Fest Track On Sirk TV Film Review: ACHROME [International Film Festival Rotterdam 2022 - Virtual]
The texture of colorless suffering on a wide open plain is an interesting texture in metaphor. In "Achrome" [Tiger Competition], writer/director Mariya Ignatenko approaches a bleak subject in the purging of Russian Jews in the Baltic States by the invading Nazis during World War II. The story is not marked by gunfire but instead relegated in the aftermath as the Germans make their way towards the interior of the Soviet Union. The story takes places for the most part in a monastery through the eyes of Mavis who is considered more basic in his perspective. Thee irony of the story is that it follows locals that worked as collaborators to survive but in many ways stayed passive watching these atrocities. The film has a haunting loneliness, mostly silent anchored by Mavis (Georgiy Bergal). The suffering and loneliness ia dark and cold with people wandering through the catacombs with only a pilfer of light. Women are taken hostage and the men emasculated.
Watching Mavis digging through mounds of dirt in the mass graves is undeniably twisted in its psychology but his life has become forfeit. Mostly the German soldiers are unseen, there simply as a threatening force over the locals heads until the final shot which is absolutely horrifying in its own right (as it is meant to be). In this bleakness Mavis finds the strength to make one or two acts of compassion and bravery (though no one is there to really see it). Is this meant to assuage his soul or change the essence of how he will be judged? Ignatenko lets the viewer watch and judge the actions on their own terms as Mavis stews in his thoughts. The monochrome visuals are meant to contrast the bits of fire that come through once in a while....a spark of fire in a lost world. These people in between are ghosts roaming catacombs of death in a sea of a nightmare. The vision is garish and yet true because in this scenario life simply becomes a black hole bathed in white. B
By Tim Wassberg
