Showing @ Filmhouse, Edinburgh, Fri 17 – Thu 23 May

Alexey Balabanov / Russia / 2013 / 87 min

The first film from the new distribution arm of Edinburgh’s Filmhouse cinema is Alexey Balabanov’s minimalist pitch-black satire about an old soldier in the New Russia. When your world changes, you can change with it or be left behind; Balabanov’s drama chronicles the lives of those left behind by the collapse of the Soviet Union, and tells the story of a war hero seeking consistency and honesty in a new Russia overrun with violence, betrayal, consumerism and selfishness.

The Stoker has been left behind, declared a hero of the Soviet Union for his military service but now he’s living figuratively and literally under gangsters, stoking the furnaces of their den, watching as bodies are coldly disposed of and slowly compiling his novel. His friends Sniper and Sergeant are similarly damaged by war, but have fallen into the role of unglamorous hitmen. Corpses pile up with the tension, as the cycle of betrayal reaches its conclusion.

Like the production’s exquisitely realised vision of the post-Soviet Russia of the nineties with its primitive infrastructure meeting crass consumerism, the clash of Western gangster movie and classic Soviet tropes is evident. Despite its brief length and spurts of stylish violence, the movie is languorous and loaded with multiple shots of the characters walking which increase the film’s scale outside of its claustrophobic interiors. If the film has a register, it’s the three veterans exceptionally distanced and reactionless performances, overlaid with the jaunty beat-driven soundtrack; histrionics are non-existent and all the players seem trapped in their roles and powerless to escape. Ultimately The Stoker is slight, and like its characters and setting, hangs between modern gangster films such as Killing Them Softly and A Bittersweet Life and the slow-burning Soviet cinema Balabanov throws into the mix.

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