My Perestroika

My Perestroika

87 Minutes

Russia has remained an enigma to American culture for many years, and never so deeply as its years as the central state and dominating force of the Soviet Union. Though the USSR is now a distant memory in the ever-ephemeral Western consciousness, an entire generation of still-youthful Russians were raised in Soviet culture and endured what is known as “glasnost” and “perestroika” (the Gorbachev-era policies of openness and restructuring). Director Robin Hessman’s documentary film My Perestroika focuses on five ordinary Moscow citizens, onetime schoolmates whose lives have diverged wildly. Through conversation and footage of their daily lives, the film examines how incredibly their world has changed in less than the span of a lifetime.

My Perestroika opens with what is a relatively common sight to Western eyes: a Soviet mass rally. It is an image deeply ingrained in our idea of Russia, the marching masses, uniforms and hyperbolic praise to their leaders. But this is a rally of kids; school children reading a speech filled with praise for General Secretary Brezhnev under a giant poster of Lenin. The following monologues from the five schoolmates only reinforce the culture of hypocrisy and conformism while still showing a deeply conflicted nostalgia and abhorrence for it. Borya and Lyuba are married schoolteachers; Olga is a working single mother just below the poverty line; Ruslan is a former punk rocker turned subway busker; Andrei is a successful businessman dealing in imported French fashion. Each is interviewed in talking-head format and followed through the course of their daily lives, dealing with children, work and casual conversations.

And the conversations are the crucial part of the film. Through their memories of Soviet life, we see an aspect of that era that is not often considered. Rather than overt political or cultural ramifications, they have memories of grocery shopping and school work. Lyuba admits to being a conformist to the point of emotionally saluting her television when the national anthem was broadcast; Andrei, on the other hand, viewed applying to join the Communist Party (he was denied for nebulous reasons) as simply a good career move. Each has their own take on that disappeared world, but they seem to agree that it was a happy childhood, at least compared to the mass food shortages, demonstrations and attempted military coups that occurred during perestroika. While Borya in particular condemns the Soviet regime as something that should never occur again (indeed, as something so inhuman and indescribable that it was beyond even concepts like good and evil), the notion that life was easier then, more predictable and safe, seems to linger.

That life takes strange turns and yet almost always feels ordinary seems to be the connecting thought between all of the five. Ruslan left his punk band NAIV when he felt their anti-authoritarian stance had grown toothless, yet is the most socially conservative and unable to adapt to changing times. His perception of himself as a rebel against Soviet order leaves him rudderless when there is no longer the same stable state to rebel against. Olga claims that the onslaught of crime and corruption in Russia in the ’90s didn’t affect most “ordinary” people and then immediately tells how her own partner was murdered and describes her sudden, subsequent change in lifestyle.

Hessman’s direction is solid but largely unremarkable, switching between fixed talking-head shots and shaky tracking motions, never letting her own voice or presence overwhelm the participants. The movie drags in its latter half, taking on an uncertain tone, filling wordless frames of the five doing housework or playing on lawns. Even so, My Perestroika is a remarkable film, its greatest strengths in small moments – like Olga mentioning that everyone’s job seems to be a “manager” these days or the still bewildering sight of a Pizza Hut in Moscow. It’s a film that shows that despite the overwhelming changes in a culture, life seems to go on in an everyday way.

by Nathan Kamal