Aleksei Balabanov: 'Brother'

By Ira Osterberg

KinoSputniks closely analyse some key films from the history of Russian and Soviet cinema. Written by international experts in the field, they are intended for film enthusiasts and students, combining scholarship with an accessible style of writing.

Ira Österberg's KinoSputnik on Aleksei Balabanov's cult film Brother (1997) examines the production history, context and reception of the film, and offers a detailed reading of its key themes.

Balabanov’s Brother made a mark on the new Russia’s film history as its hero Danila Bagrov quickly gained cult status and the nostalgic rock soundtrack hit the nerve of the young post-Soviet generation. This study unravels the film’s effective and ingenious mixture of genre elements, art narration and almost documentary-style realism, which would become trademarks for Balabanov’s oeuvre.

Primary readership will be among film studies students and film enthusiasts, but will also be of interest to anyone researching or studying film soundtracking.

A list of all books in the series is here on the Intellect website on the series page KinoSputnik

• Language: English
• Publisher: Intellect Books
• Release date: Jun 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781789384857

Book preview

1

Cinematic Context and Production History

During the 1990s, Russian cinema underwent an unprecedented and painful transition from a state-led industry towards a market-based sphere of culture. The fall of the Soviet Union meant a complete reconfiguration of the financial basis of film-making and of the structural basis of the film distribution system. The immediacy and totality of the reorganization led to a shake-up of the industry and an upheaval of value systems, for film-makers and audiences alike. Film-makers were faced with an identity crisis, questioning the overall function of cinema and the justification for their own existence. In the words of Sergei Sel’ianov, in the 1990s, the Russian film industry had to ‘reinvent itself from ground zero’ (Starobinets 2003).

However, at first things looked rather promising, as the establishment of new, independent production companies accelerated in the first years of the 1990s, during the period of ‘cooperative cinema’ (Solntseva 2018: 114–15). The number of films produced annually rapidly went up to around 300 films in 1990 and 1991, but then came crashing down a few years later, with fewer than 30 feature films produced in 1996 (Beumers 1999a: 2–3). The films were not able to make any money and the majority of the companies went bankrupt. In fact, not a single Russian film of the 1990s managed to recoup its production costs, part of the reason being that film projects were also used for money laundering. By the second half of the 1990s, the state funding system was re-established, with the state providing partial funding for independent film projects again.

Therefore, it soon became evident that Russian cinema was not able to compete successfully for audience attention in a free market-based system. The reasons behind the failure have been attributed to the poor quality, and even total lack, of a proper distribution infrastructure, and to the fierce competition provided by the globally dominant American entertainment industry (Gladilshchikov 2002). There were not enough well-equipped cinemas and those that existed were focused on showing American films that were in greater demand than the domestic product. At the same time, there was a significant change in the audience’s consumption habits: a shift from watching films in cinemas towards private viewing at home from video or from television. People stopped going to the cinema, while American films flooded the dwindling market: films by Quentin Tarantino, or classics like The Godfather (1972), or even American B-movies released on VHS, proved to be more popular than any domestic film. Television was dominated by old Soviet films, as well as Santa Barbara and Brazilian soap operas (Solntseva 2018: 115).

There were also internal, self-image and content-related issues behind the lack of audience appeal in Russian films. Cultural sociologist George Faraday (2000) suggests that the foundations for the film industry’s crisis lay partly in the Soviet-era view of the artist as a prophet and a visionary, and, on the other hand, in the state-based salary that freed film-makers from considerations over audience demand. The problem accelerated at the Fifth Congress of the Soviet Film-makers’ Union in 1986, where film-makers declared the perestroika, or the restructuring, of the film industry, which at the time merely meant artistic autonomy from state control. This resulted in an anomaly, where directors, free from both state and market control, were left to their own devices, making films only for themselves – films that, in the end, no one wanted to watch. And even after the system disintegrated around them, they still insisted on their privileged position as autonomous artists (Faraday 2000: 2–3). The sociologist and editor-in-chief of Iskusstvo kino (‘Film art’), Daniil Dondurei³, was among those industry insiders who began to promote a change in the film-makers’ mode of thought. According to him, directors needed to think about their audience, and to take both moral and commercial responsibility for their creations: ‘The 800 films made during the 1990s cannot all be auteur films’ (Dondurei 1999: 49).

