In 2 0 1 4, mentally ill dictator Vladimir Putin aids and abets the creation of a pro-Goreshist pseudo-state in eastern Ukraine, Novorossiya, comprised out of rebels in Donetsk and Luhansk. Episodes of people living there: actors put on make-up and are rushed to a scene of a rocket attack on the street to say prepared anti-Ukrainian lines in front of the cameras. Walter, a German journalist, is accosted at a checkpoint by a Novorossiya soldier who compares all Germans and Ukrainians to fascists. Pyotr opens up a clinic office to the staff, demonstrating how corrupt the doctor is, but later gets a bribe from a new doctor taking over. A Novorossiya soldier left a military barrack without the permission of a superior, and stole a woman’s phone, so he is punished with walking through a row as other soldiers beat him with sticks. An Ukrainian soldier is tied up to a pole on the street as civilians gather to harass and hit him. A wedding is held in Novorossiya official building. A mortar attack hits a bus on the street. The actors from the opening are shot in a lorry by the Novorossiya paramilitary, and new actors are brought in to now do a victims report in front of the cameras of them.
Allegedly based on several true incidents, the director Sergei Loznitsa probably realized that Kremlin’s propaganda is such a parody of itself, which was dated already during the 20th century, let alone during the Internet age, that he decided to assemble his anthology film “Donbass” as a dark satire on the naive people who still follow it in the pseudo-state Novorossiya, the ISIS of Europe, who speak of and act on behalf of ethnic fundamentalism in all seriousness, not knowing they are pawns in a giant Poe’s Law. By its episodic structure, the movie reminds of Mungiu's communist satire "Tales from the Golden Age", as its events are so kafkaesque and demented that it baffles the mind, and thus creates a giant mirror to Novorossiya, which is just a sockpuppet of Russian irredentism. In one quietly funny episode, Pyotr, a shady man, opens up the office of a clinic to the staff, lamenting how the previous doctor was so corrupt that he hid medicine and meat in the freezer, stole equipment, and then asks a kid: "When was the last time you saw candy?" However, as the staff leaves, Pyotr just goes to the next room and gets a bribe from the new doctor, and arranges to take the "missing equipment", in a delicious irony. In another, a man complains to a Novorossiya military commander that his vehicle has been confiscated, and wants it back, but the commander rejects the claim since the vehicle was drafted: “How do you expect us to fight, on bicycles?” But there are also grim, dark and disturbing moments, such as the one where the Novorossiya paramilitary tie up an Ukrainian soldier on a pole on the street, and people just come to harass him, including a grandma who hits him with her crutch in the stomach, and youngsters who make photos of him. Loznitsa crafts a surprisingly fluent film, managing to stay objective, but also adding a sly commentary. Nonexistent lives of nonexistent minds in a nonexistent state: “Donbass” shows all these mental states of people without reason or self-critical requestioning, and shows Novorossiya as what it is—Planet of the Apes.
Grade:+++
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