Writer-Director Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk’s film Pamfir is an ambitious work. Leonid, known as Pamfir, returns to his home village in Ukraine after prolonged absence, and the reunion with wife Olena and son Nazar is sweet. But after Nazar sets a fire at the church, Pamfir needs money quickly. He wished to abandon his former criminal life, but now has to smuggle contraband into Romania for the local mob.
Even for a tough guy like Pamfir – the nickname refers, aptly, to a stone – this is a dangerous world. Everything is controlled by Orest, a warlord and corrupt forestry official. And this is an impoverished backwater, where people have few options. The hope of Nazar getting to university seems remote. As Leonid’s brother, Viktor, tells him, ‘Smuggling is a national tradition’. So far, so noir. But the film is complex. This tale of a basically good man – albeit a throwback kind of male – dragged into danger, takes place as the region prepares for the ancient Malanka festival. The film’s opening shots give us a demonic image, introducing the masks and pagan costumes of Malanka. We encounter this raw, feral dimension in the dark forests, and in the roars and grunts which form the muddy and bloody backdrop.
The film seems to aspire to be a parable, or allegory. Leonid’s transformation into Pamfir, the almost invincible fighter, seeks to make him a symbolic figure. The brutish, grunting sex he has with Olena fits with the early scene of him emerging from a muddy tunnel. It is as if he is literally mired in an animalistic, primitive masculinity.
And, largely obscured, there is a dizzying array of secondary characters and narratives that remain rustratingly undeveloped. We hardly see Olena’s life amidst all the testosterone. There is Nazar’s new bicycle, which seems briefly significant. There are Pamfir’s criminal brother Viktor, and his parents, who seem to know more than we are told. Schoolboy twins join in the smuggling. There are various others, including the underworld contact called ‘the Rat’. And Pamfir’s Nemesis is the well-fed, smug Orest, with his front of respectability. He even controls the local priest and church.
This surfeit of distractions, against mud baths, barns, forests, and disused industrial buildings literally muddy the waters of what is largely powerful film-making. When Orest’s thugs surround and fight Pamfir, the spinning 360-degree mania of the photography hints at the brilliant, chaotic climax to come. Here the Malanka carnival, with pulsating folk music given modern inflections, erupts in a frenzy of fire, masks, costumes, dancing – and desperation. Elsewhere, restless tracking, and long, slow takes guide us well into Pamfir’s anguish. Oleksandr Yatsentyuk conveys both the loving family man, Leonid, and his alter ego, suggesting something elemental, primitive. The weary and helpless Olena is played well by Solomiya Kyrylova, although she inadequately served by the script.
It is all too much, and the film loses focus. Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk poses questions about the existence of God, as what we see makes Pamfir, and us, inevitably wonder. The priest is a hapless, impotent figure in Orest’s corrupt kingdom, and only Olena seems to cling to the divine. Everything around is mud and blood. The film-maker’s brief prologue tells us of the film’s place as a testament to the desire for freedom, to a world torn apart by the Russian invasion. There is a brief reference to ‘pro-Russian separatists’, But it is unfortunate this obviously talented creative figure could not rein in his thirst for the epic in what could have been a brilliant allegory.
Screened at Eden Court, Inverness