A closer look at film 11, which over at Movie Forums is 1
I would like to craft as good of a post as I can for each of the most spectacular films in my 1k list. I shall be including synopsis and a review by someone of Letterboxd, and maybe in the course of things other more professional writings about them.
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What world is one living in where it all doesn’t seem to be crumbling apart! A film that pulls off that feeling has my undying respect.
The Asthenic Syndrome Directed by Kira Muratova • 1989 • Ukraine, Soviet Union Starring Olga Antonova, Sergei Popov, Galina Zakhurdayeva
Widely considered Kira Muratova’s masterpiece, THE ASTHENIC SYNDROME is also Soviet cinema’s grand avant-comic opus, a deconstructive portrait of the nation in the final, frenzied stages of the communist experiment. For its first forty minutes, shot in black and white, SYNDROME tells the story of a grieving widow (Olga Antonova) at wit’s end, lashing out at strangers on the street, impulsively quitting her nursing job, and sleeping with random men. Cut to a disastrous post-screening Q&A with Antonova: we’ve just watched a film-within-a-film as slept through by Nikolai (Sergei Popov, one of Muratova’s co-screenwriters), a narcoleptic schoolteacher whose subsequent wanderings lead to encounters (between sudden naps) with an expansive cross section of the failing Soviet Union’s beleaguered citizenry—digressive vignettes at once bizarre, disturbing, and hilarious. Deftly applying dizzying metafiction to her inimitable brand of humanistic farce, THE ASTHENIC SYNDROME is an ingenious fractal puzzle that captures the delirious death throes of an entire epoch.
Review by Dave Jackson I don't normally do this. But this film needs a major trigger warning. There is some haunting animal stuff in this film involving cats getting flung about and some unbelievably grim footage of stray dogs. Despite loving the film, I wish I could unsee that stuff.
Since I can’t follow normal plots this film makes smart people feel like I do with normal movies.
The Asthenic Syndrome is like having a bunch of manic people shouting and screaming at you. Incomprehensibly and out of sync. And for two-and-a-half hours. The only thing I can compare this poetic fucked-chaos to is Harmony Korine's Trash Humpers (though thematically and artistically they are worlds apart). The Asthenic Syndrome is so maddening and so exhausting. Yet it is also oddly addictive. I couldn't look away. It put me in a state of couch-gripping back-and-forth body rocking delirium. I can't say that I understood all its deeper political meanings or even what the fuck was happening narratively half of the time, but damn this had a powerful visceral effect on me. It portrays a crumbling world. It is full of searing tension and confusion. A lack of direction permeates every scene. Screams suddenly cut out, replaced by silence and shots of weary wallpaper, skinny naked men, and dodgy knickknacks. There is random street attacks, smashed glasses, piles of cats. Boredom and rage run in endless circles. By the end, I was totally worn out and thoroughly blown away. I was also surprised by how funny I found it at times. An amazing film... if you're ready for it and in the right mood.
Now for some of my dorkish thoughts
I love the use of music in this as I do every film that has music, sometimes a director like Bunuel and Antonioni used music very sparingly, and that can be great too, but I love me those musical bits.
It's a fantastic experience, the kind I could spend the rest of my life analyzing, shying away from any academic study that would resolve all my confusions about it, I want to discover the gems within it on my own with only brief little appraisals by others who can express their thoughts normally with sharpness and clarity about it.
