Test
[Испытание]
Russia, 2014
Color, 96 minutes
Russian with English subtitles
Director: Aleksandr Kott
Screenplay: Aleksandr Kott
Camera: Levan Kapanadze
Cast: Elena An, Danila Rassomakhin, Karim
Pakachakov, Nariman Bekbulatov-Areshev
Producers: Igor' Tolstunov, Sergei Kozlov
Production: Igor' Tostunov Production Company
(PROFIT), Drug Druga
Awards: the Grand Prix, the Prize for best
Cinematography, and the Elephant Prize of
the Guild of Film Critics and Film Scholars at
Kinotavr Open Russian Film Festival; Best
Artistic Contribution at the Tokyo
International Film Festival; Best International
Feature Film at Antalya Golden Orange Film
Festival.
A girl (Dina) lived with her father
(Tolgat) in an isolated house in the Central Asian
steppe. Dina is loved by a sturdy, local boy on
horseback (Kaisyn), but she chooses a Russian
photographer (Maksim). This simple narrative
is not difficult to follow, in spite of the complete
lack of dialogue among the characters. The
story is legible through facial expressions,
glances, and gestures or lack thereof. The
contrasting rivals fully express their emotions,
such as excitement, jealousy, anger, and despair,
accentuating the heroine’s absolutely restricted
range of facial expressions. The nonprofessional actress offers access to her thoughts
mainly through the direction of her gaze, while
her mise-en-scène supplies a sense of the
exoticism around her.
A macro-narrative exists in mere hints
and nuances until the concluding part of the
film. Trucks, a radio, a copy of a Soviet
newspaper, Izvestiia, and the girl’s father
featured as a WWII veteran-pilot with the order
of the red star imply some period after the Great
Patriotic War. The empty steppe lies ahead
endlessly without any sign or landmark. This
scenery seems to have nothing to do with
geopolitics.
Geopolitical references, however, are
present from the beginning, alluded to by the
heroine’s hidden desire to flee from home, as
suggested by a map on the wall and her collagework of the Kremlin made of dried leaves. This
might explain her preference for Maksim, a boy
from an outside world, whose behavior seems
free and spontaneous. His body looks light as he
suddenly performs gymnastics, in contrast to
that of Kaisyn, who always wears a black fur
vest and heavy boots. Yet a weather vane
propeller on the roof top of Dina’s house
symbolizes her fate; though it mimics an
airplane propeller, its motion ties it to the house,
where it can never escape from its fixed place.
The horizontal lines that dominate the film’s
visual composition imprison her in various
ways: the endless horizon of the steppe enhances
the impression that she lives on an isolated
island; her attempt to leave ends in failure as
man-made wires that span the whole screen have
encircled the region; a decorative rope hanging
across the gate symbolizes a traditional value
that would bind her to the destined place through
marriage to Kaisyn.
As the film proceeds to the second half,
the family’s peaceful life meets with macro-
history. The remote steppe turns out to be
included in the map of some central
governmental plan prompted by Cold War
geopolitics. The daily routine in the humble
house is disrupted on a dark and rainy night by a
group of men in black coats with a Geiger
counter. Tolgat is forced to stand naked and
eventually dies, leaving Dina alone.
What is happening outside of Dina’s
world is left unclear to the viewer as the camera
centers round her. The wire fence blocks not
only her way out but also the camera’s further
gaze. The historical background becomes
obvious only when a mushroom-cloud suddenly
emerges on the horizon and its blast waves
sweep over the lovers and their house: the film is
specifically set in the first hydrogen bomb test
near Semipalatinsk in August 1953.
Yet this historical frame does not devour
the film. The absence of verbal explanation and
the slow pace of the editing highlight the film’s
visual compositions: repetitions of symmetrical
scenes; contrasts of sunlight and shadows,
including backlighting—such as the humorous
scene where the dark figure of Tolgat swallows
the sun; contrasts between the natural color
tones of the steppe and the decorative local
colors of Dina’s clothes and carpet; tiny human
beings in a bird’s-eye view of the wide steppe
that fills the whole screen. Visual parallels and
close-ups that show rich textures—such as tree
barks and the rough, bumpy walls of the
house—emphasize the tactility of materials.
In addition, the camera displays a
variety of water images: a muddy stream
flowing to the tree and dousing its bark; the
evaporating splash of water on the surface of a
stone; the pouring rain that kills Tolgat; and the
sea waves in Maksim’s hallucination. A shot of
the dark-blue rainy night sky framed in the
window cuts into a shot of Dina sitting in front
of the blue ocean of the map with wavering
shadows of pouring rain. Water, the most
important resource in human’s life, plays roles
of both life and death. Similarly, images of the
sun, sunlight, and fire are a significant motif in
the film. Lightning sets fire to a tree and sends
Maksim astray into Dina’s arms; this turns into a
shot of a lamp on the window sill. In the last
sequence, the two lovers’ faces are suddenly lit
aglow by the pseudo-sunrise, the apocalyptic fire
of the explosion. A mushroom-cloud appears at
the epicenter and a firestorm approaches them
with tempestuous wind. After everything is
over, the sun, which was about to rise, creeps
down in a hurry. Darkness dominates the
screen.
People who lived at the site do not have
a name or a voice with which to speak. Portraits
caught in frames-inside-the-frame, such as
windows, mirrors, camera, and a projected
image on the wall are left without verbal
explanation. The characters’ names are
unknown until the closing credits comes up.
Their existence remains merely as projected
images in a far-away, imagined world. The film,
like the opening scene, with a table standing
alone in an empty horizon, leaves a mere trace
that once upon a time someone lived there, but
no more.
Kiun Hwang
Aleksandr Kott is a screenwriter and director,
best-known for The Brest Fortress (2010) and
TV serials, such as Elki 2. He was born in 1973
in Moscow. He studied under Andrzej Wajda in
Kracow, Poland in 1997 and graduated from
Vladimir Khotinenko’s workshop in the
directors’ faculty of VGIK in 2000. His short
film Photographer, attracted critical attention at
several European festivals, and his diploma
work Scarecrow was the winner of the
“Kinterfest” program at the 2000 Berlin Film
Festival.
Filmography:
2014
2013
2012
2011
2011
2010
2010
2006
2001
2000
1998
Test
Elki 3 (TV serial)
The Other Side of the Moon (TV serial)
Elki 2 (TV serial)
Diamond Hunters (TV serial)
Decoy
The Brest Fortress
Hero of Our Time (TV serial)
Went Two Drivers
Scarecrow (short)
Photographer (short)