Beanpole Review (5/13/2020)

There's a fine line between making a film that portrays human suffering in harrowing ways for a greater purpose and a film that simply utilizes incessant misery porn in order to appear deeper than it actually is. It can be tricky to pinpoint where exactly this line is drawn, and it often does come down to personal preference. Even with this in mind, Beanpole, the sophomore film from Russian director Kantemir Balagov, seems to cleanly straddle the line, with genuine insight into its subject material standing alongside an utterly exhausting desire to wallow in its own misery.

War is a major theme of Beanpole, particularly the scars it leaves behind even after all of the fighting is over. Almost all of the central characters are survivors of the viscious Russian-German front of World War II, and they all have injuries, both physical and mental, to show for it. The film's protagonist, Iya, known as Beanpole because of her uncommonly tall stature, is a hospital worker caring for traumatized and permanently disabled soldiers after the conflict's end. During the war, she received brain damage that causes her to freeze into a catatonic state periodically. In the midst of one of these fits, she ends up suffocating her friend Masha's young son, whom was put into her care until the end of the war. Soon after, Masha returns home, and from this heartwrenching hook the story spirals out of control as it paints a portrait of people whose lives have been shattered by war, and who are trying to cling desperately to any pieces they have left, regardless of how broken they are.

From a formal point of view, Beanpole might actually qualify as a masterwork. The images captured are hypnotic and haunting, with an almost painterly quality imbued by the beautifully somber lighting and color work. As toxic as they can sometimes be, Balagov always treats his characters with tenderness and empathy, never losing sight of the conflicts that destroyed everything for them and brought them to this state. At times, Beanpole is painfully human, particularly in its opening acts, and this is cemented by excellent performances from Viktoria Miroshnichenko and Vasilisa Perelygina.

The major problem with Beanpole is that despite all of these technical achievements and for all its moments of genuine insight, it quickly becomes an utterly exhausting affair. So much of the film is spent with awful things happening to them to the point where, for me at least, it eventually pulled me out of it completely. The sheer unadulterated misery the characters and world are drenched in is so overwhelming that it often devours everything else; the characters, the themes, even the empathy built up from the audience. It often feels like the director is trying so hard to horrify the audience with the film's twisted drama that the overall point is sometimes lost.

By the time Beanpole was over, despite all of its strengths, I just couldn't find it in myself to care about it anymore. And for a film like this, that thrives off of building a sense of empathy from its audience, that's disastrous in its consequences. Beanpole is a remarkably well made work, but it's one that left a sour taste in my mouth, and one that I doubt I'll ever really think about again after all is said and done.