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Movies Forum Index » International Movies Forum » Some thoughts on Ivan the Terrible by Sergei Eisenstein
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| RattleRain |
 Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2004 9:41 pm |
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Ivan the Masterful
Characters here are less people than architectural motifs, as though
their historical roles have been predetermined and set in stone. Only
their eyes--small limpid pools with the slightest room to
manuever--seem to be possessed of free will. The eyes fish around
distrustfully as though clarity of human consciousness is lodged
between the fathomless depths of the spiritual darkness and the loud
and blaring pageantry of politics. At one particular moment, a man
lifts his eyelid with his finger. It's as though history and politics
weigh down heavily, and it requires an act of will and defiance to
see the truth.
Eisenstein also uses the motif of cavernousness to convey the
secretive and labyrinthine nature of ambition and distrust. It's
conveyed not only with the overbearing and dark byzantine ceilings
hunched over the characters but in the body movements of the actors.
Often, we see figures trying to burrow into themselves; a man tries to
hide behind his collar like a turtle withdrawing into his shell. Or
we see eyeballs trying to scurry away and hide, like a mouse running
to a dark hole. Just about every visual aspect of the film is a
hardened symbol or metaphor for the inner soul illustrating the
tormented corridors of the human heart.
Eisenstein shows us the illusory and unstable nature of power thru the
motif of the garb. Ivan looks magnificent in his royal outfit but the
sheer exaggeration also invites a sense of vulnerability. Dressed in
power, he becomes a naked and all-too-visible target for his envious
enemies.
Also, the fluid nature of power, the difficulty with which it's won
and maintained is shown thru how Ivan and others wear and/or exchange
their garments. For example, Kazak ambassador comes dressed in rich
silky garb only to be denuded and hung up to dry. At the end of Ivan
Pt 2. Ivan's thugs wear priests' robes while the idiot child is goaded
into wearing Ivan's imperial robe.
Ivan is a shadowy figure, actually more like a shadow of a shadow,
both in the personal and historical sense. Like the lord of
Kagemusha, his personal and mythic selves magnify, mock, and eclipse
the other. He's too larger-than-life to have close friends, yet, also
and unavoidably too human to dally with the immortals. He's both a
great flame that can engulf millions as well as flicker that can be
snuffed out easily. Shadows work as a perfect metaphor for
Eisenstein's portrait of power since the size of a shadow looming on
the wall has less to do with its actual size than in its relation to
the light source. And, so in the movie small figures sometimes loom
deceptively large and dwarf larger characters. It conveys both the
illusory and the real nature of power; that the crucial reality of
power--among men, at least--lies in the manipulation of illusions.
After all, what was most of civilization but a case of mortals playing
gods, never a stable condition--just go ask Hussein. The final image
of part one almost literally turns the actual Ivan into a shadow over
his dominion.
Ivan has a pointy goatee which is both a piercing symbol of Ivan's
power as well as the reminder of the power's illusory substance; is it
a sharp as a knife or light as a feather? His head loops high and
backwards as if to suggest a man gazing upwards into the realm of
gods. It also conveys a sense of resignation, an image of Christ upon
crucifixion beseeching his Father 'why?'.
It also illuminates an aspect of Ivan's life--emotionally twisted and
warped by conflicting loyalties, agendas, and obligations. It's as
though Ivan was born feet first while painful hours passed before the
head--deformed into a slanted conehead in the process--was pulled
out, . Indeed, Ivan the Terrible is about the birthing and rebirthing
pains of political consciousness, how a boy and a man becomes a czar
and a god. Also, it's signficant that we see Ivan's mother being
murdered when he was a child, and Ivan the grown man stills long for
lost security--made worse by his wife's death.
Then, there's the motif of chess where the pieces are in the grip of
the players, an image that suggests--especially thru the shadows cast
on the walls--players themselves in the grip of something larger.
Perhaps the most famous scene in Ivan the Terrible is at the end of
part one, where we see Ivan obliging to Muscovites' demand that he
return and resume his imperial power. The closeup of Ivan's profile
is framed to eclipse the right half of the screen while in the
background we see a column of men and women stretch into infinity.
