‘Beanpole’ brings color, understanding to desperate times

“Beanpole” is like a slow, painful dance, full of anguish and loss, about people who have lost all they can – and then lose more.

It is a tale of two women in Russia. The war is over, and both served on the Russian front. They’re making their way through a world of hunger and desperation, holding on to one other for safety and rationality, but the message might be that damaged people can’t be healed.

It’s 1945 in Leningrad, and World War II has devastated the city, demolishing its buildings and leaving its denizens in tatters, physically and emotionally. Although the siege, one of the worst in history, is finally over, life and death continue to battle in the wreckage that remains. The young women, Iya (Viktoria Miroshnichenko) and Masha (Vasilisa Perelygina), search for meaning and hope in the struggle to rebuild their lives amongst the ruins.

The movie is about debts that can’t be paid and anger that can’t be shaken. The literal colors are rich, with somber greens and deep, bloody reds. They change, I think, according to the amount of hope and light the individual has.

Despite the stately pace of “Beanpole,” there are twists around every corner, casting new light on the circumstance and the understanding of the underlaying motives of all the characters, which are never what they appear to be.

People here are generally a kind of curved reflection of one another. Iya feels meaningless inside, while Masha is literally empty inside from an injury that caused her to give up her child-bearing capabilities.

Masha faces a woman across a table, her boyfriend Sasha’s (Igor Shirokov) mother, Lyubov Petrovna (Ksenia Kutepova). The two women, from diametrically opposed social classes, are disturbingly the same and increasing so as the scene moves forward and their differences become more pronounced. This is typical of scene progression in this remarkable period piece: the more different things are, the more same they become and vice versa.

It is a movie with the textures and colors of a Renaissance painting with plenty of obscure symbolism embedded in the background. There is love and mostly loss, but love approaches in the most surprising ways, sometimes.

“Beanpole” is about healing, too, and it depicts the convoluted lengths people will travel in order to heal their minds and escape their bodies’ limitations. It’s about love and trying to use love to gain power. And finally, it’s about connections between people, and how they both succeed and fail.

Elva K. Österreich may be reached at elva@lascrucesbulletin.com.