Pamfir
Ukraine produces a film of enormous cinematic flair with a story of small-town corruption.
This first feature by the Ukrainian filmmaker Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk has won a number of awards and he is certainly a writer/director with a strong sense of cinema. Pamfir, a widescreen film strikingly photographed by Nikita Kuzmenko, frequently favours long camera takes in preference to conventional editing and in doing so it achieves a real visual impact. Not least in the finale, sound is also used effectively to build up a powerful intensity. But, if Pamfir looks good, it is less potent on the storytelling level because it leaves one without any clear understanding of what take on the material is being offered.
I found that sense of uncertainty a prominent feature of Pamfir despite the fact that its basic plot is a familiar and well-established one. The story it tells is of a rural community in which many of the inhabitants indulge in illegal behaviour such as smuggling (they live near the border with Romania) and what becomes increasingly clear is that a forestry official, Orest (Oleksandr Yarema), has become a crime boss who controls everything. His men are ready to use violence against any rivals, the pastor of the village church (Igor Danchuk) is unwilling to take a stand against him and even the police are hand-in-glove with him. No more original is the situation of the film’s central figure, Leonid (Oleksandr Yatsentyuk). He is a man who, having turned away from criminal activity, finds himself setting up one further such undertaking in order to earn enough money to pay a debt.
Such a tale is one that could be set in many places, but the fact that Pamfir takes place in western Ukraine means that in today's world one inevitably approaches the film wondering if it will contain some specific reflection on that country’s situation even if the film was developed before 24th February 2022. But, in the event, the most specifically Ukrainian element in Pamfir is the area’s very own New Year carnival which involves men representing demons, their identities concealed behind masks. It's an aspect that certainly supplies local colour and it also adds to the sense of sinister foreboding inherent in the tale.
As for Leonid, despite his criminal past, one senses that he is not far from being the hero of the piece. We meet him when he has just returned from working abroad and is welcomed by his wife Olena (Solomiya Kyrylova) and his adolescent son, Nazar (Stanislav Potiak). The boy is something of a rebel, but under his mother’s influence goes to church regardless. Leonid in contrast is not religious. However, when Nazar accidentally causes a fire which seriously damages the church, the father accepts responsibility for having it repaired. That liability is in fact the debt which leads to him reverting to smuggling to pay it off. But, if Leonid's intentions are good, one’s sympathies are limited by his behavioural traits. Even the way he approaches his wife on his return seems inconsiderately frightening and we learn that he seriously injured his father in a fight. It is even more striking that, when Orest’s men seize Leonid relatively late on, this leads to a piece of action cinema in which he takes on numerous men of Orest’s and hits them with a violence notably amplified on the soundtrack. Far from Leonid seeming an ordinary man in desperate circumstances, he suddenly becomes a larger-than-life macho figure. We do learn that Pamfir was his nickname and that it refers to a type of stone, but suddenly to play up this image cuts across the tone of the film up to that point. Furthermore, it proves to be a bridge to more genre touches (a vicious episode in which a trap is set to break the leg of Leonid's brother (Ivan Sharan), a scene in which the villain of the piece radiates bogus affability by playing with his young children like a perfect father).
To some extent Leonid’s wife, who tries throughout to discourage him from a life of crime, is the film’s voice of sanity. But, if that is indeed her function, making her a figure of religious belief is bizarre given that the film seems to take a dubious view of the church. Furthermore, it is decidedly odd that, having lost a child some time earlier, Olena should late on suddenly reveal the nature of a special pledge that she had made with God at that time, an incident that reminded me of Graham Greene's novel The End of the Affair but here it’s left as a mere passing detail. By including this but not following it up, Pamfir adds to my overall impression of a film which has no clear perspective on what approach it wants to take to its material – Leonid’s fight against the power of Orest is the spine of the piece, but the film continually seems to invite us to see more in it yet without ever being structured in a way that makes a satisfying interpretation possible.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Cast: Oleksandr Yatsentyuk, Solomiya Kyrylova, Stanislav Potiak, Oleksandr Yarema, Ivan Sharan, Viktor Baranovsky, Miroslav Makoviychuk, Olena Khokhlatkina, Igor Danchuk, Andrii Kyrylchuk, Vitaliy Boyuk, Oleksandr Boyuk.
Dir Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk, Pro Aleksandra Koscina, Laura Briand, Bogna Szewczyk, Klaudia Śmielja and Giancarlo Nasi, Screenplay Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk, Ph Nikita Kuzmenko, Pro Des Ivan Mykhailov, Ed Nikodem Chabior, Music Laetitia Pansanel-Garric, Costumes Mariya Kvitka.
Wady Films/Madants/Soilfims/Studio Orlando/Les Films d’ici/Bosonfilm/Quijote Films-Conic.
103 mins. Ukraine/France/Poland/Chile/Luxembourg. 2022. UK Rel: 5 May 2023. Cert. 15.
