Khrustaliov, My Car! (Khrustalyov, mashinu!) November 30, 2010

Presented by Light Industry in conjunction with BAMcinématek

Intro by Kent Jones, film critic and Executive Director the World Cinema Foundation

Directed by Alexei Gherman
With Yuriy Tsurilo, Nina Ruslanova, Jüri Järvet

(1998) 137min

“Khrustaliov, My Car! resembles nothing else in cinema—although if Fellini, Tarkovsky and Tati had pooled resources to update a Gogol story, they might have matched it… May be Russian cinema’s answer to Finnegans Wake.” —The Guardian

"[A] crazy carnival of a movie... Relentless and overpowering, yet often poetic in its blend of pathos, freneticism, surrealism and matter of factness." —Time Out

The time is the winter of 1953, the place is Moscow. In this masterpiece of disorientation, Gherman creates a consistently amazing visual and aural rendition of the charged atmosphere of those sad times, in which no point of view is ever fixed, nor any shadow devoid of possible danger, nor any stray remark free from potentially lethal consequences. Taking off from the infamous “Doctor’s Plot,” Gherman tells the story of Yuri Glinshi, Red Army general and famous brain surgeon, who is sent to the Gulag after an anti-Semitic purge. An odd mixture of jumpiness, exhaustion, and confusion permeates Gherman’s lustrous black-and-white images, adding up to an eye-opening representation of what it’s like to live in a totalitarian society where something monumental is taking place, although no one knows precisely what, nor when or how it will break. Profoundly personal, unrelentingly tough and oddly affirmative, Khrustaliov, My Car! is as brave as filmmaking gets. It is also an altogether towering achievement. —Kent Jones. In Russian with English subtitles.

General Admission: $12
BAM Cinema Club members: $7

Official Website: http://www.bam.org/view.aspx?pid=2800