Viktor
Tsoi was the Clifford Brown of Soviet rock & roll. He was immensely talented
and generally well-liked, but died far too young in an auto accident. Although he
was not really a dissident rocker, like the legendary Plastic People of the
Universe, he never received much support from the official cultural apparatus.
Tsoi’s live-fast-die-young rock & roll story is impressionistically chronicled
in Kirill Serebrennikov’s Leto, which
opens this Friday in New York, less than two months after the director was
released from house arrest, for the crime of being an artist in Putin’s Russia
(technically, the charge was embezzlement, but nobody really believed it).
By
the 1980s, the Communist Party realized they could no longer prohibit rock
music outright, but they still deeply distrusted everything about it,
particularly the musicians that played it. The Leningrad Rock Club was one of
the few officially sanctioned performances spaces, but audiences were expected to
sedately sit on their hands, like they were attending a government hearing.
Mayk “Mike” Naumenko was one of the few established rockers, who had
credibility with both the fans and the apparatchiks. He could usually get a new
act stage time there, as long as they said the right things. Viktor Tsoi has
trouble doing that.
Tsoi
is Naumenko’s great, yet-to-be-discovered protégé, but their relationship gets
rather more complicated when his wife Natasha (a.k.a. Natalia, the mother of
his young child) starts developing feelings for Tsoi. There is a certain degree
of openness to their marriage, but her feelings run deeper than mere physical
attraction. Likewise, Tsoi feels genuine gratitude and esteem for his mentor,
which makes it awkward for everyone. Plus, just being a rock musician in Soviet
Russian is difficult in its own right.
Watching
Leto (meaning “Summer,” for reasons
that are not immediately obvious) in conjunction with Rocket Man, the latest big studio rock bio-pic is an interesting
compare and contrast exercise. Sadly, Tsoi’s career would be drastically
shorter. While Elton John might have experienced social resistance to his
lifestyle choices, Tsoi’s very means of expression were effectively curtailed
and he often risked explicit censorship.
Both
films also incorporate flights of fanciful fantasy, but they are rather brief exaggerations
of the subject’s emotional states in Rocket
Man, whereas Leto features long,
wildly surreal interludes that even include stylized animated passages.
Sometimes, these fantastical visions seem to herald great victories in Tsoi’s
career, until Serebrennikov pans to a bystander holding a sign that says: “this
never happened.”
Some
have compared Serebennikov’s use of black-and-white cinematographer with
occasional splashes of dramatic color to Schindler’s
List, but films like Absolute
Beginners, Purple Rain, and even The
Wall are more influential touchstones. Of course, there is a lot of rock
music and rock references throughout the film, from the likes of Lou Reed,
David Bowie, and somewhat surprisingly T.Rex.
Teo
Yoo does a terrific job humanizing Tsoi and he bears a strong likeness to the
rock icon (whose father was ethnic Korean). Roma Zver (Bilyk) also nicely sidesteps
all those over-shadowed-mentor clichés as the not-as-aloof-as-he-pretends Mike Naumenko.
However, Irina Starshenbaum really anchors the film emotionally as the
conflicted Natasha.
Early
in the film, we see Natasha and her friends sneaking into the Stalingrad Rock
Club through and open bathroom window and hiding in stalls to evade the old
fuddy-duddy security guard. It is scenes like this that express the spirit of
rock & roll better than just about any film since A Hard Day’s Night (Rocket
Man is nice too, especially depicting the relationship between Elton John
and Bernie Taupin, but it won’t surprise you like Leto). Very highly recommended, Leto
opens this Friday (6/7) in New York, and June 21st in LA, at the
Laemmle Ahrya Fine Arts.
