1945, Leningrad. World War II has devastated the city, demolishing its buildings and leaving its citizens equally demolished, physically and mentally. Although the siege which lasted 900 days, one of the worst in history, is finally over, life and death continue their battle in the wreckage that remains. Two young women, Iya and Masha, work at the hospital among the dead and dying while they search for meaning and hope in the struggle to rebuild their lives amongst the ruins.
For people in extremis, the quest for normalcy is a quest in vain. All that has happened marks them forever. The two young women served as soldiers on the front and are seeking a path to peace, but no such path is open to them.
Some wanted to exit on watching this slow, glum
view of post-war Leningrad. But the protagonist, the eponymous Beanpole, named for her extreme height and almost as blond as an albino,...
For people in extremis, the quest for normalcy is a quest in vain. All that has happened marks them forever. The two young women served as soldiers on the front and are seeking a path to peace, but no such path is open to them.
Some wanted to exit on watching this slow, glum
view of post-war Leningrad. But the protagonist, the eponymous Beanpole, named for her extreme height and almost as blond as an albino,...
- 11/20/2019
- by Sydney Levine
- Sydney's Buzz
Kantemir Balagov's Beanpole (2019) is having its exclusive online premiere on Mubi in the United Kingdom. It is showing from October 11 - November 9, 2019.The twenty-eight-year-old Russian director Kantemir Balagov seems awfully young to take on the weighty topic of war, as he does in his second feature, Beanpole. And yet, Balagov’s talent is rising at a time when Easter Europe falls under the sway of war stories. From Poland to Hungary or Russia, World War II commemorations draw scores of youth, some too young to even have heard war stories from their grandparents. Balagov told me in Cannes, where his film premiered in the Un Certain Regard section, that against such nationalist background, which stresses heroism, it felt important to also show the physical and psychological suffering that the war inflected on millions. And to do so through the eyes of women, who, while they were clearly not just...
- 10/11/2019
- MUBI
The first sounds, over the black of the opening titles, are of tiny, gasping breaths catching in a throat. It could be a death rattle or an asthma attack or the last throes of a strangulation, but it is undoubtedly a human in distress. And it’s a very close analog for how “Beanpole,” the slow, ferocious, and extraordinary second film from blazing 27-year-old Russian talent Kantemir Balagov can make you feel. You quite often have to remind yourself to breathe.
These noises are coming from Iya (Viktoria Mironshnichenko), also known as Beanpole due to the almost freakishly tall figure she cuts, with her skin so pale, hair so fair, and eyes so huge under vanishing white eyelashes. She is experiencing one of her regular Ptsd-related fits, frozen in place and dissociated, in the laundry of the overworked Leningrad veterans hospital in which she works as a nurse, in the...
These noises are coming from Iya (Viktoria Mironshnichenko), also known as Beanpole due to the almost freakishly tall figure she cuts, with her skin so pale, hair so fair, and eyes so huge under vanishing white eyelashes. She is experiencing one of her regular Ptsd-related fits, frozen in place and dissociated, in the laundry of the overworked Leningrad veterans hospital in which she works as a nurse, in the...
- 5/18/2019
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
Iya (Viktoria Miroshnichenko) suffers from post-concussion syndrome after fighting on the frontlines during the Siege. Now a nurse in a musty Leningrad hospital that heaves with the dead and dying, she’s prone to sudden fits of paralysis; her muscles freeze, her voice is swallowed by a feeble croak, and her long alabaster body is no longer under her control. In these vulnerable moments, Iya truly earns the nickname that gives “Beanpole” its title: The crane-like twenty-something — whose white eyebrows make it seem as though the cold she experienced in the army may have altered her on a genetic level — goes stiff as a stick, and would tip right over at the slightest touch.
Iya’s condition may be unique, but she’s far from the only character in Kantemir Balagov’s stolid yet achingly sympathetic post-war drama who’s struggling to regain a hold on themselves. Many of the...
Iya’s condition may be unique, but she’s far from the only character in Kantemir Balagov’s stolid yet achingly sympathetic post-war drama who’s struggling to regain a hold on themselves. Many of the...
- 5/16/2019
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
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