THE MOVIE PUTIN DOESN'T WANT YOU TO SEE
The director is Estonian, the stars are British and Ukrainian, the gay love story is Russian
(Above, Tom Prior and Oleg Zagorodnii, the stars of Firebird.)
Firebird - I attended the London premiere the other night at Ham Yard Hotel - is being released at just the right moment. A true-life love story involving two dreamy Russian soldiers in the 1970s - one played by a westerner and the other by a Ukrainian - and being released this weekend in hundreds of theatres in America and England, the film is Vladimir Putin’s nightmare. Daring to express gay love in the 1970s anywhere - but especially in the Russian armed forces - was a radical political act in itself. This weekend buying a ticket to the film can be one, too. So do it. Buy a ticket to Firebird and send a message to Putin as a statement against his virulent homophobia which he continues to codify in Russia. It is reported that he has put known LGBTQ Ukrainians on a kill list as part of the war crimes and genocide he is inflicting on that country. Hell, buy a ticket to send a message to the virulent homophobes in America as well who populate the Republican party with their own repugnant bigotry as they demonize Disney for standing up for its LGBTQ employees and against Florida’s anti-gay laws and its bigoted governor. It speaks volumes about the GOP that this governor, who is no doubt running for president, is doing so and garnering support in his party by heralding his own anti-gay stances. The director of Firebird, Peeter Ribane, should next make a movie about two young male aides in the Florida governor’s office in Tallahassee falling in love in 2022. It would have the same resonance as this film set on this Soviet air force base in the 1970s.
(Above, Prior and Zagorodnii in Firebird.)
Firebird’s narrative - cowritten by Rabine and the film’s star Tom Prior, who gives a performance that centers the film in a sweetness that longs to swagger forth, a longing that limns the movie - is steeped in danger and masculinity and stakes much of its own attraction for audiences in so expertly conveying the sensuality of subterfuge just as its two leading men convey so stirringly that sensuality their characters had to find in it when they discovered they were in love. There is no Disneyfication in its depiction of homosexual desire but there is a carefulness in order, I presume, to attract the widest audience possible - which also was the reason to make the film in English. In fact, the Ukrainian actor - the dashing Oleg Zagorodnii who proves in this film that he not only is remarkably talented but also a genuine movie star - had to learn English to portray the older fighter pilot who falls in love with the young soldier, a conscript named Sergey Fetiso who wrote of this tragic love affair in his memoir, The Story of Roman.
The second half of the film takes place back in Moscow where Sergey attends drama school and his circle of friends, as well as his life, begin to expand. The narrative, which was becoming purposefully claustrophobic, expands along with it. Back at the base, Roman, the fighter pilot, marries their mutual friend Luisa, played so winningly by Diana Pozharskaya. To signify time passing, the filmmakers decided to put a very bad wig on Prior to denote the passage of it. It was disconcerting and detracted from the story. So many budgetary choices were made that added a kind of forced yet welcomed beauty and simplicity to the requisite hardware of war that served as a backdrop to the early sections of the film - Rebane is a director who knows how to visualize and frame empathy, which is the first and hardest requirement of any film director - that one did wonder why a wig went so terribly and visually wrong. But so much else went so visually right in his depiction of the terrible beauty at the heart of this romance, that I almost forgave the Dynel disaster. It did add another layer of sympathy for Prior in the role, his having to emote beneath it. By the last scene as he sat in a theatre watching a performance of Firebird at the ballet and Rebane goes in for his very moving close-up, I had forgotten about the falseness it forced into the visual sphere and focused once more on the heartrending emotional truth that the film so earnestly conjured, which speaks to both Prior’s talent and Rebane’s. Firebird honors the memory of both Sergey and Roman and, in so doing, reminds us that love transcends politics but only if it triumphs over it. Or maybe the transcendence is the triumph.
I talked to both Rebane and Prior a few days before the premiere. Here is an excerpt from our conversation over tea and coffee and pastries at Maison Bertaux in Soho. That night they were going together to see Cock on the West End. It stars Jonathan Bailey, an out gay actor, playing the role of a gay man who doesn’t want to be labeled as such.
SES/SUMS IT UP: This seems to be the perfect timing for this film to be released. But have you run into any concern regarding the Russian storyline and fear that some of the financing you secured back when you made it might have been from Russia and therefore might run into boycott problems?
PEETER REBANE: There have been lots of emails about that concern regarding investors. A lot of the partners and cinemas have been concerned and asked that we please confirm that we have no Russian financing - which we don’t. It’s totally a British and Estonian production. I can completely understand that. But, on the other hand, should we penalize Russian artists who are anti-Putin? That is why I was really glad to see that the Cannes Film Festival has included Tchaikovsky's Wife, a new movie directed by Russia's Kirill Serebrennikov, who is very anti-Putin. It is in competition for the Palme d’Or. It was shot in Russia and financed in Russia. But he has left Russia after a three-year travel ban as part of his suspended three-year prison sentence. I think he’s planning on living in Germany. It’s very shortsighted to label everything Russian as bad.
SES/SUMS IT UP: I went to the Royal Opera’s benefit concert for Ukraine the other day and before it began, the Royal Opera’s musical director, conductor Antonio Pappano, stepped out in front of the curtain and said the concert was being performed in solidarity with Ukraine but not as a denigration of Russian culture. I do think though that Russian artists who support Putin should suffer the consequences for doing so.
PR: Absolutely. As an example, the singers who sang in that stadium in Russia in celebration of the anniversary of the invasion of Crimea - we should never work with them.
TOM PRIOR: We have had to get out ahead of this. Some people think why should they go out to see a Russian film right now - or one about Russia. So we have to reiterate that this is the very film that Russia wanted to ban. We did get into the International Moscow Film Festival by some curious circumstance because someone dared to program the film. But then after they did the first screening, there were 93 press articles written the next day and 92 of them were negative because it is apparently illegal to write positive things about a film that is positive about being gay. That was last spring. Then there was a letter sent to the state prosecutor’s office saying the film should be removed from the film festival. Next there were protestors outside the cinema where the film was being screened holding banners that read: STOP HOMOSEXUAL PROPAGANDA. They didn’t blanket ban it. They basically just silenced it. They sold out the tickets - or so they said - but they wouldn’t allow anybody in. They were like: No, it’s over. No one can enter.
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