FILM REVIEW: "A Prayer for Hetman Mazepa" revisited (01/09/05)

FILM REVIEW: "A Prayer for Hetman Mazepa" revisited

by Alexandra Hawryluk

The really interesting questions are those that ask us to re-examine issues that are so deeply imbedded in a given culture that they are taken for granted. Yuri Ilyenko in his film "A Prayer for Hetman Mazepa" - which was screened for North American audiences in 2004 - attempts to lift the veil of historical myth draped over the figure of Ivan Mazepa by asking: Who is Hetman Mazepa?

It's a good question considering that the two most widely held perceptions of Ivan Mazepa are conflicted: Ukrainians see him as a hero, while Russians believe him to be a traitor. At the same time, both perceptions are burdened by the political correctness of Soviet historiography. Add to this the idea that, "The history of the Hetmanate became a key component of national history and the nation-building myth" (Orest Subtelny, "Ukraine, A History," University of Toronto Press, 1988), and it becomes clear why the leaders of that era have become revered national heroes.

Although we don't mind when historians, sociologists, anthropologists and archaeologists deconstruct the past, we are less comfortable when a cinematographer undertakes to ask similar questions. Perhaps it is because during all those Cold War years, we have had to keep justifying to our fellow citizens the existence of Ukrainian history, Ukrainian culture, Ukrainian language. Perhaps it is because in face of Soviet destruction, persecution and propaganda we have had to develop an acutely critical attitude toward the Communist deconstruction. Perhaps the resulting defensiveness makes it difficult to review the more painful aspects of history. Whatever the explanation, in that respect, Mr. Ilyenko is to be commended for having the courage to question.

However, the trouble is not so much with the question, as with his method of deconstruction. David Stratton evaluated the film on April 11, 2002, for Variety as follows: "This lavishly produced historical epic about Ukrainian hero Hetman Mazepa, who in the early 18th century briefly secured his country's independence from rivals Russia and Sweden, is a wilfully chaotic picture. Its merits, such as they are, lie in its very craziness, certainly not in its utterly confusing way of telling a story which, presumably, is familiar to Ukrainian audiences. The latest film from Yuri Ilyenko, one of the most colorful figures of the long-gone Soviet cinema, is at best a curiosity..."

Despite the fact that the film uses the classical device of telling the story through the main character's recollections of the past, that is, Mazepa's delirious death bed visions, which include Tsar Peter I, King Charles XII, Gen. Vasyl Kochubey, Motria Kochubey, scenes of clashing armies, floating corpses, flaming steppes, horsemen riding through misty forests, plaster body parts, painted sets, as well as Mazepa's own funeral - it is not easy to discern who is fighting with whom, when, where and for what reason. However rich and interesting these images are, especially their juxtaposition with bits and pieces from an ongoing "vertep" play, ultimately their complexity gets in the way of a clean story line.

There's a lot of declamatory speechifying and shouting over the din," Mr. Stratton wrote in his review. The dialogue between the main characters, Hetman Mazepa (Bohdan Stupka) and Tsar Peter I (Vyacheslav Dovzhenko), fails to reveal anything meaningful about their friendship or their enmity. Instead, the brief exchanges between them, between Mazepa and Kochubey, Mazepa and his trusted messenger Bystrytsky, and even bed talk between Mazepa and Motria, all sound more like rhetoric, than real conversation. One would think that the dramatic tension generated by all these gifted historical characters would offer the writer wonderful opportunities for brilliant verbal matches, acerbic wit, biting repartee.

The introduction of the deliberately artificial scenery into real landscape, the whimsical costumes, the romantic location shots, give the production a lush, imaginative, surrealistic atmosphere. But inserting Serhiy Yakutovych's well-painted architectural sets into too many scenes is a little tiresome. On the other hand, things like Kochubey's magnificent gold-encrusted costume, the blue yellow-trimmed uniforms of the Swedish soldiers, Charles's cumbersome coach, the beautiful horses, the confused cacophony of battle, these do give a sense of the era. Some costumes, however, (most notably the Xena-Warrior-Princess-like leather bikini worn by Ludmilla Yefimenko, the Russian general's quasi-Roman, silver padded fabric armor with its orange gauze tunic, Mazepa's red satin toga,) would look more at home in a Monty Python film than in a historic epic. All this is filmed with a hand-held camera using colored and gauze filters favoring unfocused, overexposed takes, rapid panning and uneven color grading. It's this love for overstatement, this overuse of artifice and flamboyance that gives the film its busy and affected look.

