Original title: Povinnost
Year: 1998
Runtime: 260 minutes
Country: Russia
Language: Russian
Subtitles: French | English | German | Italian | Spanish (.sub/.idx)
Genre: Semi-documentary in 5 parts
Director: Aleksandr Sokurov
Cast: Sergei Bakai (Ship Commander)
Plot/Synopsis:
The first two episodes of ‘Povinnost’ are the most documentary-realist of the five. The naval ship is based out of Murmansk, a northwestern city of the former USSR on the Kola Gulf of the Barents Sea. Murmansk is a leading freight and fishing port and the largest city north of the Arctic Circle. The first two episodes give us a detailed look into the sailor’s daily and periodic routines: cooking, eating, folding clothes, bathing, washing their clothes, cleaning the ship, medical examinations and bedtime preparations.
Things take a turn for the abstract in the third episode. Most of the third episode takes place outside the ship and consists of panning shots looking through a blizzard, shots of the ship cutting through water, extreme long shots of the bundled-up sailors transporting wood and coal to a barren outpost and a soundtrack that whistles with wind and amplified ambient sounds.
Appearing in this third episode is the film’s clearest political allusion. Over the image of the bundled-up sailors we hear the captain’s voice-over asking: why are they [the sailors] doing this? The tyrant is no longer here. This image, which recalls the Siberia and gulags of Stalinism, is reinforced by several other references or allusions to prison. For example, the sailors are often seen wearing horizontal, striped black and white shirts that look like prison uniforms. In another episode the captain is asked by a visiting captain whether captains would make good prisoners?
The routine health inspections are reminiscent of prison procedure for new inmates. The sailors wait in a crowded room until they are called in five at a time and then strip searched, front and back. And lastly, there is a shower scene that contains explicit homo-eroticism, a reality of prison life (a sailor sits just inside the shower room ogling, giggling and making eye contact with the other showering sailors). Through all the orders, work and duty, the sailors remain calm, reticent and accepting of everything, with no sign of any protest.
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Povinnost (1998) Confession
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