‘BEANPOLE’ ZOOMS IN ON THE SCARS OF WAR
Russian film is a brilliantly told tale of love and trauma
The war is over in “Beanpole,” at least officially. The hollow eyes of those crowding the hospital tell a different story, as do the faces of those drifting through a communal building, spilling through the streets and onto trams. But like the thin young nurse nicknamed Beanpole, the men and women in this startling movie don’t complain or even speak much about their suffering, perhaps because it would be like describing the air that they breathe.
Set in Leningrad in 1945, “Beanpole” opens on its title character (Viktoria Miroshnichenko) in mid-seizure, her body frozen, open eyes fixed and breathing labored. Other women, similarly dressed in white, bustle around her, their voices muffled. From a slightly high angle, the camera steadily holds on her face as she stares into nothingness.
Then someone stretches a hand up to pinch her cheek, trying to rouse her and bring her back to the dimly lit present. Beanpole, whose real name is Iya, is taller than everyone else in the room, taller than almost everyone. She sways far above this world, even when it claws at her.
Most war movies are about battle; “Beanpole” is about what happens afterward. For Beanpole, a hospital nurse, the clamor of war has quieted to an unremitting throb. At work, she cares for soldiers whose bandages and missing limbs are only the most obvious expressions of collective trauma.
Something terrible happens soon after, and while it’s almost unbearable, you should hang on. This is only the second feature from the sensationally talented Russian director Kantemir Balagov (who was born in 1991), and it’s a gut punch. It’s also a brilliantly told, deeply moving story about love — one that starts to take shape when Beanpole’s friend Masha (a fantastic Vasilisa Perelygina) returns to Leningrad, medals pinned to her uniform. Small, compact, with dark hair and preternaturally bright eyes, Masha makes a bold, visible contrast with the ethereally pale Beanpole. Sharp, wily, a touch feral, she is also a survivor who, soon after she returns, makes Beanpole her victim. Masha has her reasons for turning on Beanpole, which she articulates with terrifying ferocity.
Every so often in war movies, a woman — a nurse, prostitute, mother or stranger — is dropped into the story to express some vague idea about home and nation. An emblem of the lover or the mother left behind, she is the generic movie woman of war who embodies the prize that must be protected, which also makes her a rationalization for the fight. There is no such figure in “Beanpole,” and instead of recycling platitudes about men and the righteousness of violence, this movie tells a tough, unsparing story about war trauma, which seeps into souls and bodies and inevitably becomes — Balagov suggests — a generational bequest.