We modern types like to flatter ourselves by thinking that we can remain constantly in touch with the rest of the world. We know the instant an earthquake hits on the other side of the globe, and the exact height of a devastating tidal wave. An oil spill is tracked by satellite as the slick expands. We follow foreign uprisings via our cell phones, which also let us shoot off a quick donation to relief efforts for those natural disasters. It’s a long way from waiting for the six o’clock news.
For news junkies and worried loved ones, that’s a wonderful thing. But as anyone who has lived through a historic event can tell you, being there is a whole other ball of wax. No matter how much information we might gather, that understanding can never be the same as firsthand experience—and in fact will often appear to be wildly different.
My Perestroika, screening now at Amherst Cinema, shows us a Russia we only thought we knew: the Russia of the late 1980s and early 1990s, the time of glasnost, of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the breakup of the Soviet Union. Ask a 30-something American what they remember about those days, and you might get a Chernobyl reference, or, if you’re really lucky, a recollection of Reagan’s famous suggestion to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. It’s a phrase—”Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”—many might recall as a noble push for democracy. The Soviet press agency Tass called it “war-mongering.”
To give the world a better look at those times, Robin Hessman’s engrossing documentary turns its lens on five Russians who came of age during the collapse of the Soviet Union—the last generation to grow up behind the Iron Curtain. With first-person interviews and vintage home movies mixed in with news footage from the era, Hessman uncovers the wild reinvention necessitated by history in the making.
Lyuba and Borya Meyerson, married schoolteachers, are at the heart of the film. Both of them, remarkably enough, teach history, a nice plus for Hessman. (The director also lived in Russia during the 1990s, when she produced a Russian version of Sesame Street.) Lyuba recalls feeling blessed to grow up in a place far from the social strife of America. She was, she says with some bewilderment, “completely satisfied with my beautiful Soviet reality.”
Others, like faded beauty Olga Durikova, seem to cling to old memories. Sharing the apartment she grew up in with a son, a sister, and a nephew, she still talks of the security of communism, which promised a retirement her current job may not support. Rounding out the five are punk musician Ruslan Stupin and men’s wear magnate Andrei Yevgrafov, whose divergent paths offer perhaps the greatest look at just what that historic time really promised Russians: the chance to make their own change.
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Also this week: Amherst Cinema wraps up its month-long Films That Slipped Through the Cracks film series with The Housemaid, a recent Korean entry in the fiendishly tricky genre of erotic thriller. Notoriously tough to get right—one misplaced moan and the whole thing comes tumbling down into farce—The Housemaid is by most accounts one of the better efforts. Cannes Best Actress winner Jeon Do-youn stars as the nanny whose passionate affair (leave the kids at home, people) with her boss turns the women of the house against her.
And finally this week, a sign of summer. It may be pouring rain as I write, but there is no surer sign of the coming sun than the first spate of big sequels queuing up for their release.
This week, Hadley’s Cinemark Theaters brings in the big guns. Out now is Pirates of the Carribean: On Stranger Tides, the fourth entry in the Johnny Depp-helmed series of swashbucklers. Hot on its boot heels come The Hangover Part II (facial tattooing, graphic nudity, Bangkok) and Kung Fu Panda 2 (cartoon panda bear vanquishes evil). Long live summer.
Jack Brown can be reached at cinemadope@gmail.com.