Not surprisingly, the reactions to the film have been mixed. And naturally enough, Mr. Ilyenko is upset at the negative reviews of "A Prayer for Hetman Mazepa." In defense of his product he has said that "the avalanche of negative criticism which has buried my film cannot be called genuine cinematic critique. There is no critical thought or analysis in these libellous articles." (Meest, January 22, 2004). His supporters have responded in a similar vein, interpreting the film as the work of a misunderstood genius. Others, in a show of support for Ukrainian cinematography simply tried to explain the film. Yuri Shevchuk in his review in The Ukrainian Weekly, August 25, 2002, suggested that the film's "visual and acoustic arsenals are designed to shock, to antagonize, to revolt, to make the viewer ... suffer. Small wonder that those who expected to be entertained were in for a cruel disappointment." That's, of course, assuming that there are only two categories of viewer: serious cinema buffs and frivolous entertainment seekers. Be that as it may, it is still difficult to dismiss Mr. Stratton's observation that Mr. Ilyenko's problem is his "extremely stylized approach reminiscent, at its best of Parazhanov and at its worst (which is most of the time) characterized by an almost amateurish disregard for audience sensibilities." (Variety, April 11, 2002)

Mr. Ilyenko's disregard for the audience is precisely what galls. To begin with, the very title "A Prayer for Hetman Mazepa" suggests an allusion to religion or a religious context. According to Collins Cobuild English Language Dictionary, "Prayer is the activity of praying to God" or "a set form of words which is said during a religious service." The film, however, offers the audience no perceptible supplication to God on behalf of Mazepa, unless, the word "prayer" is a cynical reference to the excommunication incantations of the black-robed, black-bearded priests seen in the film - the infamous anathema. Even there, it is unclear who exactly might be praying or why.

It is not just this ambiguity, but the way religious ritual and religious symbolism are used, that may well offend the viewer's religious sensibilities. Why, for instance, are the violent outbursts of Peter I against Mazepa punctuated by the tsar either rushing up to a portable "ikonostas" or making the sign of the cross? The mysterious set of free-standing "tsarski vorota" in the middle of what seems like a battle scene with minor characters crawling out from under them, the painted paper set depicting generic onion-domed churches (but curiously not the churches endowed by Mazepa), and at least three cross-shaped pools, while interesting, leave the audience wondering about their relevance. On the other hand, Motria's christening scene with her father, General Kochubey, standing waist-deep in the waters of a cross-shaped opening in river ice, seems to be striking a balance between artistic expression and Ukrainian religious tradition. Yet the carefully thought out effect of one scene is often undone by another. Having Mazepa's messenger tortured in a cross-shaped well or pool makes little sense, as political loyalty is the issue in that scene, not religious beliefs.

If this violent scene hasn't ruffled religious sensibilities, Mazepa's death scene certainly might. There, Mr. Ilyenko jumbles up the sound of religious chant, the sight of sombre black-robed monks, a crowd of not-so-modest maidens inexplicably jammed up against a glass wall, with a white-clad Mazepa lying on a most original of death beds - a shallow cross-shaped bathtub cut into a white marble floor. What does this hetman, this leader of a nation, this prince of the Holy Roman Empire, this consummate politician and negotiator think of at life's end? Despite his musings over the Battle of Poltava and Peter the Great, his mind is fixed on sex and "a climactic orgy sequence which seems to have no apparent purpose" (Stratton). In fact, he dies in a sexual embrace with a nearly naked blond warrior goddess (the ubiquitous Ludmilla Yefimenko, wife of Mr. Ilyenko). Mazepa then rises from his watery cross, and enveloped in an undulating toga-like, red satin sheet walks off the screen. Even if this sleazy, tawdry interpretation of Mazepa's death were acceptable, there is no justification for debasing the cross, the symbol of Christianity. The film's dabbling in religious images, without an apparent understanding of their meaning, trivializes and insults religious faith and religious symbols.

In the end, "A Prayer for Hetman Mazepa" offers not so much a new vision or a new myth, as a vigorous variation on the old theme. Instead of offering at least a glimpse of Hetman Mazepa in his full glory, if for no reason but to give a greater sense of drama to his fall, the film inundates the audience with a frenzy of action that explains little about the man or the conflict. The demonization of Tsar Peter I does nothing to address the conflicting historic perceptions of either Hetman Mazepa, or Peter the Great, for that matter. What's more, the demonic violence is allowed to dominate the film, so much so, that it is difficult to discern whose point of view is the story propagating: Mazepa's or Peter's. Neither the violation of Mazepa's portrait, sarcophagus and effigy, nor the untrue and often repeated story of Mazepa being tarred and feathered (see Theodore Mackiw, "English Reports on Mazepa 1687-1709," Ukrainian Historic Association) contribute to a better understanding of the Kozak era leader. After decades of Soviet obscurantism, one would think that what the Ukrainian community needs is clarification, not more demagogy, albeit one tinted with nationalism.

