If
anyone has a right to be obsessed with Chernobyl, it would be filmmaker-set
designer Fedor Alexandrovich. As a four year old child, he was evacuated from
what is now the Exclusion Zone—and he has the radioactive material in his bones
to prove it. Through his research, Alexandrovich pieced together a theory hypothesizing
Chernobyl was not an accident, but a deliberate act of Soviet sabotage. At a
time when the Russian military and their proxies are once again committing
crimes against the Ukrainian people, Chad Gracia documents Alexandrovich’s
deductions as well as the increasingly precarious state of Ukrainian national
security in The Russian Woodpecker,
which screens during the 2015 Sundance Film Festival.
The
titular woodpecker was a rhythmically regular radio signal that was thought to emanate
from the old Soviet over-the-horizon radar station Duga-3, known to locals
simply as the Duga. The Duga was massive and expensive, but it did not work
very well. According to Alexandrovich, it would have failed a planned
inspection, thereby causing great inconvenience for its high ranking sponsors,
had events at Chernobyl not intervened. Can you see where he is going with
this?
The
Woodpecker ceased with the fall of Communism in 1989, but Ukrainians have
recently started picking up an eerily similar signal. Like a prophet in the
wilderness, the wild eyed and unruly coifed Alexandrovich had warned anyone
willing to listen about the dangers of a resurgent neo-Soviet Russia. Unfortunately,
his prophecies have been more vindicated than he would ever wish.
For
obvious reasons, it is nearly impossible to untangle the tragic past from the
perilous present in Woodpecker. While
originally conceived as a short doc on the Duga and its annoying signal, the
project expanded in scope due to the magnitude of Alexandrovich’s contentions and
the relevance of current events. Those in Park City associated with the film are
particularly worried about cinematographer Artem Ryzhkov, a war correspondent
by trade, who was embedded with the unit hardest hit by the latest Russian
orchestrated attacks.
The
heavy significance that looms over Woodpecker
makes it difficult to really enjoy Alexandrovich’s undeniable eccentricity,
even before the multi-hyphenate artist starts to feel the heat as a high
profile critic of Putin’s Russia. Essentially, Woodpecker begins as an idiosyncratic character study, evolves into
a visually stunning tour of the Duga and the surrounding off-limits environs,
and whipsaws into a real life chronicle of paranoia and defiance.
There
are precious few documentaries that can compare to Woodpecker’s unclassifiable tone or its sense of urgency. Even if
you do not fully buy into Alexandrovich’s theories, he and Gracia provide a
great deal of Chernobyl background and context that will be new to most
viewers. Highly compelling in an absolutely chilling kind of way, The Russian Woodpecker is definitely
recommended for anyone interested in a fresh look at Ukrainian current events
and recent history, The Russian
Woodpecker screens again tomorrow (1/29) and Friday (1/30) in Park City, as
part of this year’s Sundance Film Festival.
