The fictional Brodsky, played in his eldest and most prominent incarnation by Grigoriy Dityatkovskiy, narrates much of the film's 130 minutes from a deck chair on a large shipping vessel. His tale begins in the 1940s, as his father, a photojournalist and Navy man, returns from a tour in China and begins to unpack his trunk of souvenirs, objects that are themselves memory made material. Childhood for Brodsky begins with the Siege of Leningrad and ends, in a moment of Felliniesque perversion, while staring at his music teacher's ample figure after learning of Stalin's death. From that moment on, he is rarely seen, until his elderly years, without a woman on his arm. If Room, directed by Andrey Khrzhanovskiy and co-written by him and Yuri Arabov, offers any constants in a complete life, they are art, sex, and ignorance.
Stalin makes for an easy villain, but Khrzhanovskiy renders him borderline inconsequential. Life under Uncle Joe is arduous but handled with nostalgic warmth, due mostly to the childlike ambivalence through which the young Brodsky (Evgeniy Ogandzhanyan) filters the era. Much more frightful and formidable a figure can be found in Khrushchev, whose government exiles Brodsky as a youthful twenty-something poet (Artem Smola) for the crime of parasitism. His banishment, animated as time spent in dirt and with barnyard animals, directly results in his moving to New York City and never returning, even when his parents die and become crows perched on his terrace.
Despite rows with political parties, proud nationalists, and culture vultures, the three Brodskys that Khrzhanovskiy has envisioned are never beleaguere,d and A Room and a Half likewise has the lively buzz of anticipation and discovery in every frame. But as the film continues to become more and more rambunctious in form, one begins to wonder if the filmmaker continues to shift styles out of avoidance rather than sure trajectory. That being said, Khrzhanovskiy smartly keeps his style plain in the climactic, heartbreaking scene where Brodsky and his parents meet posthumously in their old apartment.
Art outranks death, or so Khrzhanovskiy seems to believe. Brodsky might have found his own life boring if not for the female form he discovered in paintings, the philosophical swagger he learned from Proust, or the intimate visions he experienced at the movies, whispering sweet nothings into a pretty girl's ear. But it's also possible that without Khrzhanovskiy's artful vitality, Brodsky's life might have looked like a dreadful bore, and A Room and a Half wouldn't be half as wise or entertaining as it is.
Aka Poltory komnaty ili sentimentalnoe puteshestvie na rodinu.
Oh, Captain Stubing!