Ivan appears both godly and as though chained to history. We also
sense Ivan's ambiguous relation with his people, that he's both close
to and detached from his subjects.
Eisenstein entered the cinematic pantheon thru his use of dialectical
montage, a fast cutting and pasting together of dynamic images,
resulting in the synthethis of firework imagery. Ivan doesn't
dispense with montage, but Eisenstein does something much more
remarkable(surely influenced by gothic expressionism of German cinema
and perhaps even by Citizen Kane, and, in turn, probably having a key
influence on Stone's political shadowplay Nixon). Eisenstein creates
the effect of montage in Ivan the Terrible thru means other than
editing. For example, consider the angular and jagged visual
strategems. The perspective of the camera is often at odds with(or, in
sharp contrast to) the pose or the gaze of the characters that lurches
out or shoots dissonantly to other directions. There is a sense of
disjointedness, a sense of a world fractured both emotionally and
visually. In Ivan, Eisenstein effects montage not so much across
frames but within the single frame. Instead of the a-b-c
connect-the-dots methodology of his earlier works(where the tension
was spelled out with rhythmic literalness), the visual complexity of
Ivan mounts a sense of tension that might be called ideological
cubism(we see the contradictions molded into a single image)--which,
however, never culminates into an orgasmic synthesis. Unlike the
early revolutionary movies where power transformed into a liberating
force, Ivan's notion of power is infected with impotency, like a
mathematical problem that raises more questions than offering a clear
answer.
Ivan the Terrible is a showcase of classic Russian chauvanism. The
movie suggests that Russia is the repository of the vital virtues of
man, both the primitive/crude, and high/noble/spiritual. In part one,
we see Russians as defenders of civilization against the barbaric
Asiatic tartars. In part 2, Ivan goes up against the overly effete and
refined pansyass Poles in their cookie cutter palaces. Russians are
seen as virile and manly in contrast to the decadent and pompous
Central Europeans while also cultured, noble, and dignified against
the Tartar infidels. And, Ivan is also seen this way, a leader who
balances the boorish rage of the masses with the clever and snobbish
treachery of the upperclasses.
Ivan is presented as a man torn between gentler things and the
ruthless reality of power. He wants to have friends among the
nobility, but they are treacherous, vain, and disloyal. He has a
private army of loyal followers but they are uncouth, vulgur, and
crude. He reaches out for love and frienship but his wife dies and
his pals betray him. It's a classic case of a man who gains the world
and loses his soul.
The color dance scene is part 2 is both vibrant and sticks out like a
sore thumb--not least because of the inferior color technology in the
Soviet Union. Yet, it's crucial for it acts as a breaking point. Up
til that moment tensions had gradually mounted, intrigues layered atop
intrigues, treachery seeping thru the walls and every corner. The
musical sequence serves the same function as the silent footage in
Persona after Ullmann steps on the broken glasss or the dance number
in Mulholland Drive. It's the muse between the darkness and lightness,
sanity and insanity. It's as though things have gotten to bursting
point, like a like pressure cooker going blam. And necessarily, what
follows is the sobering hangover--the assassination and resolution.
The sudden contrast between the color and noise of dance and the stark
and quiet mood of the assassination scene adds immeasurably to the
jarring mood of the latter, just as in The Godfather, the killing of
the heads of the five families seem more intensely charged because of
the juxtaposition with the baptism. And, same with Carlo's death.
The dance sequence also suggests the final break Ivan makes with his
past. Like Guido at the end of 8 1/2, he accepts his condition--the
intrigues, the wars, the betrayals--as some unavoidable circus of
life. He stops worrying and learns how to love his power.
The acting in the movie ranges from exaggerated and broad--often livid
and animated--to stilted and rigid. Dramatically it grows somewhat
wearying because of the neverending cascade of wild poses and loud
gestures, sometimes stepping into ridiculous vaudeville territory,
especially as bolstered by Prokofiev's memorable but highly uneven
score that seems to at once heighten, celebrate, and mock the passions
and the movements. Yet, each gesture carries a montage effect,
destabilizing a sense of continutiy and unity--in various aspects--,
in its constant reformulation of mood, and in the contrapuntal
emphasis of the ethereal nature of the moment against the unbudging
momument of history. |
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| septimus |
| Posted: Mon Jan 19, 2004 6:33 am |
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Very interesting article indeed. I have never
seen _Ivan the Terrible_. This may make me want
to rent the tape, although I'm frankly not a big
fan of the later propaganda talkies by Eisenstein.
