GK Retrospective, Pt. 3/5
while GK’s sci-fi ↑↑ was decent and his swashbuckler ↑ was a failure (despite all the commercial success), this is a true masterpiece!
considering that next month we (here on SCFZ) are polling the year 1964, i can (almost) guarantee that if you watch this (& you are sensible), you have got a strong entry to your ballot!
One of the greatest pieces of filmmaking ever to have been achieved in Estonia. A cocktail of magical realism, existential tragedy, and rural grotesque that is as resonant in the global capitalism of 2020 as it was in the Soviet Estonian socialist dream of 1964.
The Misadventures of the New Satan (Grigori Kromanov, Jüri Müür, 1964)
#CoMoEstonia
the main character (of this remarkable movie) is Satan, called Jürka, coincidentally my namesake (sic!)
the treacherous God breaking the business contract with Satan provides the starting point of the plot
the problem is that God turns (in Heaven) mental and thus (consequently) Satan has to leave (temporarily) Hell and play a retard on Earth (no joking!)
Jürka has to play a retard on Earth, while hiding he comes from Hell (he pretends coming from the totalitarian Russia)
Jürka has to play a retard who loves cats
despite playing (on Earth) a pious retard, Earth women (who are not blind) can perceive his subterranean origin and thus (ultimately) he can start a family and beget offspring
relying on his bitter Earth experience, Jürka makes his Earth children wary of truth and random lies (lying has its rules!)
his children are grateful for these valuable life lessons, and thus, once Jürka gets injured in a Bear fight, they disinfect his wounds with their urine
as you can see (based on all the aforementioned), this film is pretty mind-blowing!
thus, i will stop making spoilers and let you only guess what’s going on in the following scene...
ultimately (in sum), the thoughtful devil Jürka goes berserk and burns everything!
it makes 98% of the protagonists & viewers to fall into despair of pointless theodicy →
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodicy
the remaining 2% sees this annihilation as just another business opportunity
anyway...
since contributing to the overall havoc & confusion is the last thing i would wish, here (viz the next link) one can read (about the film in question) something that even an average clergyman can understand →
https://issuu.com/eestifilmisihtasutus/ ... s/44272852
The film was made in 1964 in Soviet Estonia where “the figure of the Satan was one that generates fear in ideology. If there is no God, then there should also be no Satan, but suddenly the Satan appears in Estonia,” said the Estonian SSR Cinematography Committee Chairman Feliks Liivik when looking back on the era in 1990s independent Estonia. Indeed, the film’s release at the time was surprising since the period of 1959 to 1964 saw an active anti-religious campaign in the Soviet Union.
But by some miracle, this film with a deeply religious and philosophical subtext was shown all over the Soviet Union and became the first significant success in Estonian film history.
The Misadventures of the New Satan is the last novel by Anton Hansen Tammsaare, the greatest classic of Estonian literature. It was written in the summer of 1939, just before the outbreak of World War II when Europe trembled in fear of war and different ideologies clashed — capitalism against communism and national socialism. The work is considered to be the author’s most multi-layered novel as it contains political, folkloric, theological and intertextual layers, which become the basis for an exciting and original film.
In 1955, Estonian Jüri Müür went to Moscow to study feature film directing at the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography (VGIK) (where his course instructor was Aleksandr Dovzhenko). Only a couple years later, he was already infected with the Satan bug and got VGIK screenwriting student Gennadi Koleda involved to thoroughly work through the material and write many versions of the script. Müür had a definite plan to make his graduate film a full-length feature, and that it had to be The Misadventures of the New Satan (the script’s working title at the time was Earthbound). “Dovzhenko told us that you have to choose your first script like you choose your bride. I’ve also been eyeing my bride for the last four years,” said Jüri Müür at the VGIK Study Council where they were discussing producing the script together with Koleda on March 24, 1960.
Unfortunately, the film was not given the green light at the time and Müür received his diploma for directing the film Men from the Fisherman’s Village (1961), which is also an important work in Estonian film history, as it is the first full-length feature film in Soviet Estonia made with a creative crew composed entirely of Estonians. During the shooting period for the film, he met Grigori Kromanov, who was working as the second director whose job was to direct the actors. For a debut film, Men from the Fisherman’s Village was quite an achievement and, more importantly, it opened the door for Müür to start work on his passion project.
With The Misadventures of the New Satan, Müür and Kromanov were equals as director in the film hierarchy even though they still had quite different roles to play, which probably only benefited the film. Kromanov continued to focus on working with the actors, deliberately staging the dialogue scenes in an uncharacteristically static manner similar to other well-known directors of the same era like Ingmar Bergman or Luchino Visconti.
As a result of all the challenges faced and preparation done, a completely timeless film was made that talks of themes as relevant today as probably at any time, as long as the world still has a capitalist market economy and some form of currency in use. There has always been a danger of working one’s self to death but, today, an era striving more than ever to combine work, a lifestyle and self-realization at any cost possible, these topics are even more relevant than they were in the Estonia of the first half of the 20th century when Satan-Jürka roamed.
The film perfectly presents the absurdity of the situation where the Satan, usually associated with evil, seeks bliss, so he enslaves himself to the big banks, or to loan sharks, or to the embodiment of an inhuman boss, Clever Ants, who keeps raising the rent because that is how our people are supposedly able to live better, even if that means the worker has to sell his worldly belongings and still ends up taking out another loan on top of it all.
There is an absurd atmosphere in The Misadventures of the New Satan, which is enhanced by the brilliant dialogue and excellent supporting roles that help to highlight the contrast between slow-witted Satan-Jürka’s benevolent, extra-terrestrial strength and Clever Ants’s boundless greed. The final phrase that slips from his lips at the end of the film: “Let it burn, the money will come!” is the historically symptomatic attitude of the entire Western worldview that believes in endless economic growth and the reason why humanity and our planet are in danger of catching fire here in the 21st century. It is exceptional how accurately a writer from a small country, and two film directors working together were able to put the confrontation between human greed and sincere benevolence unprotected against exploitation into such an effective, 95-minute, explosive form.
