In an ornate palace ballroom overhung by an immense chandelier, a gang of strapping, shaven-headed young men play volleyball on a makeshift court. Stripped down to their undershirts, the game degenerates into vigorous roughhousing, and finally into a wrestling match. As flesh slaps flesh, amid the fading grandeur of Old Russia and the grunts and catcalls of its self-anointed revolutionary inheritors, the superb opening scene of Natasha Merkulova and Aleksey Chupov’s “Captain Volkogonov Escaped” builds a cleverly keyed-up, yet also stylishly pared-back vision of pre-war Leningrad as a purgatorial proving-ground from which, contrary to the film’s title, there can be little hope of escape.
For these young men, bonded together by their sense of untouchability as the enforcers of the regime’s oppressive, arbitrary cruelty, masculinity is expressly defined by competitive aggression. And young Captain Volkonogov (Yuriy Borisov) is the fittest, perhaps smartest and certainly the most paranoiacally intuitive of the bunch.
For these young men, bonded together by their sense of untouchability as the enforcers of the regime’s oppressive, arbitrary cruelty, masculinity is expressly defined by competitive aggression. And young Captain Volkonogov (Yuriy Borisov) is the fittest, perhaps smartest and certainly the most paranoiacally intuitive of the bunch.
- 9/10/2021
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
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