the home of his Army colonel brother to visit their mother in fictional Russian broken-down factory town Leninsk. Along the way, his car breaks down, and he seeks refuge in the dismal, nowheresville shack of a bootlegger. The professor and the bootlegger get into a heated, vodka-fueled argument about faith and the possibility of utopia while the bootlegger’s Vietnamese handyman fixes the car. The bootlegger is drunk and riled up from the ideological debate, but the professor is ultimately able to drive off before any non-verbal conflict ensues. The bootlegger’s next guests, the boyfriend and best friend of the Colonel’s teenage daughter, are much less lucky. To say more about the plot would spoil the excruciating experience of watching unspeakable horrors unfold in patient, matter-of-fact realism. Balabanov has crafted horror setpieces as vile (and strangely aesthetically pleasing) as anything you might see in contemporary torture porn, but Cargo’s slow-burn build (there’s a good hour of steadily mounting dread before anything remotely violent happens) give each act of rape, murder, torture and necrophilia (sometimes all on the same bed!) that much more weight. When I sat on a jury last year at Fantastic Fest, I fought hard to give an award to Cargo 200, and my biggest obstacle was convincing my fellow jurors to overcome their gag reflex and see Balabanov’s film as a twisted work of historical activism. In a Wall Street Journal story about the controversy that surrounded the film‘s release in its home country last year, Balabanov, who is known in Russia for making relatively patriotic (and sometimes anti-American) blockbusters, said Cargo is his attempt to combat a growing Putin-fueled nostalgia for the Soviet era. “I show what filth we lived in,” the director said. I can’t vouch for Cargo 200’s verisimilitude, but as a work of cinema I’d file it alongside genre classics like Cat People and Invasion of the Body Snatchers as an allegorical polemic against a toxic but increasingly common ideology. Equal parts sad, sickening and sharply critical, it puts Eli Roth’s sensational pretenses towards cultural relevancy to shame. A slightly different version of this review appeared during Fantastic Fest. Check out our interview with Balabanov here. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2008/12/30/38947.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 12/30/2008 9:01:24 AM
Body: Upon its Russian release in 2007, Cargo 200 immediately provoked a national furor. Alexei Balabanov’s grim little movie centers around one Captain Zhurov (Alexei Poluyan), a police officer in 1984’s Soviet Russia who uses his position of authority to essentially institutionalize rape, prisoner beatings and all-round mayhem.  In a typical scene, he tosses the corpse of a girl’s soldier-fiance next to her while she’s chained to a bed and proceeds to read the dead man’s love letters. When I first saw Cargo 200, I thought it was supposed to be black comedy, but it isn’t; its pitch-perfect production design is part of a whole package designed to check any nostalgia for the departed Soviet era, even if it summons up long-gone discotheques and hairstyles effortlessly. Cargo 200 itself is the code word for the boxes in which dead soldiers are shipped back from Afghanistan, which pretty much sums up the grim tone. Already available through Netflix, Cargo 200 receives a much-deserved if small release January 2; Balabanov’s film is appalling, but it’s also surprisingly elegant. A few contextual things you may like to know: despite working as an interpreter for two year in the ’80s, Balabanov will only do interviews in Russian, so I spoke with him over the phone in that language. Balabanov is not what you might consider a tactful, soft-spoken guy: in an interview in 2007 with “Novaya Gazeta,” he responded to a question about charges of xenophobia with the terse statement, “In every country there are decent people and there are freaks.” Cargo 200 is his first film to be screened outside of festivals in the US in a decade, since 1997’s Brother, so I’ve included contextual notes as needed. When did you first come up with the idea for Cargo 200? I came up with the idea for Cargo 200 a long time ago, after the film River [a 2002 project about a 19th-century leper colony left unfinished after actress Tuiara Svinoboeva died in a road accident during production]. I traveled a lot around the country in 1984-86. I know Siberia and the far north well, and this is based on true things that happened. The only thing I made up when the corpse of the dead soldier is thrown into bed with the girl. In reality, when I served in the army from 1981-83, the boxes with dead soldiers from Afghanistan disappeared all the time. And where they ended up, no one knows. Those kind of discotheques were everywhere then, I went to them. At that time, there were limitations on vodka, so everyone bought imitation vodka. A lot of American reviews said the movie’s set in 1984 in reference to Orwell’s book. No. That’s not correct. The truth is, Gorbachev is a thief. There was a famous cotton scandal in Uzbekistan in 1983. Everything that happened connected back clearly to Moscow, and it was all terrifying. And Gorbachev was then the Minister of Agriculture. That’s the whole story. I had 1984 in mind, because this was the last year under Chernenko. After that began changes in the country, right after his death. The two boys who walk off together at the end are going to become oligarchs, right? Yes yes yes, these are the people who will start businesses in the future. These are the beginnings of capitalism, and then these people became oligarchs. I don’t love capitalism. I don’t love communism either. I like it when people are honest and decent. Oligarchs are for the most part not decent people because their capital is stolen. The communists, they’re simply terrible people. Does your film belong to the chernukha genre [a series of films popular during perestroika depicting Soviet life as unpleasantly as possible: 1988's Little Vera et al.]? In the first place, this is a film without genre. I insist on this. I don’t like chernukha or horror movies. This is a film without genres that absolutely reflects the position of our history in 1984. In the second place, many people don’t like this film, many people like it. For example, Alexey Zernov the famous director said “We all wanted to make such a film, but we didn’t have enough courage. But Balabanov made it.” It was very pleasant for me to hear his words. It seems to me that this film is honest, truthful and good. There’s no chernukha. In any case, the worst kind of movie is those they say nothing, when people instantly forget if when they watch it. Did the ban on anyone under 21 seeing it cause you any problems? Honestly, this is a formality. In reality they let everyone in. For example, I took my children to this movie. I’m not worried about showing it to them: my youngest is 13, my oldest 19. They go to the movie and they’re let in. I read you were planning to work with Willem Defoe at one point. I became friends with Willem Defoe at Telluride. He really liked [2002's] War. We walked around and talked. I told him about my idea for a film called The American. When I wrote it, I sent it to him. He read it and said it was very good, but he didn’t see himself in this role. I badgered him about it for a long time, but he refused. Afterwards we began looking for an American actor and settled on Michael Biehn. We began filming with Biehn in New York, and he was great. Then we moved to Northern Siberia, and he began to drink vodka heavily. We filmed there for three days, then moved to Irkutsk. There all hell broke loose. He drank himself into a stupor. I refused to continue filming, and winter was already passing. He returned to Los Angeles and promised to return the money. He didn’t return anything. We filed a lawsuit in 2003. Is the lawsuit over? Of course not. We lost our money and that’s it. How do you feel about the current state of the Russian film industry? It’s not very good. Government support has fallen because of the world financial crisis. Has my film Morphia shown up there yet? No, it’s the first time I’ve heard of it. You’re calling me from New York? Yeah. Well, then you can easily find it at Brighton Beach. Pirated copies? Of course. You can find it online easily. It came out right after the premiere. Bad quality, but now there’s a better one. You can find it at Brighton for sure. Morphia is based on the early writings of Mikhail Bulgakov. This was the first screenplay by Sergei Bodrov Jr., who’s sadly dead now. Do you think people misunderstand Cargo 200 when you show it outside Russia? I don’t know. I think that 1917, the revolution, everyone understands what that means. All this happens at every step to this day. They kill every day. They show it to us on television every day, and it’s getting worse and worse. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Tue, 30 Dec 2008 14:01:24 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com12/30/2008 9:01:24 AM Upon its Russian release in 2007, Cargo 200 immediately provoked a national furor. Alexei Balabanov’s grim little movie centers around one Captain Zhurov (Alexei Poluyan), a police officer in 1984’s Soviet Russia who uses his position of authority to essentially institutionalize rape, prisoner beatings and all-round mayhem.  In a typical scene, he tosses the corpse of a girl’s soldier-fiance next to her while she’s chained to a bed and proceeds to read the dead man’s love letters. When I first saw Cargo 200, I thought it was supposed to be black comedy, but it isn’t; its pitch-perfect production design is part of a whole package designed to check any nostalgia for the departed Soviet era, even if it summons up long-gone discotheques and hairstyles effortlessly. Cargo 200 itself is the code word for the boxes in which dead soldiers are shipped back from Afghanistan, which pretty much sums up the grim tone. Already available through Netflix, Cargo 200 receives a much-deserved if small release January 2; Balabanov’s film is appalling, but it’s also surprisingly elegant. A few contextual things you may like to know: despite working as an interpreter for two year in the ’80s, Balabanov will only do interviews in Russian, so I spoke with him over the phone in that language. Balabanov is not what you might consider a tactful, soft-spoken guy: in an interview in 2007 with “Novaya Gazeta,” he responded to a question about charges of xenophobia with the terse statement, “In every country there are decent people and there are freaks.” Cargo 200 is his first film to be screened outside of festivals in the US in a decade, since 1997’s Brother, so I’ve included contextual notes as needed. When did you first come up with the idea for Cargo 200? I came up with the idea for Cargo 200 a long time ago, after the film River [a 2002 project about a 19th-century leper colony left unfinished after actress Tuiara Svinoboeva died in a road accident during production]. I traveled a lot around the country in 1984-86. I know Siberia and the far north well, and this is based on true things that happened. The only thing I made up when the corpse of the dead soldier is thrown into bed with the girl. In reality, when I served in the army from 1981-83, the boxes with dead soldiers from Afghanistan disappeared all the time. And where they ended up, no one knows. Those kind of discotheques were everywhere then, I went to them. At that time, there were limitations on vodka, so everyone bought imitation vodka. A lot of American reviews said the movie’s set in 1984 in reference to Orwell’s book. No. That’s not correct. The truth is, Gorbachev is a thief. There was a famous cotton scandal in Uzbekistan in 1983. Everything that happened connected back clearly to Moscow, and it was all terrifying. And Gorbachev was then the Minister of Agriculture. That’s the whole story. I had 1984 in mind, because this was the last year under Chernenko. After that began changes in the country, right after his death. The two boys who walk off together at the end are going to become oligarchs, right? Yes yes yes, these are the people who will start businesses in the future. These are the beginnings of capitalism, and then these people became oligarchs. I don’t love capitalism. I don’t love communism either. I like it when people are honest and decent. Oligarchs are for the most part not decent people because their capital is stolen. The communists, they’re simply terrible people. Does your film belong to the chernukha genre [a series of films popular during perestroika depicting Soviet life as unpleasantly as possible: 1988's Little Vera et al.]? In the first place, this is a film without genre. I insist on this. I don’t like chernukha or horror movies. This is a film without genres that absolutely reflects the position of our history in 1984. In the second place, many people don’t like this film, many people like it. For example, Alexey Zernov the famous director said “We all wanted to make such a film, but we didn’t have enough courage. But Balabanov made it.” It was very pleasant for me to hear his words. It seems to me that this film is honest, truthful and good. There’s no chernukha. In any case, the worst kind of movie is those they say nothing, when people instantly forget if when they watch it. Did the ban on anyone under 21 seeing it cause you any problems? Honestly, this is a formality. In reality they let everyone in. For example, I took my children to this movie. I’m not worried about showing it to them: