It
turns out Star Trek and DC Comics didn’t
lie to us after all. There are alternate universes out there, somehow existing
parallel to our own. In point of fact, there are twenty-two such universes, but
the mysterious Arkan has been closed to outsiders for decades. Kiril Maksimov
has been recruited to serve as a gatekeeper and custom-taker for those
traveling between universes. It sounds like dreary TSA kind of work, but
apparently it requires a special touch. Regardless, he has a hard time leaving
his old earthly life behind in Sergey Mokritskiy’s A Rough Draft (trailer here), which screens during the 2018 Fantasia International Film Festival.
Maksimov
is on the brink of superstar status as a video game designer, when suddenly he
turns into Thomas Veil from Nowhere Man.
All records of his existence are erased and none of his friends and family
recognize him anymore. For good measure, the shadowy cabal also frames him for
murder. Then they lead him to a creaky old tower, hiding in plain sight a stone’s
throw from the Kremlin. This will be his new home, where he will facilitate
travel between the universes, as part of the “functional” class.
One
universe is a lovely beach front world. Another is a steampunky analog of Romanoff
Russia, which apparently is a charming place for afternoon tea. There is also a
Stalinistic Gulag universe, where difficult functionals get sent. The big
question is: what is Arkan really like? Supposedly, it is a lot like our world,
but a few years ahead, so we could learn from their mistakes. Arkan could be
the rough draft for our universe. Unfortunately, Khrushchev had the passage
connecting our universe and Arkan destroyed when it looked like “Rightists”
were on the verge of taking over there. Now the elites of the multiverse are eager,
even desperate to observe current developments in Arkan, so if Maksimov can
figure out a way to “open a door” to the lost universe, it will justify all the
trouble they took installing him.
Rough Draft is consistently
intriguing as an example of Russian science fiction, even though its narrative
is patchy and inconsistent. Obviously, the charm of the Czarist universe and
the dystopian grimness of the Gulag universe say quite a bit about the last one
hundred-plus years of Russian history. Tellingly, Arkan becomes a black box
that holds some vastly disparate ideological speculation.
There
is no doubt the alternate universes of Rough
Draft resonate on an archetypal level. The problem is the rules for
interdimensional travel seem to constantly change, as do the powers of the
cabal that hold Maksimov in check. The editing is also pretty rough, allowing
characters to just magically turn up in places.
As
Maksimov, Nikita Volkov is not exactly the second coming of Stanislavski, but
he is probably adequately luggish. Likewise, Olga Borovskaya is mostly just serviceable
as Anna, the woman Maksimov can’t forget, even though she has been made to
forget him. Easily, the most memorable, screen-grabbing work comes from
Severija Janušauskaitė as Renata Ivanova, Maksimov’s initial recruiter.
