Vlad Trav
Five American doctors drive (with neither guides nor translators) through the desert of an unnamed Arab land to test a recently created vaccine on children in a remote village, ostensibly motivated by good will. A group of Russians (a surgeon and sappers clearing mines) is juxtaposed on a background of local Arabs. The Americans' selfish motivations quickly become clear. They speak about "the team" and "the children", but each is obsessed with himself and his inadequacies. Americans' well-known philanthropy is revealed to be crassly self- serving, just as the cynical audience always suspected. They are completely, stupidly culturally insensitive.*Tom (Mark Adam) is the team leader—narrow, brittle, humorless, and dogmatic, he wants to Americanize the primitive Arab world. Sterile, he is unable to provide the child his wife wants. When the Arab guard deliberately leaves his gun next to Tom while he goes and rapes Tom's wife, Tom isn't man enough to defend his honor. Instead, when Tom's wife is later drinking with a severely wounded Russian surgeon, Tom attacks and kills the elderly and helpless surgeon with a bottle of Jack Daniels.* Jane (Scarlett McAlister), Tom's red-haired wife, longs for a child, so she seduces the grim Arab guard and rendezvous with him repeatedly to copulate in various poses, finally to be violently raped whereupon she gets up smiling (after our initial shock, we realize she finally got what she wanted) and later to give birth to a black child (shown in the movie).* Miss Stone (Kathleen Gati), a sexually frustrated old maid, vaccinates children like an automaton. As warm and compassionate as her surname suggests, she expresses her feeling for the children by singing them "Row, row, row your boat" ENDLESSLY, mercilessly accompanying herself on an accordion, which the Arab boys eventually urinate on.* Mike (Neil Patrick Stewart) is the passive white gay partner: shrill, prone to hysterics, and desperately afraid that he is getting older and unattractive. He wants to adopt an Arab boy.* Bill (Jeff Grays) is the muscular black gay partner, stereotypically warm and affable. He likes lollipops (nearly always has one in his mouth) and also likes children, maybe too much: his long, slow proffering of a lollipop to a timid Arab boy is obviously a symbolic seduction.The movie was forbidden in the US by Condoleezza Rice.
levelclearer
"Strangers" to whom, to what ? It's easy to shut the issue up by calling "The strangers" (Chuzhie) by Russian Director Yuri Grumov a piece of Russian Anti-American propaganda. But is it really ? The message the movie delivers sounds rather like "Sin estranges people one from another" than "Americans are daemons". The movie title means first of all "strangers to each other". It's a moralistic research journey into the world of relationships between humans united on the mission with the motto "America must act !". If you would like to know what is it like I would compare this work to the "The Island" with Di Caprio. Corrupt human relations ruin life even in the paradise (The Island), and even on the noble mission (The Strangers). But "The Strangers" go a bit further in exposing the decease: when sin becomes a norm (like relationship of gay doctors) and is no more treated as sin then truth leaves the place, noble doing looses sense, aggression turns against the weakest, charity becomes hypocritical, family is destroyed. The grotesque portrayal of US team members serves not propagandistic aims, but helps to reveal the message which is universal in any nation. They are not caricatures, but pure types. We know that pure types rarely exist in real life. Same is applied to the Russians (de-miner squad) who appear just in several short episodes, the only aim of which is to create the contrast, and to show what a real human relationship should be. It's quite universal. I agree that this movie will hardly be appreciated in the West, nobody likes to recognize himself in grotesque, but it will come very useful to a Russian spectator who has to face the influence of Western culture stereotypes every day. Yuri Grymov has done work worth of Fyodor Dostoevsky. A very pure, very responsible, work with a great sympathy to the truth. Drunk and speaking one-liners Russian commissars from "RAMBO" and the stuff, shall not be brought forth as the justification of "The Strangers". "The Strangers" is not in any way a revenge for the goofy or evil Russian characters in the cold war era blockbusters. It's a serious work that sources it's inspiration in the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky and Orthodox Christianity. If you want a Russian spoof of RAMBO please watch "The sole cruise" (Odinochnoe plavanie). If you still feel offended, think rather of "Gulag Archipelago". It would be a just cultural exchange. Very probably Yuri Grymov made only one mistake calling Americans Americans and Russians Russians. But if he cloaked the story in the fantasy names (like Orks and Hobbyts) would it spare the movie from the Russian anti-American propaganda charges ? But how to speak on the problem then ? Our strangers are lost to the truth in their own understanding of what truth is. American Jesus has little to do with real Jesus. I've heard this several times from Americans. So, after all, that makes me believe "The Strangers" have some chance with the American audience.
