Yevgeni Bauer | Posle smerti (After Death) / 1915

escaping life

by Douglas Messerli

 

Yevgeni Bauer (screenplay, based of Ivan Tugenev's Klara Milich), Yevgeni Bauer (director) Posle smerti (After Death) / 1915

 

In the two years since he had filmed Twilight of a Woman's Soul, Bauer had clearly learned the craft of filmmaking, and expanded on techniques with which he had previously experimented.

     The story once again involves a suffering and isolated being, in this case a retiring young scholar, Andrei Bagrov (Vitold Polonsky), who has clearly been too influenced by his mother, whose grand portrait hangs over his studies. He lives with his doting aunt, whose gentle demonstrations and love he attempts to brush away, focusing on his own studies and, particularly, his photography.

     A colleague of his stops by to invite him out to a social affair thrown by a local Princess. Resistant at first, he finally gives in. Once more Bauer's skill with tracking shots is apparent; but this time the field of depth is far wider as the camera, beginning at a seeming entryway, moves forward, again toward the viewer, further and further, each time expanding our view of the underway event filled with its participants, until you finally think the camera can go no further, despite its continued movement forward. The shot lasts for three long and stunning moments.

     Andrei and his friend arrive, clearly not as well dressed as the others, and the young student is obviously embarrassed by his appearance and lack of comfort with those around him. There is even occasionally laughter from those to whom he is introduced. But one woman, the actress Zoia Kadmina (Vera Karalli) greets him with a deep stare that literally forces him to sit in a nearby chair, while he engages her dark, black eyes.

     A few nights later at a charity soirée he encounters her again, this time observing her performance, and, once again, is stunned by her intensity. A day or so later he receives a letter:

 

                  If you can guess who is writing this, meet me at Petrovski Park at 5:00.

 

     Andrei appears ay the anointed hour, as does Zoia, but looking into his face, she becomes uncertain of his ability to love and, perhaps, aware of his naiveté, running from the spot.

     Three months later, Andrei reads in the newspaper of Zoia's death during a performance; she has poisoned herself!

     Suddenly the film shifts, as the hitherto isolated and imperceptive hero begins to see images of Zoia, sometimes behind or beside him, but most often in his sleep, where she beckons him in a field of wheat to follow. In another dream, Andrei is laying in the wheat, while she gestures to him with the sleeves of her shroud, placing her bodiless arms about his neck. These encounters go on for several days, exhausting Andrei and worrying his aunt, fearful of his behavior and apparent fainting spells.

      Determined to put the girl out of his imagination by dealing with reality, Andrei travels to Kazan to visit her family, where he first speaks with the distraught mother—surprised by and suspicious of his visit—and then Zoia's sister, who reveals that the suicide has been an explicable product of unrequited love. She shows Andrei her sister's diary, and, after he begs to have it, gives up the document and a photograph.

   If he had hoped to end his obsessions with the dead girl, he is now—just as he had behaved previously with the death of his mother—drawn into a morbidly isolated world where the focus of his love is not upon the living but the dead. Like Antonioni's photographer Thomas in Blow-Up, Andrei studies the portrait over and over again, a photograph which his Aunt later discovers hidden beneath his desk blotter.

     The dreams continue, as do the ghost-like appearances throughout his rooms. Demanding that the specter appear and prove that she is Zoia by looking him directly in his eyes, Andrei meets up with the ghost one last time, as she slowly, vaguely looks in his direction.  He collapses on the spot, and, in the next scene, lies dying in bed.

     When his aunt asks him "What is wrong?" he replies "Wrong? I am happy."

    With his aunt on one side the ghost, suddenly, on the other, Andrei slips away from life, in a sense, accomplishing what he has been seeking to do since the very first scenes. He has escaped the world of the living.

 

Los Angeles, October 2, 2011

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (October 2011).