It finally happened: the first film of the post-revolutionary series called Orange Sky has been released and immediately caused problems for this reviewer .
How can a person review a film based on events in which he took an active part? There is a temptation to check whether the plot corresponds to what you saw the year before last. But everybody had their own revolution and, besides, there is such a thing as freedom of artistic expression. So the only thing to do is concentrate on expression as such, on the picture’s artistic value.
Unfortunately, the first “Orange” film is beset with a mass of problems. The very first scenes are surprising: for some reason the faces of most of the actors are in deep shadow even if the script requires them to say something in a close-up (photography by Ulugbek Khamrayev). The impression is that the film was shot in battlefield conditions, where the only goal was to record something on celluloid without any subtleties.
The same applies to a purely technical but important detail: makeup. Even when the lighting is good, the performers’ faces seem to be studded with beads of sweat or covered with a mysterious, reddish suntan. People with such faces and skin color simply do not exist in real life, unless they are very sick.
Unfortunately, even the main actors give a weak performance. You also get the impression that they could not find a good-looking actress for any of the female roles. This makes it unbearable to watch the scenes of conflicts, confessions, and the film’s only intimate scene: too much falseness, overplaying, and artificial bombast. The apotheosis of this is the appearance of Oleksandr Moroz in a bit part. The well known politician pronounces some fine words about freedom and the murder of Gongadze. Everything is essentially correct, but for some reason this episode leaves a bitter aftertaste and discomfort. I don’t even know how to explain this. Naturally, you need money to make a film and promote it after the release, but still there are limits that one should not exceed.
The plot of Orange Sky, touted as “Romeo and Juliet on the Maidan,” is not exceptional at all, because it was all too true. Mark (Oleksandr Lymarev), the son of a Kyiv high-ranking official, falls in love with Ivanna (Lydia Obolenska), a PORA activist, and thus plunges into the whirlpool of events that took place in November 2004. You have here the standard set of political and love passions.
But the devil is in the details. By all accounts, the episode that was supposed to be the culmination of the story, when Mark learns that a terrible order has been issued to the troops and he rushes to Kyiv, overtaking an armored column, ends up in nothing. By all the genre’s canons, he should have declared his love and at the same time saved the Maidan from the riot police, but he didn’t.
In other words, all this horror was for nothing. Passing up good opportunities is a separate topic. For example, when Mark’s father and his buddy, the police chief, are drinking and discussing their uncertain future in the center of the revolutionary capital, it is obvious that they are doing it at the foot of Lenin’s monument. Was it too difficult to raise the camera a little and show the leader in stone? It would have provided great irony.
But I wouldn’t say that Orange Sky is a total flop. Lymarev does a good job, as does Mykola Chyndiaykin (Governor Zadukha, Mark’s father). But the film’s star attraction is Oleksiy Vertynsky, an actor from the Kyiv Youth Theater, in a cameo role as the seasoned revolutionary Valeryanych. He is unsurpassed. He out-acts everyone else. He is an inexhaustible source of tricks with his gestures, intonation, and mimicry. Each of his appearances on screen is sheer bliss from beginning to end. I only wish he had appeared more than just three or four times.
Well, here it is: the first film about the revolution and it’s not a very successful one. But I cannot pan it outright. After all, there may be a sequel. And next week another “Orange blockbuster” is being released.
