Days of Eclipse (1988)

 

100 Best Science Fiction Movies from Slant Magazine

 

#95. Days of Eclipse (1988)

 

This is a notably beautiful film, but an immensely frustrating one. It's from Russian Director Alexander Sokurov, who studied under the great Andrei Tarkovsky, and based on the novel “Definitely Maybe” (1974) by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky who also wrote “A Roadside Picnic” (1971) which was the basis of one of Tarkovsky’s finest films, “Stalker” (1979).

 

Sokurv mimics the older Director’s deliberate slowing of pace, static camera, and long takes, and stretches these mannerisms to even more punishing extremes (it’s 2 ¼ hours long). He also presents exquisitely composed and detailed images full of mystery and melancholy that reach beyond both language and story. The elegance of image is all, demonstrated by the fact that he never does quite get around to telling a story.

It was made at a time when everyone the USSR knew it was falling apart. General Sectary/President Mikhail Gorbachev was making scrambling, and futile, efforts to save it that included some pretty remarkable Culture Liberations in an Empire long-defined by heavy-handed Censorship. At the time Sokurv was still unknown in the West (he would later become World-Famous with the International release of “Russian Ark” (2003)) but already had two critically acclaimed films released at home, though both those films’ release were delayed interminably by Soviet Censors.

 

Here, he did something remarkably bold, he made an anti-Communist film inside the system while it was still, barely, standing. One might credit he’s oblique style for allowing him to get away with this, except that the only clearly stated thing in this film is its contempt for the Empire’s Imperialism.

 

It’s set in Krasnovodsk (now Türkmenbaşy) in Turkmenistan. Our first images are approaching the place from the sky, then crashing to the ground. As the tale unfolds, all the central Characters are strangers to this place (though a reasonably large number were born here) so the opening shots are deliberately suggesting something not in the script, an Alien Invasion, and setting up the idea that Humans are Aliens whenever they don’t belong. If this sounds like I’m speaking of the plight of Immigrants and their children, yes, that is exactly what I mean.

 

Of this film, Sokurov has said, “My childhood, since my father was in the army, took place in that very same southern town in which we shot the film. I wanted to express on screen all the feelings that remained with me from my encounter with that natural and social milieu […] where there was a complete cultural vacuum, which could reduce even the most unassuming person to despair.”

 

Krasnovodsk is a hot, dry, deeply impoverished place. Turkmenistan was a shockingly poor nation during the Soviet era despite abundant natural gas resources (not mentioned in the film) and proved resistant to almost all reform, even though other parts of the Empire were actually trying that when the film was made (strongly implied in the film, but never explicitly stated). Turkmenistan was also one of the places the Soviets dumped people during an earlier eras’ obsession with Forced Relocations and blurring Ethnic differences, giving some isolated places wildly diverse populations for the first time and diluting Political Opposition in the same gesture. The year is never made clear, the endemic poverty might explain ever prop seems behind-the-times of the 1980s, but the age of one Character in relationship to the one specific historical event discussed suggests it’s set a decade earlier, which would put it in line with the time-frame of the novel it’s based on.

 

It takes only a glance to recognize that the main Characters are not of the Native Ethnicity, but it took me some time to realize they weren’t all Ethnic Russians. The film’s secondary lead, Alexander Vecherovsky (Eskender Umarov), proves to be a Crimean Tartar, his parents forcibly relocated during one of former General Sectary Joseph Stalin’s Purges.

 

In the Real World, these internal Dysphorias remain a terrible burden on the Russian conscience and play no small part in the rhetoric of current Russian President Vladimir Putin uses to justify the annexation of Crimea and the Invasion of Ukraine -- he insists he’ reuniting Ethnic Russians beneath the same National umbrella. After Director Sokurov publicly criticized the Invasion, the Russian Government slapped him with travel restrictions.

Our Hero, Dmitri Malyanov (Aleksei Ananishnov), is from Gorky, Russia, and unlike Alexander, not the child of Internal Refugees, but someone who chose to come here. He’s a young Doctor doing Field Research on, he says, Juvenile Hypertension, but as he has not a single child Patient for more than half the film and destroys some of his notes, he's probably lying.

 

Those of more European-stock have never been able to integrate with the Natives and seem not to even want to try. Except Alexander, most of the European-stock live in a near-poverty barely above the Natives around them. Alexander’s home is luxurious and Dimitri’s sanctuary, at least until near the end, when it’s overtaken by a sudden, surreal, rot. Alexander is estranged from his family even though they only live on the other side of town. Dimitri is also estranged, but not to the same degree, his sister (Irina Sokolova) comes to visit him, but he feels no desire to return to Russia. Meanwhile, Alexander longs to see the homeland he’s never put a foot in.

 

Midway though the film, Alexander: “Few people are where they should be.”

 

Minutes before the end, Dimitri: “Where ever you go, you always end up where you started.”

