A key film of Russia’s late Elem Klimov (1933-2003), who regarded it as a failure. His not-unreasonable view was that the originator of FAREWELL (PROSHCHANYIE S MATYOROJ), the iconic Ukrainian filmmaker—and Klimov’s wife—Larisa Shepitko (1938-1979), would have done a better job directing the film, a task she approached “as though preparing herself for it all her life.” Unfortunately Shepitko was killed in a car accident after completing just one shot, a magisterial depiction of a mist-shrouded tree with which, appropriately, Klimov concluded the eventual film.
Its basis was a widely acclaimed 1979 novel by Valentin Rasputin. Klimov, who claimed to have talked his wife into adapting the book, took over the production after Shepitko’s demise, and during its shoot put together the documentary short LARISSA (included on the Ruscico FAREWELL DVD). FAREWELL was completed in 1981 but (as happened with Klimov’s previous feature AGONY) was hotly contested by Soviet authorities, and took until 1983 to be released.
The opening shots are among Klimov’s greatest achievements, depicting sea-bound despoilers, in the form of several plastic-encased men, approaching the Siberian island Matyora. It’s the beginning of summer, and the men’s mission is to clear out the island, which is set to be flooded by an unscrupulous power company. The first act these men perform is plundering a graveyard in a rural village bearing the same name as the overall island, which greatly upsets the largely elderly populace.
These people, who lead a near-prehistoric existence, are given until September to evacuate. They call in several dozen friends and family members from the mainland to help with Matyora’s final harvest, leading to a twilight celebration that devolves into a vast ocean-set orgy—broken up by the burning down of a house that, like most all the structures in Matyora, is very, very old. Another ancient structure of note is a larch tree that proves impenetrable to the saws and chains of the interlopers, who finally set it on fire (in reality the tree survived the flames).
More fires follow (the famous church burning of Klimov’s subsequent film COME AND SEE is repeatedly foreshadowed) as the populace grows jittery about the impending flood. Andrey (Vadim Yakovenko), one of Matyora’s younger residents, loses his head, injuring himself severely in an attempt at uprooting that invincible larch tree, after which he impulsively deserts the island in a motorboat. His aging grandmother Darya (Stefaniya Stanyuta), meanwhile, meticulously scrubs down and redecorates her house, outfitting it for death—and, after most everyone else has deserted the island, stays to commune with the spirits of the land.
The shooting of FAREWELL was a bit of a hodgepodge, with Klimov doing daily script rewrites due to the fact that his sensibilities didn’t jibe with those of Shepitko, whose stamp never entirely left the film. That, in conjunction with the Soviet-mandated censorship, is evident in the piecemeal nature of the finished product (on which no less than three cinematographers are credited).
Further muddying matters is Klimov’s emphasis on pictorial splendor and panoramic scope, ensuring that the human element is played down, if not lost entirely (a problem, incidentally, that also afflicted the Valentin Rasputin source novel). That being said, the film contains memorable acting turns by Aleksey Petrenko (who played Rasputin in AGONY) as the bordering-on-inhuman representative for the power company and Stefania Stanyuta as the spiritually-attuned Darya.
Yet for all its problems, FAREWELL proves that even a lesser Klimov product isn’t entirely without worth. The haunting, magisterial visuals compel attention, with many of Klimov’s signature touches on display, including wilderness tracking shots and surreal touches like an early scene in which a bickering family suddenly find themselves transfixed by a TV set showing space walking astronauts.
Vital Statistics
FAREWELL (PROSHCHANYIE S MATYOROJ)
Mosfilm
Director: Elem Klimov
Screenplay: Larisa Shepitko, Rudolf Tyurin, Elem Klimov
(Based on a novel by Valentin Rasputin)
Cinematography: Aleksey Rodionov, Yuri Skhirtladze, Sergey Taraskin
Editing: Valeria Belova
Cast: Stefania Stanyuta, Lev Durov, Alexei Petrenko, Leonid Kryuk, Vadim Yakovenko, Yuri Katin-Yartsev, Denis Luppov, Maya Bulgakova, Naidan Gendunova, Galina Dyomina, Anna Kustova, Lyubov Malinovskaya, Nadezhda Pogorishnaya, Ludmila Polyakova