2023-07-29 09:49:36
KURSK. In the halls
The roads of Italian distribution are really tortuous. Think of the path taken by Kursk, a historical-catastrophic blockbuster that tells the story of the tragedy of the nuclear-powered Russian submarine K-141, jewel of the powerful Northern Fleet, sunk in the Barents Sea after a double explosion in the room where the warhead torpedoes were housed atomic. The incident occurred during a military exercise. Safe, in theory.
Instead, the submarine turned into an icy grave for the 118 sailors on board. In a two-hour epic, the film tells the family stories of the crew members: their wives, children, fathers and mothers. The festive departure of the underwater mastodon, pride of the post-Soviet Navy. Then, the accident, fire and water, the sinking, the (vain) wait for help from about twenty survivors barricaded in compartment 9 who survived the explosions. The despair, the agony. And, again, the reasons for the disaster, the context in which he matured, the setbacks, the negligence, the reticent press conferences, the tears. Originally Kursk was armed with 24 Granit cruise missiles and 8 torpedo tubes. A war machine that you then age until it becomes obsolete.
The facts we are talking about date back to 2000. The film was presented at the Rome Film Fest in 2018, five years ago. But only now, in the middle of summer, does it arrive in our cinemas despite being a dramatic, spectacular, moving work. Strengthened by a formidable international cast (Matthias Schoenaerts, La Seydoux, Colin Firth, Max Von Sydow, deceased in 2020). With a director like Thomas Vinterberg, born in 1959, founder with Lars Von Trier of the Dogma 95 movement, later kidnapped by Hollywood cinema, whose last film is the Oscar-winning Another round with Mads Mikkelsen.
Five years to have a distribution: net of the stop due to Covid, the delay remains a mystery. Known history, from post Cold War. Vinterberg makes extensive use of long shots and handheld or subjective shooting and effectively recalls the drama of the submarine by contrasting an awake and pugnacious military West with a senile Russia, hampered by bureaucracy, conservative and mendacious. Which, in the light of today’s events, gives the thriller an unexpectedly topical aura. With the Moscow government refusing international aid to the last minute, to the point of no return. With the sorrowful protests of wives and mothers.
In the first sequence, a child immerses himself in the bathtub and holds his breath, then plays with mum and dad. It outlines the existence of sailors waiting for commission, the camaraderie / patriotism that binds them. When catastrophe strikes and the submarine sinks, the format of the film changes. The epos of the story fills the screen, drowns in a greenish, liquefied light, where the bodies have no weight, dragged / overwhelmed by a greater force.
At the center of the story, the generous Mikhail Averin (Schoenaerts, inspired by the real Captain Dmitri Kolesnikov), ready to sell his military watch to pay for a friend’s party, with his simple and very high love for Tanya (Seydoux), pregnant, you are my eternity, and for little Micha. The presence of the sea dominates: a very blue and frozen sea that comes out of the windows, can be seen at the end of the streets, can be glimpsed on the hills, enters the eyes of children: like a breath, a magnetic, enveloping companion in life and also in death.
The film offers its version of the facts: it does not seek the absolute truth, using Robert Moore’s book A time to die: the untold story of the Kursk tragedy as a narrative framework. The rescue operations by the Northern Fleet, once the sinking was ascertained, had no result: the wreck was reached by a British-Norwegian team led by the Royal Navy commodore, David Russel (Colin Firth). Too late: the tragedy was accomplished. The former avant-garde Vinterberg becomes more realistic than the king, the most Hollywood of Americanizing directors. But the spectacle is there, the pathos as well, and the novelistic emphasis is not disturbing.
KURSK di Thomas Vinterberg
(France-Belgium, 2018, duration 117′)
con Matthias Schoenaerts, La Seydoux, Colin Firth, Max Von Sydow, Michael Nykvist, Steven Waddington
Rating: *** out of 5
In the halls
July 29, 2023 | 09:49
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