 

Despite most being poor, the European-stock are clearly have the local Upper-Class status, and their better hygiene frequent physical attractiveness separates them from their neighbors far more than their Ethnicity. This is especially notable of Dimitri, perhaps the most Alien among the Aliens: he’s strikingly handsome and proves this by often showing off his well-muscled chest. There’s an undeniable Homoerotic subtext in how the camera lingers on him though even though Homosexuality was (and is) criminalized in the Russia.

 

As the film’s first images are of crushing poverty and this remains true throughout, criticism of the Communist ideal is laid-out even before the first word is spoken. True, we have extreme poverty in the USA and it is chronicled by filmmakers like Debra Granik, but many of these images are crueler, and while USA films expose where we as a Nation have failed, we rarely make the case that that everything we say about ourselves is a lie. In this movie, statues of dead Soviet Heroes and related symbols creep into frame again and again, often crumbling, always in a manner underlying how meaningless they have become.

 

Another thing Sokurov learned from Tarkovsky was bringing forth greater surface texture through B&W or sepia-tones, making films that were exactly contemporary or even set in the near-future look like faded photographs of lost dreams. Here, Sokurov smoothly switches from B&W to sepia to color, deliberately confusing our sense of time and place. This plays into Sokurov often shooting the film as if it were a Documentary, then embracing Dimitri’s Hallucinations, and later Surreal Imagery that seems to be experienced by all, then back again to Documentary style. His Cinematographer Sergei Yurizditsky is unknown outside of the former Soviet, but contributes far more to this film than Screenwriter Yuri ArabovYuri Arabov, who is a frequent Sokurvo collaborator and has a substantial International reputation.

 

The use of music and environmental sound is also impressive and a distinctive element of many of Sokurov’s films. Composer Yuri Khanin highly abstract score is strikingly sinister and set alongside Nationalistic tunes, a snippet from a Disney cartoon, Native, Classical, and Pop Songs. Voices on the radio, be it news or the broadcast of a Mass, are treated as if they are part of the score. Sometimes these elements overlap. The film’s significant prizes were all related to its music and the work of Sound Designer Vladimir Persov.

 

But now, after such praise, I must complain. This unapologetic Art-House film not only refuses to make the story the primary concern, it’s not even a tertiary one. The first fifteen minutes unfolds with only barely touching on characterization; it’s only concerned in immersing you in setting. After that, Characters are developed gradually but the plot never arrives at all. Other films that confused me I found it easier to surrender to the opaque complexities (example, “Upstream Color” (2019)) but I admit, this one annoyed me.

 

So, what is going on? Well, I looked up the plot of the novel it was based on. The Scientists, plural, not singular, are Astrophysicists, not a Medical Doctor, based in an advanced Research Facility in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), Russia, not an isolated, impoverished, hell-hole. They find their work stymied because Experimental Results are increasingly non-repeatable. They ultimately conclude that the Universe has an Intelligence and it’s deliberately conspiring against them to guard its own secrets; in other words, the death of Science is proof of God. I’m sure that’s in here somewhere, but damned if I could find it. What is in here is the camera often lingering on Religious devotion, both Christian and Muslim, but that never includes any of the central Characters.

 

That’s not to say the film is without incident. Dimitri’s neighbor, a writer suffering from a disfiguring but unmentioned skin condition, Gluchoc (Kirill Dudkin), commits suicide, and later his corpse speaks to Dimitri. A crazed Russian Soldier Gubar (Victor Belovolsky) holds Dimitri hostage, threatens him about his writing without knowing anything about the contents, but then commits suicide by Police. Near the end, Dimitri starts caring for an abandoned, malnourished, child (Seryozha Krylov), but that child is literally pulled from his arms not long after.

 

In this film, lethargy stalks all but Dimitri resists through writing. That writing must be the backbone of the plot, but what’s actually on the pages is never discussed. Alexander has his own, sturdily-bound, Journal. But another Character, Alexander’s former History Teacher, Snegovoy (Vladimir Zamansky), warns against this, “There is no need to write. Don’t invent anything. It is the work of the Devil, believe me.”

 

So, what is this film actually about, given it seems to bare little relationship to the novel it’s allegedly based on? Well, first, it is NOT about a Solar Eclipse, that doesn’t happen in the film. It must be about a Spiritual Eclipse, where one view of the nature of the Universe and one’s place in it becomes over-shadowed by a different view.

 

The final frames probably hold the key. Dimitri is more alone than ever before, but also in possession of all the film’s important writings: the surviving pages of his own, unfinished, research, and both Gubar and Alexander’s Journals. He has no connection to the land he stands in, but is perhaps the guardian of History. The crumbling Civilization fades into desert before his eyes, then the film, itself, fades to black. The closing credits are in a 19^th c. style type-face.

 

And three years after the film’s release date, the USSR ceased to be.

 

Trailer:

DÍAS DE ECLIPSE - Dir. Alexandr Sokurov - TRAILER - YouTube