Lots of great Russian writers have a serious
chauvanist attitude as well, but religion is usually part
and parcel of the brand of Russian spirituality they
celebrate. On the other hand, I still vividly remember the
virulent and vulgar anti-Christianity embodied in
Eisenstein's _Alexander Nevsky_. (I may be wrong but
I assume 12th century Russia already had a deeply ingrained
orthodox Christian tradition.) Although one should take
into account the historical context; Germany was gobbling up
central Europe when the Eisenstein film was released (1938),
and Russia had lost WWI to the Germans not so long
ago. So the blood curdling hatred of Germans is
understandable. Still, Stalin signed a pact to carve up
Poland with Hitler the year after. I wonder how many
Russian filmmakers feel apologetic about the wars
and hardship the Soviet empire had inflicted on so many
other countries, and have made films to exorcise the
demons. (Sokurov, for one, simply ignores the Soviet
part of Russian history in _Russian Ark_.)
These days I often think about films that celebrate
French nationalism (and military success), because of
all the blatantly racist, ignorant, inflammatory
anti-French comments being made -- often in connection
with cinema. Most of these ridicule the French for
"losing the world wars," for lacking courage. (Quite a
few reviews of the Peter Weir film _Master and Commander_
use the occasion to do more French bashing, despite
the fact that they were
our ally in the Revolutionary war, and the book was
set in 1812, during which it was the English, the
"heroes" of the film, who burnt Washington DC to
the ground. Talk about ignorance.) Unfortunately, the
most famous film depicting French military power, Abel
Gance's _Napolean_, is one film that I heartily
despise, partly because it takes such sadistic, gleeful
delight in the killing of enemy soldiers, especially
the English (who were French allies in WWI -- such
stupid, anachronistic chauvanism apparently knows no
national boundaries).
Most French (and European) films that depict the
French military seem to be negative. Where is the
French film celebrating their victory at Marne or
Verdun? (Where they lost more than a million
casualties; so much for their supposed lack of
courage.) I guess there are lots of films glorifying
French Resistance in WWII (_A Man Escaped_ being
perhaps the best known.) _Battle of Algiers_ depicted
the ugly French military and foreshadowed its ultimate
defeat. _Colonel Chabert_, based on the novel by
Balzac, opens with the legendary "charge across the
snow" by Murat's Reserve Cavalry at the Batter of Eylau
-- one of the most heroic feats of arms of the Grande
Armee, whose physical courage, if nothing else, has never
been questioned.
And then I draw a blank. I can't even think of
a French equivalent of _Cross of Iron_, about
ordinary soldiers and NCO's earning a personal,
pyrrhic victory. |
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| septimus |
| Posted: Mon Jan 19, 2004 6:58 am |
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septimus wrote:
Quote:
_Battle of Algiers_ depicted
the ugly French military and foreshadowed its ultimate
^
victory
Quote: defeat.
And then I draw a blank.
partly because I forgot all those Joan of Arc films ... |
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| Paul Gallagher |
| Posted: Wed Jan 21, 2004 10:57 am |
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In <400B9666.61910B7D@millenicom.com> septimus <septimus@millenicom.com> writes:
Quote: Very interesting article indeed. I have never
seen _Ivan the Terrible_. This may make me want
to rent the tape, although I'm frankly not a big
fan of the later propaganda talkies by Eisenstein.
I definitely recommend Ivan... It's so stylized I don't
really think of it as dealing with history anymore than,
for example, Sternberg's Scarlet Empress.
Quote: Most French (and European) films that depict the
French military seem to be negative. Where is the
French film celebrating their victory at Marne or
Verdun?
I thought of Pierre Schoendoerffer's films -- which I haven't
seen, but my impression is they're sympathetic to the French
military.
Paul |
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