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| DAU. Natasha - film works in Kharkiv, Ukraine - fot. Wikipedia.org |
I
have to confess I wasn’t aware of all the controversy the film DAU. Natasha
had provoked when I decided to go for a screening of this film. The controversy
had circled around the production of the DAU project - shot as 700 hours raw
material from 2008 to 2011 on set in Kharkiv/Ukraine - as well as in particular
the torture scene of the DAU.Natasha installment depicting a women
forced to insert a bottle into her vagina. I’d dare to guess that Russian main
regisseur Ilya Khrzhanovsky deliberately choose to scandalize his DAU-films and
its production on set as a kind of shock advertisement. Khrzhanovsky
might have followed a trick often used by Vladimir Sorokin, the
Russian playwright initially involved into his DAU project but parting soon
over differences. However it was, let me write down, why I (dis)liked
that film.
DAU.
Natasha - grandest cinematic experiment in Russia
The
film deals with the life of the Nobel Prize winner Soviet physician Lev
Landau (1906-1968), called Dau. DAU.Natasha is an intimate examination of the banality of evil in totalitarian Stalinist times. In the first part of
the film we follow the Moscow Research Institut buffet warden Natasha and her
younger assistant Olga. Both women have a quarrelsome relationship full of
verbal atrocities and alcoholic libations with and after their guests. During
one of these meetings Natasha falls in love with a French scientist visiting
the secret Soviet institute working on creating better workers and better
people as such. A very slow camera shows us a graphic and probably not-staged
sex scene between two people in their fifties. The film turns inevitably and
Natasha is called for questioning by the security forces. Stalinist KGB officer
Azhippo first talks nicely with her, but soon throws her into a torture cell. In
her completely powerless situation Natasha reclaims in that film a small scope
of action back, a moment giving some hope in a completely hopeless situation.
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| Film set showing the Institut and the buffet Natasha worked in - fot. Wikipedia.org |
DAU
- A film?
A political statement? An experiment?
I read later on that people left this film in masses.
I did not experience that - I watched that film in the huge
Friedrichstadtpalast cinema and saw nobody leaving the screening. But maybe I
was too absorbed. Every third viewer was Russian speaking and most of them,
like me, left dazzled and shocked at the end. “Well, reality was still much
worse than when my grandparents lived” - a young Russian immigrant woman said.
Somebody else mentioned last UN Human Rights reports on pro-Russian separatist prisons and tortures in Donbas
(Ukraine) to create a link to present day reality in post-Soviet area.
Together with my German friend we needed some vodkas
and lots of talk to digest this film that evening. An interesting side aspect
is original language also in the few dish washing songs, with a special mention
of Russian and Ukrainian. What I missed was a more analytic view on totalitarianism because the presented individual view on evil is too little. But I do realize that
there are at least 12 more parts in this monster project DAU. I hope
what I meanwhile have read about the production on set isn’t true; including Khrzhanovsky’s alleged totalitarian approach
of what to demand of his crew, his actors and actresses.
Last but not least I would like to plead for watching films first and
read reviews only later and not the other way round. Despite all controversy it
was worth watching DAU.Natasha.
Paul
Berlin
DAU.
Natasha is a 2020 Russian-Ukrainian-German-French-Swedish-Dutch
co-produced drama directed by Ilya Khrzhanovsky and Jekaterina
Oertel. It was selected for the 2020 Berlinale competition and got
the Silver Bear for an Outstanding Artistic Contribution.
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