Room and a Half, Andrei Khrzhanovsky, 2009
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A great and special film, a semi-factual autobiography of Russian writer and poet Joseph Brodsky who left the USSR in 1972. The film imagines him returning to St. Petersburg and contrasting it with the memories of wartime Leningrad.



"About a year has passed. I've returned to the place of the battle,
to its birds that have learned their unfolding of wings
from a subtle
lift of a surprised eyebrow, or perhaps from a razor blade
- wings, now the shade of early twilight, now of state
bad blood.

Now the place is abuzz with trading
in your ankles's remnants, bronzes
of sunburnt breastplates, dying laughter, bruises,
rumors of fresh reserves, memories of high treason,
laundered banners with imprints of the many
who since have risen.

All's overgrown with people. A ruin's a rather stubborn
architectural style. And the hearts's distinction
from a pitch-black cavern
isn't that great; not great enough to fear
that we may collide again like blind eggs somewhere.

At sunrise, when nobody stares at one's face, I often,
set out on foot to a monument cast in molten
lengthy bad dreams. And it says on the plinth "commander
in chief." But it reads "in grief," or "in brief,"
or "in going under."
Joseph Brodsky, Selected Poems, Penguin Modern European Poets, Translation George L Kline


Joseph Brodsky recites "Nature Morte" / Иосиф Бродский, "Натюрморт" 1989
https://youtu.be/UPmMFbCI_f0


Directed by Andrei Khrzhanovsky
Produced by Andrei Khrzhanovsky
Artyom Vasilyev
Written by Yuri Arabov
Andrei Khrzhanovsky
Starring Alisa Freindlich
Sergei Yursky
Grigoriy Dityatkovsky
Cinematography Vladimir Brylyakov
Production
company
School Studio Shar
Distributed by Cinecliq (Russia)
Seagull Films (USA)
Release date
2009
Running time
130 minutes
Country Russia
Language Russian