London Film Festival 2012: Tomorrow Review

rating: 1

Politically charged films have a history of weeding out the allegiances of the less-scrupulous film critics, who might be keen to savage a film based on its politics. However, here is a film about one of Russia's anarchic protest groups that is likely to have liberals and conservatives lining up, arm in arm to scream obscenities at them. Some opening titles state that what we are about to see is not necessarily historically accurate or, in fact, real, and boy, are we not surprised... Vor and Kozlenok are a couple and the founders of a political protest group called Voina (Russian for "war"); they reject the notion of currency, and thus resort to stealing from supermarkets to feed their young son, Kasper. The ultimate plan of their so-called "art group" is to flip a police car as a sign of protest and upload the footage to the Internet, making the statement that the present paradigm needs to be, in effect, turned on its head as well. It's a ludicrous premise, and for the first ten minutes or so, it'd be easy to expect Andrey Gryazev's film to be a gamy satire of grassroots political activism, rather than the pandering endorsement that it is, paying such microscopic attention to the asinine logistics of the car-flip that it often feels like a piece of absurdist, postmodern art in itself. The end result instead feels like a 90-minute Jackass skit, but even more infantile, and featuring characters who are a lot harder to like. Too much of the content consists of banal recitations of philosophical rhetoric, such that one can't help but view the members of the movement as maddeningly obnoxious and entirely unrelatable. On a broader level, what is the sense in making an esoteric political statement that erudite art critics are going to analyse to death, when the layman is likely to find it simply inscrutable Protest art needs to be loud, colourful and accessible in order to capture the public's imagination; this is only one of those three. The only likable character throughout is baby Kasper - and that's likely because he's the only one to keep his mouth shut - while the only vaguely meritorious aspect of the film is how Gryazev blurs the line what is real and what isn't, with seamless, verite-style shooting making it a challenge for viewers to discern the difference. An exhausting, infuriating experience in which logic is checked at the door, Gryazev's film beats us around the head with its trite message and gives a bad name to the worthier activist platforms in Russia. Thankfully, the likes of Pussy Riot are sure to remain well-lodged in our collective consciousness, while Voina will exit it as quickly as this film will itself. Lesson one of parenting; maybe don't bring your infant son along to a political protest in which it is quite likely you are going to be arrested. Rule one of filmmaking; don't make this fact abundantly clear to the viewer, and then attempt to manipulate sympathy out of us. This is an unbearable slice of political propaganda in which the "characters" think that poorly-organised acts of vandalism make them worthy of having their own place in cinema. Flipping a police car is not a work of art, and neither is this film.