The films made during the early 1990s were generally criticized for being too ‘auteur’ and experimental in form or too dark and depressing in content. The dark and pessimistic tones in the films were seen as an unnecessary continuation of the late-1980s chernukha trend. Chernukha, which could be translated as ‘blackness’ or ‘making black’, emerged as a film genre in the late 1980s, when censorship and control over film content were lifted and it became popular to indulge in those very themes that had been previously forbidden: sex, violence and substance abuse (Faraday 2000: 159). In these films, there prevailed the ‘death of all former ideals, leaving no hope for the future after the closing credits’ (Horton and Brashinsky 1992: 163–64). One of the best examples of the genre is Malen’kaia Vera (Little Vera, 1988), which was an immediate audience favourite both in Russia and on Western festival circuits.⁴ In the 1990s debate over film content, chernukha continued to be used as a general derogatory term that could refer to cheap and trashy films that aimed to emulate American B-movies and/or artsy naturalistic depictions of Russian contemporary life aimed at Western festival audiences. In either case, the long shadow of the perestroika trend was seen as detrimental to the future of domestic cinema.

Those films that were more interested in attracting the interest of exclusive foreign audiences instead of the large domestic crowd were labelled with the term ‘festival cinema’ (festival’noe kino). Both Daniil Dondurei (1999) and director Nikita Mikhalkov (1999), among others, campaigned against such treason, and openly called for ‘films for the masses’ (zritel’skoe kino), which should be defined by a more positive outlook on Russian life and society. According to Mikhalkov, films should be made that emulate American cinema in their positive affirmation of unequivocal heroism, national pride and triumph over all obstacles (1999: 51).

Sergei Sel’ianov and CTB film company

In the early 1990s, while working at Lenfilm, the young Sergei Sel’ianov envisioned an independent film company as a new and efficient form of collegial collaboration among director-peers (Solntseva 2018: 114). Sel’ianov had filmed his own debut as director, Den' angela (Angel Day), in Tula almost a decade earlier. As an underground project, it was filmed entirely outside existing studio structures and without any support from the state, and, therefore, it can be seen as the first truly independent full-length film made in Russia (Solntseva 2018: 81). This early experience of entrepreneurship – making a film and organizing all aspects of the creation process from start to finish independently – was his stepping stone into film production, and also left him with the ethos of film as a collective effort, not merely as an expression of a single individual’s artistry.

It was not until the restructuring and opening up of the film industry in the second half of the 1980s, when Sel’ianov established connections with Lenfilm and its noted director Aleksei German, that Angel Day was officially released seven years after its filming in 1988. Sel’ianov then continued as a director at Lenfilm to make his second feature film, the mystical Dukhov den' (Day of Spirits), which featured the rock musician Iurii Shevchuk. Both of Sel’ianov’s films received positive reviews and gained recognition within the film-making community (Solntseva 2018: 81–82, 103–04). In interviews, he was keen to emphasize his team’s arrival from outside the industry elite, as ‘ordinary boys from the provinces’ (Solntseva 2018: 103).

Sel’ianov met the young Aleksei Balabanov while studying at the Higher Courses for Scriptwriters and Directors VKSR (Vysshie Kursy Stsenaristov i Rezhisserov). Having completed a degree in screenwriting at the State Film School VGIK (Vsesoiuznyi Gosudarstvennyi Institut Kinematografii) in 1980, Sel’ianov had returned to Moscow to study for a director’s diploma in autumn 1987, whereas Balabanov had already begun his studies in 1985. They developed a strong friendship over their shared passion for cinema – which, according to Sel’ianov, was not self-evidently prevalent even at film schools. Sel’ianov soon returned to Leningrad, and, after graduating, Balabanov joined him to live in the Sel’ianov family’s flat (Ledneva 2013; Solntseva 2018: 92).

The early vision for a production company finally came to fruition when Sel’ianov and his friend Vasilii Grigor’ev were involved in developing a documentary project with French co-producers. The official foundation date of CTB Film Company is 4 January 1992, with Sel’ianov, Grigor’ev and Lenfilm as the three co-founders (Solntseva 2018: 116–19; Ledneva 2013).⁵ According to Sel’ianov, the letters CTB stand for nothing and were made up on the spot when the founding document needed to be sent off (Solntseva 2018: