It
was one of the worst cases of mass murder and ethnic cleansing in recorded
history, yet the world never demanded the guilty be held to account. At least
590,000 Estonians, Lithuanians, and Latvians met a premature death as a result
of the Soviet WWII era occupation of the Baltics and the resulting mass deportations
to Siberia. While many would prefer to ignore the Communist crimes against
humanity for ideological reasons, the testimony of survivors like Erna Nagel
were an inconvenient indictment of the socialist system. To commemorate the
victims, Martti Helde has adapted Nagel’s Siberian diary (written in the form
of letters to her beloved husband Heldur) as the extraordinary cinematic hybrid
In the Crosswind (trailer here), which screens during
the 18th Annual European Union Film Festival in Chicago.
Nagel’s
domestic life with Heldur and their six-year-old daughter Eliide was so blissful,
it blinded her to the mounting Soviet danger. Tragically, when the Red Army
arrives, Heldur Nagel is one of the first to be rounded up, since he is a
member of the Estonian Defense League. He and his colleagues will be sent
directly to a gulag, where they will be tortured for months and then executed
without trial. Erna and Eliide will be sent to a work camp in Siberia, where
Estonian women are forced to perform slave labor. Food rations are meager and
only given to adults who meet their quotas. Estonian children like Eliide get
nothing (so much for “each according to his need”). Having already contracted dysentery
in the over-crowded cattle car that took them east, Eliide will slowly expire
from disease and starvation, while Nagel is helpless to comfort her.
Nagel’s
own words will tell her story through Laura Peterson’s sensitive voiceovers,
but during her period of Siberian exile, they are accompanied by a series of
thirteen black-and-white frozen tableaux, in which Helde suspends time for his cast, amid their
snarls and cowering. Realized in excruciating detail, cinematographer Erik Pőllumaa
slowly surveys each living picture, often revealing greater horrors as his
perspective changes. These are not freeze frames, because the wind and
elements, as well as ambient noise and background chatter waft through Helde’s
carefully composed images. It is a bold aesthetic strategy, but Crosswind cannot be called non-narrative
filmmaking, because Nagel’s entire life unfolds through the narration.
While
Nagel’s before and after scenes in Estonia are more conventionally live action
in their execution, the tableau vivants constitute the guts of the film. Eerily
effective, they preclude any possible melodramatic excesses, distilling the essence
of the terror and dehumanization of the Communist prison camps and collectives.
As Nagel, Peterson does more than hold her poses. Her deeply expressive face
speaks volumes and her voiceovers reach into the soul.
