Sunday, February 14, 2010
Hipsters
"Every hipster is a potential criminal" Or so says Katia, buttoned-down party-line, not party girl in the fifties Stalin Russia of Hipsters. Hipsters is a dynamic musical from Russia directed by Valeriy Todorovskiy that is featured in this year;s Portland International Film Festival.
This is a film with a very free camera and a flixable definition of permissible reality, which by definition is what one would expect of a musical, but here even more so. We are talking about a world that uses some of the same kinds of laws of physics and narrative that Baz Luhrman applied in Moulin Rouge or Julie Taymor utilized in Across the Universe. From time to time, the camera sweeps, swoons and characters who were in the background become part of a vigorous chorus line.
Hipsters shows youth in fifties Russia as a kind of binary world. One is either grey and uniform or and follows the party or outlandish to the extreme with bright colors and pompadours that would make those of the Stray Cats seem conservative. The latter is almost an act of unthinkable definance in a country where "sneezing too loud might get you arrested." Or where saxaphones are traded on the black market as guns are.
The adventurous ones transcribe records from broadcasts on old XRay film, anglecize their names (Boris becomes Bob, Paulina becomes Polly, etc.) and always seem to be just a step or two ahead of disapproving authorities. The main character is Mels, whose encounter with a proto-feminist and hot free spirited girl leads him into an almost overnight transformation as Mel, a sax wielding hipster who later tells Katia a junior Rosa Kleb that its cool when people are different." But Mel later learns that there can be freedom in simplicity in style and appearance, it kind of blows his mind.
Hipsters is a film that might be almost a reel too long and it suffers a few missed steps in its script and structure. But it makes up for it with heart, verve, and style along with some pretty interesting commentary about freedom,identity, and the transformation from youth to adulthood.
posted by well-executed buffet at 9:25 AM
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