The Vanished Empire

Russian language films produced around the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union tend to be big with major film critics, who praise their frankness and honesty, but can be a bit of a haul for the average moviegoer who doesn't know his glasnost from his perestroika. Produced during the administration of General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev yet invariably set in the years before the official December 1991 dissolution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, these films revel in squalor, sadness, and grubby desperation - what film critic Roger Ebert called "long-repressed truth-telling" - detailing as they do the increasingly hopeless lives of the Russian people as they struggle to live up to an impossible ideal of universal socialism. Vasili Pichul's Little Vera (1988) and Pavel Lungin's Taxi Blues (1990) got high marks from American cineastes in their US art house releases but never become crossover hits in the manner of, say, Nikita Mikhalov's Academy Award® winning Burnt by the Sun (1994) or the assorted masterpieces of Andrei Tarkovsky. Set in Moscow in 1973, Karen Shakhnazarov's The Vanished Empire (2008) brokers in many of the same themes as those earlier Russian films but is a more pleasant viewing experience, even given its hard home truths about urban life in the autumn years of the USSR. Like Federico Fellini's I Vitelloni (1953), Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets (1973), George Lucas' American Graffiti (1973) and Barry Levinson's Diner (1982), The Vanished Empire attends the awkward adjustment of three boyhood chums to an adult life of diminished expectations and shattered dreams. In a Moscow hobbled by privations but kept up to date due to a thriving black market (tendering Wrangler blue jeans, Marlboro cigarettes and the latest rock-and-roll albums), bright but troubled 18 year-old Sergei Narbekov (Aleksandr Lyapin) jokes his way through his studies at the local university. The oldest son of academic parents who long ago split up, Sergei shares a cramped, book-lined apartment with his divorced mother Larisa (Olga Tumajkina), his kid brother Misha (Vasili Shakhnazarov) and his elderly grandfather (Armen Dzhigarkhanyan, People's Artist of the Soviet Union 1985), an archeologist whose rare books Sergei pilfers for the latest in western comforts. In the company of the more studious Styopa (Yegor Baranovsky) and the volatile Kostya (Ivan Kupreyenko), the son of a diplomat, Sergei is directionless and headed for trouble... until he spies the lovely Lyudmilla (Lidiya Milyuzina) and flirts with the notion of a steady, purpose-driven life even as his capricious nature lures him into one impulsive, self-destructive spree after another. While not uncritical of soul-crushing Soviet policy (longtime General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev is seen on television, droning on about proper socialist values as his constituents gaze on, deadeyed), The Vanishing Empire is markedly less self-flagellating than earlier films have been about life in (as US President Ronald Reagan put it) "the evil empire." The script by Russian crime novelist Sergei Rokotov (with the participation of Evgeni Nikishov) brings a light touch to the narrative, illustrating the misfortune of its dramatis personae without reveling in their misery. The Vanished Empire also teases sly humor out of unfortunate situations, as when the acquisitive Sergei spends 75 precious rubles on a copy of the Rolling Stones' Goats Head Soup album as a gift for Lyuda, only to find out he's been palmed off a pressing of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. Director Shakhnazarov works wonders with a cast of film newcomers (whose number includes Yanina Kalganova – only in Soviet cinema do braids mean "bad girl") but special honors go to Olga Tumajkina as Sergey's dying mother and Armen Dzhigarkhanyan as his crusty grandfather, who cherishes a photograph he once took of British mystery writer Agatha Christie and who made his own name in the world with his excavation decades earlier of the Persian "vanished empire" of Khorzem, "the city of winds." Drawing an obvious but not inapt parallel between that ancient, forgotten khanate and the crumbling USSR, Shakhnazarov and her scenarists hint at the inherent fragility of all societies and stress the importance of finding "a moment of happiness before it flies away forever." As with the lion's share of their foreign acquisitions, Kino International's transfer of The Vanished Empire is acceptable but nothing to write home about. Letterboxed at 1.85:1 (and anamorphically enhanced for widescreen playback), the image suffers from muted colors and an overall lack of warmth; while this suits the narrative (set during the autumn and winter of 1973-1974) early on, the lack of chromatic vibrancy is greatly missed when Sergey makes a third act pilgrimage to the desert ruins of Khorzem. Kino's packaging is no-frills. There are no extras and the only menu screen is a listing of the disc's six (count 'em!) chapters. English subtitles are burned into the image but rarely prove disruptive or difficult to read. The subtitles cause occasional problems with comprehension, as when Sergey offers to take Lyuda to the movies to see Back to the Future, which is Leonid Gaidai's Ivan the Terrible, Back to the Future (1973) and not the 1985 American film by Robert Zemeckis. For more information about The Vanished Empire, visit Kino International. To order The Vanished Empire, go to TCM Shopping. by Richard Harland Smith