Soviet Nostalgia: Hoover’s Complex Portrait of a Ukrainian Vigilante Pastor Opens Cultural Can of Worms
Steve Hoover’s sophomore feature opens on a Ukrainian industrial landscape overlayed with the following quote from My First Fee by Isaac Babel, a Russian author whose futile death came at the hands of the Soviet secret police: “A well thought out story doesn’t need to resemble real life. Life itself tries with all its might to resemble a well-crafted story.” Out of context, it merely foreshadows the high tension tale to follow, yet knowing Babel’s fate – which isn’t mentioned in the film – brings greater depth to the Ukrainian/Russian situation that snowballs throughout. In Crocodile Gennadiy, what begins as an astounding, morally murky portrait of a man subverting inert government organizations to rescue abused children morphs into a something more akin to a unraveling sketch of a man clutching his overflowing family,...
Steve Hoover’s sophomore feature opens on a Ukrainian industrial landscape overlayed with the following quote from My First Fee by Isaac Babel, a Russian author whose futile death came at the hands of the Soviet secret police: “A well thought out story doesn’t need to resemble real life. Life itself tries with all its might to resemble a well-crafted story.” Out of context, it merely foreshadows the high tension tale to follow, yet knowing Babel’s fate – which isn’t mentioned in the film – brings greater depth to the Ukrainian/Russian situation that snowballs throughout. In Crocodile Gennadiy, what begins as an astounding, morally murky portrait of a man subverting inert government organizations to rescue abused children morphs into a something more akin to a unraveling sketch of a man clutching his overflowing family,...
- 4/20/2015
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
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