When I lit a cigarette outside Film Forum in a post-Beanpole daze, I felt like I just lost half of my life source. I have never experienced a film that translates immediate bodily sensations in such a visceral and disquieting way. Muffled ringing sounds, nose-bleeding attacks, frantic dancing turns into mania—the film's masterful use of involuntary physical condition traces the unimaginable pain of post-war trauma into a tangible form.
The film starts with Iya, a young nurse returning from World War II, standing still in front of a factory-like room. Frozen in motion save for some aberrant throaty noise, Iya is unaffected by people touching, pinching, or snapping her cheeks, not even blinking. After the deafening silence passed, Iya regained her consciousness and went on with her chores.
Later we learned the reoccurring ringing sound signals Iya's frozen fit, a post-concussion syndrome from the war that she has no control over, nor over the agency of her body. When the muffled ringing sound hits again while Iya is affectionately playing with Pashka, a three-year-old boy who the film initially misleads us to believe is Iya's child, I felt the audience tensing up their breath in the theatre. This time the fit lasts just long enough to suffocated Pashka, who turns out to be the son of her wartime fellow Masha.
When the disheartening death of Pashka is revealed to his mother, Masha's initial impulse is to "go dancing". Dancing is a metaphor for sex. Masha has bull-like eyes and energy. Her defense mechanism to incomprehensible pain is to have a human inside her body, be a penis or a child. When the wimpy boy uttered "Thank you" after their somewhat violent and un-erotic intercourse, the audience collectively chuckled while something deep inside of me brews into tears. I have received the same word from a stranger once in the same scenario. I felt infinitely, infinitely powerless.
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