SOL5: Catch-up! Another Movie Review

Beanpole is a contemporary Russian movie set in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) in the months after World War II. The main characters are two women, one with a small child, who work as nurses in a hospital caring mostly for wounded soldiers. But while most war movies focus on fighting and men, this film focuses on women, some of whom were also among the fighting, but even in this city were a symbolic resistance to the enemy. (Leningrad, if you don’t know, was besieged by the German army for 900 days, from September 1941 until January 1944.)

            The child dies, and Masha, the child’s mother holds her friend, Iya aka Beanpole (because she is so tall and so thin), responsible, and thus responsible for helping her get another child. The lengths Masha is willing to go through, and to force her friend, are extreme, but the experiences she and everyone else have gone through during the war were also extreme and

may have damaged them all psychologically as well as physically.

            The film was especially interesting to me as the week before, the speaker at the workshop on women and Eastern Europe that I co-moderate presented a talk about Russian women’s attitudes toward sex, particularly Russian immigrants in Germany. The characters of Beanpole were from what our speaker characterized as “the silent generation,” who held traditional views about gender roles, believed in equality in public but accepted inequality in their private lives, were generally pro-natal with abortion being their only contraceptive, and didn’t discuss sex openly so women particularly were kept ignorant of sex. This did help me understand the film.

            Despite the grim story and setting, the cinematography is beautiful and the performances magnificent, especially since the two leads are first-time actors.

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I’m participating in the 13th annual Slice of Life Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers. This is day 5 of the 31-day challenge.  It’s not too late to make space for daily writing in a community that is encouraging, enthusiastic, and eager to read what you have to slice about.  Join in!