my youngest is 13, my oldest 19. They go to the movie and they’re let in. I read you were planning to work with Willem Defoe at one point. I became friends with Willem Defoe at Telluride. He really liked [2002's] War. We walked around and talked. I told him about my idea for a film called The American. When I wrote it, I sent it to him. He read it and said it was very good, but he didn’t see himself in this role. I badgered him about it for a long time, but he refused. Afterwards we began looking for an American actor and settled on Michael Biehn. We began filming with Biehn in New York, and he was great. Then we moved to Northern Siberia, and he began to drink vodka heavily. We filmed there for three days, then moved to Irkutsk. There all hell broke loose. He drank himself into a stupor. I refused to continue filming, and winter was already passing. He returned to Los Angeles and promised to return the money. He didn’t return anything. We filed a lawsuit in 2003. Is the lawsuit over? Of course not. We lost our money and that’s it. How do you feel about the current state of the Russian film industry? It’s not very good. Government support has fallen because of the world financial crisis. Has my film Morphia shown up there yet? No, it’s the first time I’ve heard of it. You’re calling me from New York? Yeah. Well, then you can easily find it at Brighton Beach. Pirated copies? Of course. You can find it online easily. It came out right after the premiere. Bad quality, but now there’s a better one. You can find it at Brighton for sure. Morphia is based on the early writings of Mikhail Bulgakov. This was the first screenplay by Sergei Bodrov Jr., who’s sadly dead now. Do you think people misunderstand Cargo 200 when you show it outside Russia? I don’t know. I think that 1917, the revolution, everyone understands what that means. All this happens at every step to this day. They kill every day. They show it to us on television every day, and it’s getting worse and worse. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/blogs/karina/archive/2008/10/14/36301.aspx Post By: Karina
Post To: Karina on SpoutBlog
Post Date: 10/14/2008 3:02:12 PM
Body: This might be the least safe-for-work thing I’ve ever blogged. Cargo 200, Alexei Balabanov’s gruesome indictment of Russian devolution circa 1984 which was one of my favorite films from this year’s Fantastic Fest (it also played Telluride and Toronto in 2007), is available for viewing in nine parts on YouTube. This is either the best way to watch this film or the worst. As I noted in my review, one of the best things about Cargo is its slow build –– it takes forever for anything actually disturbing to happen, but then once shit goes bad, it just gets worse and worse and worse –– and the power of the mounting revulsion might get lost if you’re watching it in chunks. That said, you also have the option to either skip, or skip directly towards, the really, really sick stuff. For the record, that gets started in part four. It gets much, much worse in part seven. Enjoy! Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth
]]>Tue, 14 Oct 2008 19:02:12 GMTKarinaKarina on SpoutBlog10/14/2008 3:02:12 PM This might be the least safe-for-work thing I’ve ever blogged. Cargo 200, Alexei Balabanov’s gruesome indictment of Russian devolution circa 1984 which was one of my favorite films from this year’s Fantastic Fest (it also played Telluride and Toronto in 2007), is available for viewing in nine parts on YouTube. This is either the best way to watch this film or the worst. As I noted in my review, one of the best things about Cargo is its slow build –– it takes forever for anything actually disturbing to happen, but then once shit goes bad, it just gets worse and worse and worse –– and the power of the mounting revulsion might get lost if you’re watching it in chunks. That said, you also have the option to either skip, or skip directly towards, the really, really sick stuff. For the record, that gets started in part four. It gets much, much worse in part seven. Enjoy! Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2008/10/14/36299.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 10/14/2008 3:01:49 PM
