Evgenii & Olga L
Warning: Spoilers Ahead.
The film's plot demands a lot of attention: it's jagged, illogical, and ornate. It immerses us in the feeling that we are watching a long dream. This gives us every right to review the film as an interpretation of a big dream.
Viktor Banev is the director of the film, Konstantin Lopushanskiy. Lyudmila is Konstantin's mother. Active, energetic, phallic, beside her there is only such a man as Igor - the symbol of Konstantin's father. That is, we have before us a perfect illustration of the Oedipus complex, in which the son symbolically marries his mother and kills his father. From the biography of Konstantin Lopushanskiy we know that his father died when Konstantin was 6 years old. After the death of her husband, Konstantin's mother lived a long and full life with men like Igor. Igor is a symbol of the emasculation of the "masculine". Ira Baneva is Konstantin's secret.
The presence of a powerful Oedipus complex and the symbolic image of the castration of the "masculine" in Konstantin's life leads to Konstantin's identification as a boy with the feminine path. And the careful secrecy of Konstantin Lopushanskiy's personal life confirms that he has no spouse, which means that in Konstantin's Psychic reality lives his traumatic part, identified with the feminine way and fixed in the prepubertal period - in the inner object "Ira Baneva".
The dwarf scientist is the countertransference of Viktor and, consequently, of Konstantin. The dream in which Viktor clearly sees the number of the house and the place where the dwarf's house is located is the best argument for the fact that the whole destiny of the dwarf is the destiny of Viktor/Konstantin. The dwarf lives a closed life behind twenty locks. All his work has not become an international sensation. Nobody needs him. His physical handicap makes it impossible for him to live among healthy and happy people. He has no relationships, except for a pussycat, which is a symbol of the dwarf's narcissism and omnipotence complex. Viktor's encounter with the dwarf is an encounter with his inner inferiority, worthlessness, needlessness, and loneliness, but after Viktor's dialogue with the dwarf, we realize that pride has prevented Viktor from seeing the truth about himself.
An important moment from the director's biography, which will be very useful to us in building our interpretation: during his student days, Konstantin Lopushanskiy found himself on the set of Andrei Tarkovsky's film Stalker. This meeting was fateful for Lopushanskiy. The director's entire oeuvre is imbued with a great desire to repeat and surpass Tarkovsky's genius. But Tarkovsky was the first and, as we know, remains the only one. Lopushanskiy waited for Andrei Tarkovsky to emigrate and then, in one of his interviews, allowed himself to say that Tarkovsky had escaped, while Lopushanskiy was destined to defend Tarkovsky's legacy in his homeland. Then Lopushanskiy met the Strugatsky brothers.
From the biography we know that the Strugatsky brothers rejected Lopushanskiy's script for the book The Ugly Swans and did not agree with Lopushanskiy to make a film. Lopushanskiy waited until the older brother died many years later, and after meeting with the younger brother, received permission to write and shoot the film based on his own vision. Aquatter is the Priest Archetype - a symbolic representation of all of Lopushanskiy's brilliant teachers and of conscience itself in the sphere of any person's Psychic reality.
It is his conscience that makes Viktor go to Tashlinsk, the place from which he once escaped, and throughout the film he asks his colleagues who the Aquatters are. Viktor tries to justify his lack of conscience by the ignorance of the higher professors about conscience. Tashlinsk is the town of Viktor and Konstantin's psychological trauma. Aquatter's energy barrier is the defense mechanism of the Psyche and the shell of Narcism. Going into the psychic trauma means taking a risk, and the very arrival of Viktor in Tashlinsk suggests that the protagonist has a charge of risk that should pay off in the best-case screenplay. Endless rain. Water flooding houses and streets, filling every container, running down windows, dripping endlessly from ceilings and walls - this is the great water of the Unconscious. And this very look of Viktor into the sky, where the red divine eye is visible, makes us hope that Viktor will save Ira and Aquatters, but it does not happen.
And now we must remember an important scene from Konstantin Lopushanskiy's biography, which, in our opinion, is the biggest trauma in the director's life and, consequently, the biggest reason for the creation of the film The Ugly Swans. As a kid in Dnepropetrovsk, Konstantin and other kids decided to set fire to an underground celluloid vault. Some kids climbed right into the vault and set the celluloid on fire. There was an instantaneous, lightning-fast explosion. The exit from the vault was narrow, and after the explosion a huge column of smoke, like a nuclear mushroom, came out of the vault. In describing this story, Lopushanskiy says that he was drawn to the style of this event. In addition, there were greenish-yellow Civil Defense posters of people wearing gas masks.
The director recreates this scene in the film when Viktor takes the children into the bomb shelter, closes the hatch behind him, looks out the porthole, and sees toxic smoke coming down the air duct into the hallway. He sees three alternately exploding light bulbs. The light is a symbol of Knowledge, the Genius teacher and the Father. The three exploding bulbs are a symbolic representation of the destruction of Konstantin’s father - Sergei, Andrei Tarkovsky and Arkady Strugatsky. Panting, Ira asked her father to read, and Viktor read the poem There Round the Corner by Boris Pasternak. It was around the corner where Konstantin stood when the kids set fire to the celluloid in the vault. And in that mise-en-scene, we realize that Viktor is not going to save the kids. It's a symbol of the triumph of the Cain Archetype. The triumph of envy, pride, anger, and narcissistic decisions about the ability to judge - who to give life to and who to take life from.
All perish. The light goes out. And then we see a research institute and Ira, who long ago was subjected to cruel research and turned into a biological creature without a will. This Ira is gone. Every trauma has a tendency to repeat itself and this happens until a person manages to deal with one’s trauma and stands on the side of acceptance, light sorrow, remorse and enters the Prodigal son Archetype. But destiny is merciful to man - it always gives many chances to correct mistakes.
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The film The Ugly Swans is a story about how a man was given several chances to correct a series of mistakes and how a man did not use these chances. A good artist is the one who can show the viewer how to get out of the biggest misfortune and how a person can overcome one’s Narcism and pride and learn repentance as a necessary stage in becoming and overcoming Narcism. That is why we cannot call this movie really artistic, and we call director Lopushanskiy a bad artist.
Rated 0.5/5 Stars •
Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars
01/02/25
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Audience Member
Very nice treatment of the old "mutant children, next generation of humanity" sci-fi standard. Based on a Strugatsky novel. Good intro to Lopushansky, but not nearly as good as his others.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
02/15/23
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Audience Member
May not be very easy to follow, but is, ultimately authentic and compelling because it addresses real and honest questions.
Rated 4.5/5 Stars •
Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars
01/18/23
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Audience Member
The film had no budget to speak of, and yet it is moving and dreamlike in parts. Often playing as a tribute to Tarkovsky, with much dripping water,shakuhachi music and frames full of abandonment (his film from Strugatsky book Roadside Picnic called Stalker, is my favourite film). The message is delivered on many levels, so many you don't know it until the film is over. Not the typical kind of film I'd give a 9 to, but this virtually unseen movie deserves it.
Rated 4.5/5 Stars •
Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars
02/14/23
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Audience Member
i've heard this would be similar to stalker...it's not, except at a very shallow level.the imagery is nice,sounds also nice, overall quite interesting if you're into SF excuses for deeper thoughts...
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
02/11/23
Full Review
Audience Member
One of the greatest films I've ever seen
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
01/12/23
Full Review
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