The original Irony of Fate is a 1975 Russian film which is considered a
Soviet-era cultural treasure. It is adored by generations of Russians with
the same kind of affection Americans have for It's A Wonderful Life, and
centers around the sentiments of the same winter holidays as that beloved
American classic. Irony takes place on New Year's
Eve and New Year's Day, and it was first
broadcast on television in two parts, on New Year's Eve of 1975 and New
Year's Day of 1976. The repeat broadcasts are now an annual Russian tradition
at that time of year. It also had a successful theatrical release, so I suppose
it has
probably been seen by more Russians than any other Russian film ever made.
It is not a typical film. For one thing, it's a three-hour romantic comedy.
It is not so long not because it is especially plot-heavy, but because it
gets stretched out by songs - beautiful, melancholy songs based on classic
Russian poetry, generally sharing the basic theme of loss, and often
stressing that we always end up spending time with the wrong people,
whether they are friends or lovers, while we miss out on the right people
or watch them walk away. (Yes, the songs are melancholy. Would you expect
Soviet Russians to have happy songs in a romantic comedy?) The songs are usually worked into the fabric of the film
with some clumsy device like, "We can eat/shop/whatever in a minute, but
before we do, you know I really love it when you sing."
I'm not Russian myself, so I don't relate to the film as a cultural
touchstone. I find it clunky, syrupy, artificially plotted, and
old-fashioned, and I find many characters rather difficult to relate
to as real people. On the other hand, I am a Russophile with a Russian
family and at least some small grasp of their incredibly complex language,
so there are many things about the film I admire and even love:
* For one thing, there are the songs, which consist of great poems set
to music especially for this film, and mostly performed by a very young
Sergei Nikitin. Although he was not well known at the time of his
performance in this film, Sergei and his wife Tatiana are now great
international treasures, two PhD's in Physics who have spent the latter
part of their lives bringing Russian literature and folklore to life in
ballads, most often combining Nikitin's music with the words of leading
poets. Like many real Russians, I know many of the film's songs by heart,
and get chills at certain lines.
(Note: Nikitin didn't write the songs in the film, but his own songs are just
as good or better. I'm a huge fan. Here's an
example not from the
film).
* For another, there is the film's simple charm. Like It's A Wonderful
Life, it "sells" its corny premise with genuine enthusiasm for its
message. It may be naive and amateurish at times, but it converts those attributes
into gold with good-humored sincerity.
Which finally brings us to Irony of Fate 2, which was made some thirty
years after the original, and which, in my opinion, got just about
everything wrong.
Let's start with its lack of sincerity. While the original was created
solely to entertain, amuse and move audiences, the new film is basically a
long commercial. It places more products, and in more obvious ways, than
any film I have ever seen.
And then there's the lack of charm. The original film was almost
completely lacking in any form of directorial technique that you would
notice. It's about as un-hip as any film you'll ever see. It was about
people and their feelings. That's part of what made it so beloved. The new
film shows off some dazzling techniques. It is awash with swirling colors, artistic close-ups of small objects,
special effects, bullet time, speed-ups and slow-downs, pulsating music,
and just about every other form of excess that the modern cinema bathes in
regularly. Those sorts of things have their place in movies. The director
of this film, Timur Bekmambetov, a very imaginative and hip dude, has used
those same techniques in his other films to excellent effect. I
really enjoyed his next film, Wanted, the English-language thriller with
Angelina Jolie and James McEvoy. Irony 2 is also slicker than owl
shit before breakfast, but all of those fancy-ass pyrotechnics just don't
belong here, where they can frequently and intrusively take the viewer out
of the story. The mission of this film should be to get the audience to
touch the characters' hearts, not to admire the director's techniques.
Oh, yeah. Remember that I mentioned those incredible songs from the
first film, based upon some of the great
Russian poems; those tunes that many Russians of all ages know by heart as
well as Jimmy Buffett fans can ... er ... parrot his classics?
The sequel's creators decided that it didn't need any of that boring,
stodgy, old-fashioned crap.
Finally, and perhaps most important, the new film not only screwed up
its own running time, but it somehow actually managed to screw up the
original as well! The first film had managed to take the two protagonists away
from the people with whom they were mismatched, thus allowing them to pair
up
in a final embrace that promised them a better future. It was a rare
Russian classic with a happy ending, and it filled viewers with a glimmer
of hope that each may find his or her kindred soul. The new film, coming
from a new, cynical Russia, got right
to the point by saying "Oh, that original ending was a romantic pipe dream. Those two both went
back to the people they were not right for, married them, and had children
by them." And to make bad matters even worse, the new script left us in
the dark about the details of how all that happened! Hell, those details
alone would have been a better movie than this one.
The Soviet functions of New Year are being reverted back to Christmas
in re-Christianized Russia, so in that spirit I offer my comment on this
film:
"Bah, humbug!"