Body: This might be the least safe-for-work thing I’ve ever blogged. Cargo 200, Alexei Balabanov’s gruesome indictment of Russian devolution circa 1984 which was one of my favorite films from this year’s Fantastic Fest (it also played Telluride and Toronto in 2007), is available for viewing in nine parts on YouTube. This is either the best way to watch this film or the worst. As I noted in my review, one of the best things about Cargo is its slow build –– it takes forever for anything actually disturbing to happen, but then once shit goes bad, it just gets worse and worse and worse –– and the power of the mounting revulsion might get lost if you’re watching it in chunks. That said, you also have the option to either skip, or skip directly towards, the really, really sick stuff. For the record, that gets started in part four. It gets much, much worse in part seven. Enjoy! Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Tue, 14 Oct 2008 19:01:49 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com10/14/2008 3:01:49 PM This might be the least safe-for-work thing I’ve ever blogged. Cargo 200, Alexei Balabanov’s gruesome indictment of Russian devolution circa 1984 which was one of my favorite films from this year’s Fantastic Fest (it also played Telluride and Toronto in 2007), is available for viewing in nine parts on YouTube. This is either the best way to watch this film or the worst. As I noted in my review, one of the best things about Cargo is its slow build –– it takes forever for anything actually disturbing to happen, but then once shit goes bad, it just gets worse and worse and worse –– and the power of the mounting revulsion might get lost if you’re watching it in chunks. That said, you also have the option to either skip, or skip directly towards, the really, really sick stuff. For the record, that gets started in part four. It gets much, much worse in part seven. Enjoy! Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2008/9/23/35460.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 9/23/2008 6:01:58 PM
Body: Fantastic Fest announced their film awards late last night, even through we’ve still got three more days of movie watching and alcohol drinking to go. As expected, The Good, The Bad and The Weird took the Audience Award, although JCVD took third place in that category, which continues to baffle me. The much buzzed about Let The Right One In was named best horror film over Donkey Punch and Acolytes, and the Danish film How To Get Rid Of The Others took top award in the Fantastic Features category with Cargo 200 and Ex Drummer in second and third place. Thankfully they gave the wacky and fun Santos a special award in that category. We’ll have a lot more to say about these films and much more soon, so keep checking back for more festival information and news throughout the week. Heck, I’ve even enjoyed seeing Conquest of the Planet of the Apes at this thing. The complete awards listings can be found after the break. Animated Shorts: First Place: Bernie’s Doll Second Place: Muto Third Place: Violeta Special Jury Award for Technical Merit: Facts In The Case Of Mr. Hollow Fantastic Shorts: First Place: The Object Second Place: Spandex Man Third Place: Stagman Special Jury Award for Visual Invention: Rojo Red Horror Shorts: First Place: Electric Fence Second Place:. I Love Sarah Jane Third Place: El Senor Puppe Special Jury Award for sheer enjoyability: The Horribly Slow Murderer With The Extremely Inefficient Weapon Fantastic Features: First Place: HOW TO GET RID OF THE OTHERS Second Place: CARGO 200 Third Place: EX DRUMMER Special Jury Award for originality and vision: SANTOS Horror Features: First Place: LET THE RIGHT ONE IN Second Place: ACOLYTES Third Place: DONKEY PUNCH Special Jury Award for most politically incorrect gore: FEAST 2 Special Jury Award for best use of latex: JACK BROOKS MONSTER SLAYER Audience Award: First Place: THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE WEIRD Second Place: CHOCOLATE Third Place: JCVD AMD Fantastic Fest Online: Best Feature Film: SOUTH OF HEAVEN Best Short Film: TREEVENGE AMD Next Wave: First Place: TOKYO GORE POLICE Second Place: DEADGIRL Third Place: LE CREME Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Tue, 23 Sep 2008 22:01:58 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com9/23/2008 6:01:58 PM Fantastic Fest announced their film awards late last night, even through we’ve still got three more days of movie watching and alcohol drinking to go. As expected, The Good, The Bad and The Weird took the Audience Award, although JCVD took third place in that category, which continues to baffle me. The much buzzed about Let The Right One In was named best horror film over Donkey Punch and Acolytes, and the Danish film How To Get Rid Of The Others took top award in the Fantastic Features category with Cargo 200 and Ex Drummer in second and third place. Thankfully they gave the wacky and fun Santos a special award in that category. We’ll have a lot more to say about these films and much more soon, so keep checking back for more festival information and news throughout the week. Heck, I’ve even enjoyed seeing Conquest of the Planet of the Apes at this thing. The complete awards listings can be found after the break. Animated Shorts: First Place: Bernie’s Doll Second Place: Muto Third Place: Violeta Special Jury Award for Technical Merit: Facts In The Case Of Mr. Hollow Fantastic Shorts: First Place: The Object Second Place: Spandex Man Third Place: Stagman Special Jury Award for Visual Invention: Rojo Red Horror Shorts: First Place: Electric Fence Second Place:. I Love Sarah Jane Third Place: El Senor Puppe Special Jury Award for sheer enjoyability: The Horribly Slow Murderer With The Extremely Inefficient Weapon Fantastic Features: First Place: HOW TO GET RID OF THE OTHERS Second Place: CARGO 200 Third Place: EX DRUMMER Special Jury Award for originality and vision: SANTOS Horror Features: First Place: LET THE RIGHT ONE IN Second Place: ACOLYTES Third Place: DONKEY PUNCH Special Jury Award for most politically incorrect gore: FEAST 2 Special Jury Award for best use of latex: JACK BROOKS MONSTER SLAYER Audience Award: First Place: THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE WEIRD Second Place: CHOCOLATE Third Place: JCVD AMD Fantastic Fest Online: Best Feature Film: SOUTH OF HEAVEN Best Short Film: TREEVENGE AMD Next Wave: First Place: TOKYO GORE POLICE Second Place: DEADGIRL Third Place: LE CREME Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/blogs/karina/archive/2008/9/23/35430.aspx Post By: Karina
Post To: Karina on SpoutBlog
Post Date: 9/23/2008 11:02:25 AM
Body: In its depiction of mid-80s Eastern European Communist social hell, Cargo 200 makes 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days look like Sesame Street. There are plenty of films that use real history as the jumping off point for genre fantasy (and even a couple of others at this festival), but Aleksei Balabanov’s brutal, fetid vision of personal sadism and political policy intermingled is the only work of serious, modern social criticism in recent memory that actually made me want to puke. This is a compliment of the highest order. It’s 1984. A professor of Scientific Atheism (academic backup for the Communist state’s embargo on religion) leaves the home of his Army colonel brother to visit their mother in fictional Russian broken-down factory town Leninsk. Along the way, his car breaks down, and he seeks refuge in the dismal, nowheresville shack of a bootlegger. The professor and the bootlegger get into a heated, vodka-fueled argument about faith and the possibility of utopia while the bootlegger’s Vietnamese handyman fixes the car. The bootlegger is drunk and riled up from the ideological debate, but the professor is ultimately able to drive off before any non-verbal conflict ensues. The bootlegger’s next guests, the boyfriend and best friend of the Colonel’s teenage daughter, are much less lucky. To say more about the plot would spoil the excruciating experience of watching unspeakable horrors unfold in matter-of-fact realism. Balabanov has crafted horror setpieces as vile (and strangely aesthetically pleasing) as anything you might see in contemporary torture porn, but Cargo’s slow-burn build (there’s a good hour of steadily mounting dread before anything remotely violent happens) give each act of rape, murder, torture and necrophilia (sometimes all on the same bed!) that much more weight. Pretty much tied with Ex-Drummer as the most unforgettable film I’ve seen (as of this writing) at Fantastic Fest, I fought hard to give an award to Cargo 200 when I deliberated with my fellow Feature jurors, and not just for the puke factor. In a Wall Street Journal story about the controversy that surrounded the film‘s release in its home country last year, Balabanov, who is known in Russia for making relatively patriotic (and sometimes anti-American) blockbusters, the filmmaker said Cargo is his attempt to combat a growing Putin-fueled nostalgia for the Soviet era. “I show what filth we lived in,” the director said. I can’t vouch for Cargo 200’s versimilitude, but as a work of cinema I’d file it alongside genre classics like Cat People and Invasion of the Body Snatchers as an allegorical polemic against a toxic but increasingly common ideology. Equal parts sad, sickening and sharply critical, it puts Eli Roth’s sensational pretenses towards cultural relevancy to shame. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth
