Respond to these rapid questions in our Beanpole quiz and we will tell you which Beanpole character you are. Play it now.
The young woman spins around and around in her green dress, until she suddenly realizes that she is unable to stop herself from spinning. After several minutes of frolicking, the carefree giggles that had rippled from her lips, harkening back to the innocence of her childhood, are replaced with labored breathing as her frolicking movement becomes increasingly apparent to be a desperate compulsion. As long as she can keep the rest of the world out of her mind, she will be able to maintain the denial that allows her to hold on to her optimism. This is just one of countless scenes from “Beanpole,” the stunning sophomore feature film from 28-year-old Russian director Kantemir Balagov, who employs color as deftly as any painter of note could possibly hope to achieve. Create new life, a theme that runs throughout the film and is represented by various shades of green, is what the sterile woman Masha (Vasilisa Perelygina) desires above all else in this film. Everyone in Leningrad, a city that has just been ravaged by the Second World War’s siege, is struggling to regain their equilibrium, resulting in a pervasive clumsiness that is evoked by the film’s title. Despite the fact that Masha’s initial attempts to find happiness are irrational, ungainly, and, in some cases, downright cruel, they are never less than understandable in their wounded humanity.
As a result of her research into the oral histories of Soviet war veterans for her 1985 book, The Unwomanly Face of War, Nobel Prize-winner Svetlana Alexievich attempted to portray the criminally underrepresented experiences of female soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Besides being one of the most important films to be released in theaters this year, “Beanpole” is also one of the most involving character studies to be released in recent memory, drawing us so deeply into the psyches of its female leads that we find ourselves trembling along with them whenever they are shook to their very core. Almost immediately after the first shot is shown on the screen, we are treated to an unsettlingly familiar soft, high-pitched tone that serves as the defining motif of “Loveless” composer Evgueni Galperine’s score and is eerily reminiscent of the music cue that heralded the arrival of Heath Ledger as The Joker in “The Dark Knight.” This scene effectively conveys the terrifying loss of control suffered by Masha’s friend and fellow comrade, Iya (Viktoria Miroshnichenko, who looks exactly like “Euphoria” star Hunter Schafer), whose service as an anti-aircraft gunner has left her with the disorder known as post-concussion syndrome (PCS). She will periodically freeze in place without warning, unable to move or speak until the episode has passed, serving as a powerful metaphor for the paralysis experienced by veterans in a variety of ways when they are unable to function as they would otherwise do.
For Iya, sex manifests itself as a form of paralysis in and of itself, necessitating her to remain silent and still for the purpose of fertilization. During the months following World War II, Masha’s desperate desire for a child leads her to use blackmail—both emotional and physical—to persuade Iya to sleep with Nikolay (Andrey Bykov), a doctor at the hospital where they are working as nurses. Due to Iya’s refusal to comply with this request in the absence of her friend, a harrowing overhead shot shows Masha pinned between the intercourse and a wall, where she is violently rocked by each violation of the thrust order. As a result of his collaboration with Kseniya Sereda, an incredibly talented 24-year-old cinematographer, Balagov has the confidence to tell his story primarily through the faces of his characters and where they are placed in the frame, making the dialogue a secondary concern. He never draws attention to himself or his use of long takes, instead allowing his actors to engage in a subtly choreographed dance that tells us more about their relationship than any words could ever convey. It’s critical not to cut between emotional beats because the heart of the film is found in the lingering pauses and unspoken shifts that occur between them.
But you shouldn’t waste any more time and start this Beanpole quiz.
Consider the reunion of Iya and Masha, which occurs at the end of the film. When Iya is ashamed of who she is, she retreats into the darkness of a room, where she keeps her secrets hidden until Masha strikes a match, which illuminates both of their faces. Then we cut to a mesmerizing five-minute take of the friends conversing primarily with their eyes, which is a highlight of the film. Without saying a word, the truth that Iya has been suppressing gradually comes to light, prompting Masha to rise from her seat on the floor to confront her. When Iya is overcome with grief, she falls on her friend’s shoulder, a tender move that inspires the pair to waltz back to the ground before Masha finally says what they had been too afraid to say out loud before. It is poetically mirrored by a later and significantly more harrowing encounter between the women, which is fraught with long-simmering tensions that finally bubble to the surface, culminating in an angle that recalls an earlier sequence of such excruciating anguish that it haunts the audience as much as it does the characters. This scene is one of the most powerful in the film. If green represents the potential for hope, then red represents the trauma that threatens to seep out of the women’s noses at any time during the performance. Through the course of the film, crimson hues are transferred between Iya and Masha and appear in everything from their clothing and hair color to the intricate production design.
Beanpole Quiz
In this story, the timely question of how to bring new life into an increasingly chaotic world—which has been a central preoccupation in Alfonso Cuarón’s masterworks “Children of Men” and “Roma,” as well as this year’s ground-breaking Oscar-nominated documentary “For Sama”—becomes manifest in Pashka (Timofey Glazkov), the boy mothered by Iya. A high angle is used to emphasize his fragility and diminutive height in a land still reeling from the devastation of war at the time of our first encounter with him…. Patients at the hospital, who amuse Pashka by imitating various animals, are temporarily silenced when one of them points out that the boy may not recognize the barking of a dog because all of the dogs in the town have been devoured, and the laughter returns for a moment. One of the lucky ones, Lyubov (Kseniya Kutepova), the well-heeled wife of a government official who also happens to be the mother of Sasha (Igor Shirokov), a hot young man who Masha has deftly wrapped around her little finger, has managed to keep her own canine companion alive for a while. Despite the fact that Masha’s monologue, in which she describes her tumultuous past and how she managed to survive on the battlefield courtesy of her sexual wiles, contradicts the backstories she had shared with Nikolay, it appears that at least one of these yarns may have sprung from Masha’s imagination.
Also, you will find out which character are you in this Beanpole quiz.
Neither Perelygina nor Miroshnichenko has ever performed in a film before, and their performances are as authentic and dizzyingly complex as any of the ones recognized by the Academy this month for their achievements. Their friendship is a fascinating study in contrasts in and of itself, with Masha’s short stature juxtaposed next to Iya’s blonde hair and lanky height, which earns her the nickname “beanpole,” and their characters’ relationship is no exception. When compared to Masha’s cool and calculated gaze, Iya’s is wide and vulnerable, always conscious of how she stands out in a crowd, making it all the more difficult for her to discreetly carry out forbidden tasks assigned by Nikolay, who is too cowardly to complete them himself. In the same way that Jennifer Kent’s sadly underappreciated second film, “The Nightingale,” took us to the depths of unspeakable pain before demonstrating the healing power of human connection, the hard-won optimism of “Beanpole” is earned precisely because it refuses to dilute its depictions of abject despair, which include a death scene as excruciatingly protracted as the one in Hitchcock’s “Torn Curtain,” It’s often the case that what we’re looking for is right in front of us if we can just see through the fog of our own expectations. The final, perfectly-timed moments of this extraordinary film, during which its remaining heroines realize they have little need for the impotent men in their lives and decide, in essence, to shut up and deal, would have made even Billy Wilder tear up a little.
For more personality quizzes check this: The Wolf Of Snow Hollow Quiz.
