Балабанов. Перекрестки

Aleksei Vostrikov, Elena Gracheva. Zero Society: Wacław Sieroszewski’s Work as a Source of Yakutian Narratives in Balabanov’s Films

Wacław Sieroszewski was a Polish writer and civil leader who spent 12 years in exile in Yakutia. His novel “The Depths of Misery” came in Balabanov’s view when he worked on “The River”; the book was used as a source material for the script. Later on, the short story “Hailak” became a basis for the film “Stoker”.

Sieroszewski’s prose resists the aesthetics of its time—the narrative is not bulit upon a presentation of a character determined by environment, nor it is an ethnographic study or a psychological novel. Yakutian material for the author is a way of estrangement which makes possible a description of human condition and survival. His model of a primitive community is dynamic, not static: the characters reveal themselves in their doings, action is the main subject, narrative is limited to a plot delivery; the story is conventional, language is neutral, psychology not yet invented. Every action is a choice leading to either death or life; hence the straightforwardness, lack of halftones.

That kind of poetics and point of view proved congenial to Balabanov: the writer and the filmmaker both describe zero societies existing before (Sieroszewski) or after (Balabanov) civilisation.