]]>Tue, 23 Sep 2008 15:02:25 GMTKarinaKarina on SpoutBlog9/23/2008 11:02:25 AMIn its depiction of mid-80s Eastern European Communist social hell, Cargo 200 makes 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days look like Sesame Street. There are plenty of films that use real history as the jumping off point for genre fantasy (and even a couple of others at this festival), but Aleksei Balabanov’s brutal, fetid vision of personal sadism and political policy intermingled is the only work of serious, modern social criticism in recent memory that actually made me want to puke. This is a compliment of the highest order. It’s 1984. A professor of Scientific Atheism (academic backup for the Communist state’s embargo on religion) leaves the home of his Army colonel brother to visit their mother in fictional Russian broken-down factory town Leninsk. Along the way, his car breaks down, and he seeks refuge in the dismal, nowheresville shack of a bootlegger. The professor and the bootlegger get into a heated, vodka-fueled argument about faith and the possibility of utopia while the bootlegger’s Vietnamese handyman fixes the car. The bootlegger is drunk and riled up from the ideological debate, but the professor is ultimately able to drive off before any non-verbal conflict ensues. The bootlegger’s next guests, the boyfriend and best friend of the Colonel’s teenage daughter, are much less lucky. To say more about the plot would spoil the excruciating experience of watching unspeakable horrors unfold in matter-of-fact realism. Balabanov has crafted horror setpieces as vile (and strangely aesthetically pleasing) as anything you might see in contemporary torture porn, but Cargo’s slow-burn build (there’s a good hour of steadily mounting dread before anything remotely violent happens) give each act of rape, murder, torture and necrophilia (sometimes all on the same bed!) that much more weight. Pretty much tied with Ex-Drummer as the most unforgettable film I’ve seen (as of this writing) at Fantastic Fest, I fought hard to give an award to Cargo 200 when I deliberated with my fellow Feature jurors, and not just for the puke factor. In a Wall Street Journal story about the controversy that surrounded the film‘s release in its home country last year, Balabanov, who is known in Russia for making relatively patriotic (and sometimes anti-American) blockbusters, the filmmaker said Cargo is his attempt to combat a growing Putin-fueled nostalgia for the Soviet era. “I show what filth we lived in,” the director said. I can’t vouch for Cargo 200’s versimilitude, but as a work of cinema I’d file it alongside genre classics like Cat People and Invasion of the Body Snatchers as an allegorical polemic against a toxic but increasingly common ideology. Equal parts sad, sickening and sharply critical, it puts Eli Roth’s sensational pretenses towards cultural relevancy to shame. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2008/9/23/35429.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 9/23/2008 11:01:03 AM
Body: In its depiction of mid-80s Eastern European Communist social hell, Cargo 200 makes 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days look like Sesame Street. There are plenty of films that use real history as the jumping off point for genre fantasy (and even a couple of others at this festival), but Aleksei Balabanov’s brutal, fetid vision of personal sadism and political policy intermingled is the only work of serious, modern social criticism in recent memory that actually made me want to puke. This is a compliment of the highest order. It’s 1984. A professor of Scientific Atheism (academic backup for the Communist state’s embargo on religion) leaves the home of his Army colonel brother to visit their mother in fictional Russian broken-down factory town Leninsk. Along the way, his car breaks down, and he seeks refuge in the dismal, nowheresville shack of a bootlegger. The professor and the bootlegger get into a heated, vodka-fueled argument about faith and the possibility of utopia while the bootlegger’s Vietnamese handyman fixes the car. The bootlegger is drunk and riled up from the ideological debate, but the professor is ultimately able to drive off before any non-verbal conflict ensues. The bootlegger’s next guests, the boyfriend and best friend of the Colonel’s teenage daughter, are much less lucky. To say more about the plot would spoil the excruciating