True enough, no one expects a film of this magnitude to offer the audience, as Prof. Shevchuk puts it, "the shallow satisfaction of a proverbial happy ending." After all, it is about history and history offers few happy endings. But, neither is it necessary to subject the audience to so much violence and anger that the theater seems redolent with their miasma. An even-handed, dynamic evaluation of the two main characters and their conflicting interests played out against the colorful tapestry of the shifting European alliances, large-scale wars and fiery rebellions, could have produced an unforgettable, tense drama in which the clashing of wills and swords changes our perception of that part of history.

What is new in Mr. Ilyenko's interpretation of Mazepa's story is the introduction of nudity and sex. Some critics, most notably Olha Briukhovetska, suggest that Mr. Ilyenko wants to jolt Ukrainian audiences out of their prudishness. Surely, no one is so naive as to believe that Ukrainians go rigid with shock at the mention of sex. Even in the puritanical Soviet movie industry Serhii Paradjanov's characters in "Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors" run naked through the forest. Tastefully done nudity that advances the plot, develops character or illustrates social attitudes is not an issue. But senseless, voyeuristic sex, like the opening scene of the film in which the tsar commits sodomy, the on-camera masturbation by Kochubey's widow, the sexual writhing of the women in the death scene, is a serious issue, as is sexual stereotyping. The men in the film are inevitably violent and virile, while the women are categorized as either sex objects, or as vague figures in diaphanous white robes being carted off to the nunnery. One cannot help but wonder: just how do these ideas fit in with the creation of a new nation-building myth?

Ukrainian communities in North America are upset with "A Prayer for Hetman Mazepa" for other reasons as well. While the process of deconstruction is interesting and Mr. Ilyenko is having a lot of fun, it is, one suspects, at the expense of the community. For one thing, apparently different versions of the film were seen by different audiences, with the result that one never knew which version of the film was being discussed. For another, Mr. Ilyenko's insistence during his personal appearances and in his interview with Valentyn Labunsky (Meest, January 22, 2004) that "making a film is above all a search for truth" and that "erotica enhance the portrait of Mazepa," alienated many people.

Anyone who has seen the uncut version of the film can attest that the film, while highly imaginative and inventive, neither uncovers historic truth, nor makes a convincing connection between Eros and political power. All the horses and all the king's men in the film cannot put Mazepa's deconstructed picture together again because Mr. Ilyenko simply does not provide enough insights to create a new, convincing portrait of a complex man. To my mind, that's a curious way to go about getting support for the comeback of the Ukrainian film epic.

Conor Humphries in evaluating the state of the Ukrainian cinema quotes Mashenko, the director of Kyiv's Dovzhenko Studio as saying "We have had 10 years of an uncensored, free creative process, with nobody controlling it. ... Occasionally, however, we confuse creative freedom with an absence of responsibility for what we do. We need to decide whether or not our audience needs something without the aid of censorship" (The Ukrainian Weekly, August 25, 2002). While Mr. Mashenko's frankness is refreshing, it is also very interesting that the studio which produced "A Prayer for Hetman Mazepa" is more concerned with the choice between a censored and an uncensored product, than with defining its objective, that is, defining its responsibility in the development of Ukrainian culture.

Yet, culture is the most accessible of nation-building tools. Mykola Ryabchuk, who is passionately interested in the development of a national Ukrainian identity, believes that in the transformation of, as he puts it, "an inert, amorphous mass into a developed civic society, united not so much by its common past, as by its common future. ... can only be achieved through the implementation of progressive economic, political ... reforms together with various consciousness-raising cultural programs" (Dylema Ukrainskoho Fausta: Hromadske Suspilstvo i Rozbudova Derzhavy, Krytyka', Kyiv, 2000). There is no better medium than cinema for bringing the achievements of history, literature, art, geography, religion, economics, music and science to any audience. It is not just the information, but also the appreciation for these things that nurtures identity.

If "A Prayer for Hetman Mazepa" was to have been the one magic product of the new Ukrainian cinema that would impel Ukrainians to rediscover the splendors of their culture and history, then it seems to have missed the mark. What is interesting, however, is not so much the shortcomings of the film, as the passion that it elicited because all the hot debates, critical reviews, allegations and denials, are witnesses to one fact: culture matters.

"Molytva Za Hetmana Mazepu" (A Prayer for Hetman Mazepa). Kyiv: Vision XXI Media Group and Alexander Dovzhenko National Production. Produced by Ihor Diakovsky; written and directed by Yuri Ilyenko; production designer: Serhiy Yakutovych; music: Virko Baley; costume designer: Volodymyr Furyk; time: 2 hrs., 34 min.

Alexandra Hawryluk writes regularly for Radio Canada International in Montreal.

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