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Fairytale
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Fairytale is among the least known major works of an internationally much-vaunted filmmaker, Alexander Sokurov. The response to it at several festivals I attended was puzzled, even a little embarrassed. Many cinephiles have never even heard of it. But it has the brazen cheekiness of couldn’t-care-less, go-for-broke late style written all over it. (The word at the moment of its public release was that it constituted, officially, his final work; it has been succeeded, however, by the epically-long Director’s Diary in 2025 which, it seems, is just as little seen and recognised.) In Fairytale, Sokurov weaves digital magic to create a stunning, phantasmagorical vision of the Afterlife, worthy of Dante. It is effectively an animated feature – and a relatively short one, at 78 minutes. But wait: are we in the limbo of Purgatory, or a paradoxical Paradise reserved for the very worst men of world history? Animation, in this case, triggers re-animation. Mussolini, Stalin, Hitler, Churchill and more (even Jesus, outrageously enough, rates a cameo): all are present and accounted for. Since they now exist only as archival media images, each figure comes in a serial set. This mode of rendering can remind you, at moments, of Terry Gilliam’s Monty Python days. It’s the blackest of satirical, political comedies (political intent presumably covered or excused by the ironic fairytale tag): these fallen men beg, one by one, to be let through Heaven’s Gate – but the angels who peek through decide to never open wide. Little wonder, as the former leaders now wander listlessly, bitching (in a Babel of multiple languages) about each other’s clothes, hair and hygiene. Sokurov has pulled together many talents in an extraordinary technological feat. It blends pictorial elements from art history to form an endlessly unfolding landscape, replete with fog and ghostly armies of the sacrificed victims of history. Apparently banned (more or less) in Russia itself, Fairytale is an undoubtedly odd but supremely inspired riff on the high culture vein of Peter Greenaway, as if mixed with the low culture of mash-up artists Soda_Jerk. As usual, Sokurov casually or angrily shrugged off the various interpretations made by stray critics (such as one that tagged the film as ingenious fake truth as distinct from Trumpian fake news). Like all his work, it stands just as it is, without external commentary from him or anybody else: an intractable monument. For Sokurov, it is a Late Style plunge into Late Oblivion. What a way to go! Can we now expect some canny entrepreneur to bring us the interactive Fairytale video game? That might be more of a commercial hit than the film itself. MORE Sokurov: Elegy of a Voyage, Moloch, Father and Son © Adrian Martin 6 November 2022 |
