Name: Immortal
Genre: Documentary
Released: 2020-02-11
Duration: 1 h 1 min
Rating: 7.1

Beautifully photographed sombre winter account of a land far away.

From the very beginning of the film the director makes it clear to the audience that this is a story of a place unfit for human habitation. A soviet-era forced labor settlement with perpetually dark extreme winter, heavy snow, industrial smoke, old crammy apartments make an excellent landscape for stunning photography. This film utilizes that opportunity to its full extent. More than half of the film's running time is comprised of well-composed static slow-paced shots of melancholy winter landscape of snow, smoke, trains, grey walls, buildings, metal structures and wall graffiti. Beautiful as they are, they also express a certain boredom that is evidently present in the lives of the town inhabitants. The director does not delve into the lives of these people on a personal level, rather chooses to focus on the only two interests that keep the younger generation of the residents occupied on a collective basis - cadet school and ballet. In an oppressive cycle of nothingness, the children practice dancing and warfare like a social duty, an inescapable tradition in robotic precision. Everyone is free to leave, yet they don't - that's what the producer said when he presented this film to a local festival I was attending.

Russian cinema is distinguished by its epic scale, philosophical depth, and innovative visual language. It often explores history, ideology, and the human psyche, with a tradition of psychological realism and artistic experimentation. Russian cinema contributed revolutionary theories of editing and later a spiritual approach to film language. It remains known for combining formal experimentation with profound explorations of endurance and belief.

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The documentary is a form of non-fiction storytelling that aims to present factual information, insights, and perspectives on real-world subjects, events, issues, or people. Documentaries can cover a wide range of topics, including history, science, culture, social issues, nature, biographies, and more.

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The film, set in a north-western industrial town in Russia, reveals the mechanisms that entice human beings to voluntarily become a resource to the state. Can a person ever be free in an imperialist society, where intricate and obscure structures take control of their mind-set from an early age? The film looks at the making of a Russian citizen from a fresh angle. The director's subtle but demanding look reveals "the system" at work in the most benign-looking situations, in all aspects of the everyday. What happens to people's free will and self-determination in such conditions? The film is a Nietzschean treat, asking the core existential question: is a human being ever born free?

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Immortal

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