Movie Review: Ukraine’s long-shot hope for an Oscar — “La Palisiada”

Obscure to the point of exasperation, “comic” in ways only its director truly “gets,” “La Palisiada” is one of the more unapproachable films of recent memory.

Even accepting that the challenge of making a period piece movie in the middle of Ukraine’s devastating war(s) is impressive in its own right, “grading on the curve,” as we say, “Palisiada” still isn’t worth endorsing.

I wonder what the old American joke “A ‘film’ is a ‘movie’ we don’t quite understand” sounds like in Ukrainian. That might help explain this indulgent and often incoherent exercise in dark Slavic humor’s selection by a national cinema committee in the embattled country as its entry in the Best International Feature competition for this year’s Oscars.

Director and co-writer Philip Sotnychenko challenges the viewer with a meandering story of the last murderer to be given the death penalty before Ukraine abolished it. He struggles to tie violence back then to violence today with a long prologue set in the present day that connects to the film’s celebratory finale set in that “last execution” year, 1996.

It says something about where the filmmaker’s head is that so little effort is made to separate the two eras (radio news and Soviet vintage cars give it away), or properly identify the characters on the two timelines. The title itself is nonsense, “a figure of speech,” one character explains to another near the end. It might be an Italian or Ukrainian pun. Or it might not.

The prologue wanders about the social whirl of artist Aiesel (Sana Shakhmuradova) and her husband Kiril (No idea who plays him, and the distributor and IMDB are no help). We hear one half of an innocuous phone coversation, visit a party where the inane chatter overlaps (in Ukrainian with English subtitles), and a dinner with her parents, including her “dictatorial” cop-father is followed by an after dinner bedroom argument which ends badly.

We’ve invested 20 minutes trying to figure out what the movie will be about, a film whose prologue adds nothing to understanding what follows. What follows skips back to 1996.

A police colonel has been murdered, and we track through a brusque roundup of what might be called “the usual suspects.” But these un-uniformed scenes could just as easily be Ukrainian “civil war” depictions of “kidnap every male you can get your hands on” reprisals.

Sacha (Novruz Himet) is the dogged cop on the case, participating in the roundups, attending the many “crime reenactments” Ukrainian cops put a lot of store in as they try to solve the case.

We don’t really “get” why they settle on one suspect or see that moment. Did he confess? Is that him taking part in the “reenactments?”

When we meet the forensics doc Vlodymyr (Andrii Zhurba) and two alleged “mental health” experts who interrogate him, we note the young perpetrator’s uncertain memory and his unconcern, which suggests “mental problems” that should figure in the case.

Naturally, he’s railroaded in a “fit to stand trial” farce.

Sotnychenko borrows stylistic and storytelling touches from the Lars von Trier “Dogme 95” Danish filmmaking movement that emphasized naturalism in performance, technique and in immersing the viewer in that which is under-explained.

Our Ukrainian filmmaker takes all of that too far. His movie is dull, and dares to be demandingly so. The “routines” recreated here are blase, even the “comical” trips to a (quarry, I think) for the murder recreations.

The one comic touch that translates is taking us to an open air Odessa flea market, where vendors set up tables and the masses crowd in, prowling for bargains.

Every so often, a train shows up and everybody has to pick up her or his wares or simply move their feet to avoid getting run over. The flea market is in a railyard covered with tracks, with the tracks covered by sellers and buyers.

That’s wacky. Or could be.

As it is, you’d like to think there’s a message in here, about turning away from violence only to be violated by Putin’s “Rebuild My Empire” minions. But I can’t honestly say that there is.

Rating: unrated, violence

Cast: Novruz Himet, Andrii Zhurba and Sana Shakhmuradova

Credits: Directed by Philip Sotnychenko, scripted by Alina Panasenko and
Philip Sotnychenko. A Film Movment release.

Running time: 1:40