experience of watching unspeakable horrors unfold in matter-of-fact realism. Balabanov has crafted horror setpieces as vile (and strangely aesthetically pleasing) as anything you might see in contemporary torture porn, but Cargo’s slow-burn build (there’s a good hour of steadily mounting dread before anything remotely violent happens) give each act of rape, murder, torture and necrophilia (sometimes all on the same bed!) that much more weight. Pretty much tied with Ex-Drummer as the most unforgettable film I’ve seen (as of this writing) at Fantastic Fest, I fought hard to give an award to Cargo 200 when I deliberated with my fellow Feature jurors, and not just for the puke factor. In a Wall Street Journal story about the controversy that surrounded the film‘s release in its home country last year, Balabanov, who is known in Russia for making relatively patriotic (and sometimes anti-American) blockbusters, the filmmaker said Cargo is his attempt to combat a growing Putin-fueled nostalgia for the Soviet era. “I show what filth we lived in,” the director said. I can’t vouch for Cargo 200’s versimilitude, but as a work of cinema I’d file it alongside genre classics like Cat People and Invasion of the Body Snatchers as an allegorical polemic against a toxic but increasingly common ideology. Equal parts sad, sickening and sharply critical, it puts Eli Roth’s sensational pretenses towards cultural relevancy to shame. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Tue, 23 Sep 2008 15:01:03 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com9/23/2008 11:01:03 AMIn its depiction of mid-80s Eastern European Communist social hell, Cargo 200 makes 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days look like Sesame Street. There are plenty of films that use real history as the jumping off point for genre fantasy (and even a couple of others at this festival), but Aleksei Balabanov’s brutal, fetid vision of personal sadism and political policy intermingled is the only work of serious, modern social criticism in recent memory that actually made me want to puke. This is a compliment of the highest order. It’s 1984. A professor of Scientific Atheism (academic backup for the Communist state’s embargo on religion) leaves the home of his Army colonel brother to visit their mother in fictional Russian broken-down factory town Leninsk. Along the way, his car breaks down, and he seeks refuge in the dismal, nowheresville shack of a bootlegger. The professor and the bootlegger get into a heated, vodka-fueled argument about faith and the possibility of utopia while the bootlegger’s Vietnamese handyman fixes the car. The bootlegger is drunk and riled up from the ideological debate, but the professor is ultimately able to drive off before any non-verbal conflict ensues. The bootlegger’s next guests, the boyfriend and best friend of the Colonel’s teenage daughter, are much less lucky. To say more about the plot would spoil the excruciating experience of watching unspeakable horrors unfold in matter-of-fact realism. Balabanov has crafted horror setpieces as vile (and strangely aesthetically pleasing) as anything you might see in contemporary torture porn, but Cargo’s slow-burn build (there’s a good hour of steadily mounting dread before anything remotely violent happens) give each act of rape, murder, torture and necrophilia (sometimes all on the same bed!) that much more weight. Pretty much tied with Ex-Drummer as the most unforgettable film I’ve seen (as of this writing) at Fantastic Fest, I fought hard to give an award to Cargo 200 when I deliberated with my fellow Feature jurors, and not just for the puke factor. In a Wall Street Journal story about the controversy that surrounded the film‘s release in its home country last year, Balabanov, who is known in Russia for making relatively patriotic (and sometimes anti-American) blockbusters, the filmmaker said Cargo is his attempt to combat a growing Putin-fueled nostalgia for the Soviet era. “I show what filth we lived in,” the director said. I can’t vouch for Cargo 200’s versimilitude, but as a work of cinema I’d file it alongside genre classics like Cat People and Invasion of the Body Snatchers as an allegorical polemic against a toxic but increasingly common ideology. Equal parts sad, sickening and sharply critical, it puts Eli Roth’s sensational pretenses towards cultural relevancy to shame. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/murder/MemberTagFilms.aspxmurder
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