In its depiction of mid-80s Eastern European Communist social hell, Cargo 200 makes 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days look like Sesame Street. There are plenty of films that use real history as the jumping off point for genre fantasy, but Aleksei Balabanov’s brutal, fetid vision of personal sadism and political policy intermingled is the only work of serious, modern social criticism in recent memory that actually made me want to puke. This is a compliment of the highest order.

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Upon its Russian release in 2007, Cargo 200 immediately provoked a national furor. Alexei Balabanov’s grim little movie centers around one Captain Zhurov (Alexei Poluyan), a police officer in 1984’s Soviet Russia who uses his position of authority to essentially institutionalize rape, prisoner beatings and all-round mayhem.  In a typical scene, he tosses the corpse of a girl’s soldier-fiance next to her while she’s chained to a bed and proceeds to read the dead man’s love letters.

When I first saw Cargo 200, I thought it was supposed to be black comedy, but it isn’t; its pitch-perfect production design is part of a whole package designed to check any nostalgia for the departed Soviet era, even if it summons up long-gone discotheques and hairstyles effortlessly. Cargo 200 itself is the code word for the boxes in which dead soldiers are shipped back from Afghanistan, which pretty much sums up the grim tone. Already available through Netflix, Cargo 200 receives a much-deserved if small release January 2; Balabanov’s film is appalling, but it’s also surprisingly elegant.

A few contextual things you may like to know: despite working as an interpreter for two year in the ’80s, Balabanov will only do interviews in Russian, so I spoke with him over the phone in that language. Balabanov is not what you might consider a tactful, soft-spoken guy: in an interview in 2007 with “Novaya Gazeta,” he responded to a question about charges of xenophobia with the terse statement, “In every country there are decent people and there are freaks.” Cargo 200 is his first film to be screened outside of festivals in the US in a decade, since 1997’s Brother, so I’ve included contextual notes as needed.

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This might be the least safe-for-work thing I’ve ever blogged. Cargo 200, Alexei Balabanov’s gruesome indictment of Russian devolution circa 1984 which was one of my favorite films from this year’s Fantastic Fest (it also played Telluride and Toronto in 2007), is available for viewing in nine parts on YouTube.

This is either the best way to watch this film or the worst. As I noted in my review, one of the best things about Cargo is its slow build –– it takes forever for anything actually disturbing to happen, but then once shit goes bad, it just gets worse and worse and worse –– and the power of the mounting revulsion might get lost if you’re watching it in chunks. That said, you also have the option to either skip, or skip directly towards, the really, really sick stuff. For the record, that gets started in part four. It gets much, much worse in part seven. Enjoy!

As the shit hits the fan on Wall St., a more gradual, but equally serious shake-up is happening in the world of independent film. Paul shares stories from Independent Film Week, a tumultuous clash of ideas about what the future of cinema sans Hollywood will look like.

Karina checks in to tell us about Fantastic Fest. Along with alcohol, karaoke, and BBQ, she’s enjoyed the films Cargo 200 and Ex Drummer.

Choke, the new film based on a novel by Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club), comes out tonight. Is this Sundance alum truly provocative cinema, or just the same old thing with some extra sex thrown in?

 

 FilmCouch 89 [38:06m]: Play Now | Download

(Subscribe to FilmCouch–Spout’s weekly movie podcast–in the iTunes store or to our RSS feed and an episode will download each Friday)

0:00 - Intro, listener feedback, what independent film of yesteryear made the scales fall from your eyes?

6:23 - Independent Film Week, state of indie film.

18:44 - Karina shares tales from Fantastic Fest.

28:24 - Choke.

filmcouch-89

Fantastic Fest announced their film awards late last night, even through we’ve still got three more days of movie watching and alcohol drinking to go. As expected, The Good, The Bad and The Weird took the Audience Award, although JCVD took third place in that category, which continues to baffle me. The much buzzed about Let The Right One In was named best horror film over Donkey Punch and Acolytes, and the Danish film How To Get Rid Of The Others took top award in the Fantastic Features category with Cargo 200 and Ex Drummer in second and third place. Thankfully they gave the wacky and fun Santos a special award in that category.

We’ll have a lot more to say about these films and much more soon, so keep checking back for more festival information and news throughout the week. Heck, I’ve even enjoyed seeing Conquest of the Planet of the Apes at this thing. The complete awards listings can be found after the break.
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In its depiction of mid-80s Eastern European Communist social hell, Cargo 200 makes 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days look like Sesame Street. There are plenty of films that use real history as the jumping off point for genre fantasy (and even a couple of others at this festival), but Aleksei Balabanov’s brutal, fetid vision of personal sadism and political policy intermingled is the only work of serious, modern social criticism in recent memory that actually made me want to puke. This is a compliment of the highest order.

…Read more