simplulo
Yuri Grymov's Chuzhie ("Strangers") is a beautifully shot movie that brilliantly accomplishes its twin objectives: Russian anti-American propaganda and fantasy fulfillment. It maintains a perfect balance between art and message. Non-Russian audiences would find it a caricature, if not offensive hate-mongering, but most Russians, with their decade of accumulated grievances and hunger to regain past glory, will doubt neither the Russians' nobility nor the Americans' vulgarity and brutality, because this is what they *want* to believe.Five American doctors drive alone (with neither guides nor translators) through the desert of an unnamed Arab land to vaccinate children in a remote village, ostensibly motivated by good will. A group of Russians (a surgeon and sappers clearing mines) is juxtaposed on a background of local Arabs. Strangely, in this dangerous, international environment, only one character speaks a second language: a sapper, who understands just enough English to know that he has been insulted. The Americans' selfish motivations quickly become clear. They speak about "the team" and "the children", but each is obsessed with himself and his inadequacies. Americans' well-known philanthropy is revealed to be crassly self-serving, just as the cynical audience always suspected (and hoped). They are completely, stupidly culturally insensitive, though any American doctor has completed graduate school and spent a great deal of time with foreigners, if he is not an immigrant himself (has Grymov seen Harold & Kumar?). Russian filmmakers love grotesques, but assembling such an implausibly flawed group of doctors would require not only careful selection but genetic engineering. Some highlights of the five Americans (SPOILERS):*Tom (Mark Adam) is the team leader—narrow, brittle, humorless, and dogmatic, he wants to Americanize the primitive Arab world. Sterile, he is unable to provide the child his wife wants. When the Arab guard deliberately leaves his gun next to Tom while he goes and rapes Tom's wife, Tom isn't man enough to defend his honor. Instead, when Tom's wife is later drinking with the grandfatherly Russian surgeon, Tom attacks *him*.* Jane (Scarlett McAlister), Tom's red-haired wife, longs for a child, so she seduces the grim Arab guard and rendezvous with him repeatedly to copulate in various poses, finally to be violently raped.* Miss Stone (Kathleen Gati), a sexually frustrated old maid, vaccinates children like an automaton. As warm and compassionate as her surname suggests, she expresses her feeling for the children by singing them "Row, row, row your boat" ENDLESSLY, mercilessly accompanying herself on an accordion, which the Arab boys eventually urinate on.* Mike (Neil Patrick Stewart) is the passive white gay partner: shrill, prone to hysterics, and desperately afraid that he is getting older and unattractive. He wants to adopt an Arab boy.* Bill (Jeff Grays) is the muscular black gay partner, stereotypically warm and affable. He likes lollipops (nearly always has one in his mouth) and also likes children, maybe too much: his long, slow proffering of a lollipop to a timid Arab boy is obviously a symbolic seduction.The pattern is clear—American men aren't real men, American women aren't real women. In Grymov's cosmology, the Americans are demons, and the Arabs animals. Only the Russians are humans with souls, as the Russian surgeon demonstrates when he plays Miss Stone's accordion. The Russian surgeon saves an American's life, and a Russian sapper saves an Arab child. Both lose their own lives, betrayed by the ungrateful Americans. Prudence, Justice, Temperance, Courage, Faith, Hope, Charity—the Americans lack every virtue. Russians' customary heavy use of symbolism becomes laughable, e.g. such unsubtle product anti-placement as a bottle of Jack Daniels as a murder weapon. Russians have less trouble suspending disbelief because they want to believe the central message, that Americans have no souls. This serves the fantasy and propaganda interests: raising Russian self-esteem, dehumanizing the enemy.From the beginning to the mocking "Happy End," Grymov's Chuzhie is humiliation. One American woman is urinated on, the other raped, whereupon she gets up smiling (after our initial shock, we realize she finally got what she wanted). The humiliation continues into the real world: one wonders why Grymov made the movie, who financed it (Roskultura, the Russian Federal Agency for Culture and Cinematography), why the actors participated, and how they could subject the audience to such pandering and abuse. Web-searching for Chuzhie finds discussion expressing neither disgust nor embarrassment, but curiosity about whether the movie really was forbidden in the US by Condoleezza Rice, an absurd publicity-generating rumor broadcast by a Russian news program on TV7. Apparently nobody attempted to publicize Chuzhie outside Russia, quite the opposite: even in the Middle East, its unpleasant portrayal of Arabs would curtail its audience. But Americans will appreciate it most: 80% of the dialog is in English; only a native speaker will feel the stiltedness of the script and acting. Russians will listen to the simultaneous translation, in most movies an annoyance but in Chuzhie a mercy.Russians claim they are portrayed just as badly in American movies like Rocky, Rambo, Top Gun, and Armageddon, forgetting serious, positive portrayals like in Dr. Zhivago and Enemy at the Gates. Armageddon showed a Russian cosmonaut as not evil, but goofy. Russians do not mind being hated or feared, but they want respect; ridicule is unforgivable. This movie attempts to be payback for all these slights combined, ending up a farce, a fantasy that reveals less about Americans than Russians, whose ancient inferiority complex clearly remains. It is no surprise that Chuzhie's producers did not want it shown abroad. Unfortunately, real respect and self-esteem will come from real achievement, not fantasy, and certainly not from nasty little movies like Grymov's Chuzhie.Chuzhie ran several weeks in major Moscow cinemas. Together with the end of the Bush administration, Chuzhie will likely mark the nadir of US-Russian relations, though what the 2008 financial crisis portends is now anyone's guess. One hopes that the rising Russian victim mentality, fostered by certain interests, bears only passing resemblance to that of Weimar Germany.
