By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3 cats
Director: Jessica Oreck
Country: poland, russia, ukraine, united_states
Year: 2014
Running time: 73
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3212838/combined
Kyle says: “THE VANQUISHING OF THE WITCH BABA YAGA sounds more interesting than it is. Baba Yaga is a horrible witch famous throughout Slavic folklore and in the works of Russian composers such as Mussorgsky and Liadov, bearing similarities to the witch in ‘Hansel and Gretel’ but predating the Grimm Brothers by centuries. Writer/Director Jessica Oreck’s version is a concatenation of animation and contemporary documentary to depict the symbiosis between nature and fantasy, with extensive observations on how dark and evil are left behind when we leave the forest, once we cross the threshold between ‘here and there.’ The creation of superstitions becomes necessary, because ‘familiarity breeds invisibility.’ ‘Fear and reverence are measures of the same confusion.’ Intercutting scenes from a storybook of Baba Yaga’s confrontation with two children who survive her machinations, with scenery in the lush forest, or peasants hard at work harvesting essentials like mushrooms for soups, or dancing joyfully at weddings, or somberly visiting cemeteries, or even visiting a wild place holding a hint of the complete extinction of both nature and traditional folklore in a place called Chernobyl, with a photo of Lenin still visible on a page in a disintegrating book in a ruined classroom. Director Oreck is passionate about her interwoven stories, but fails to solve the problem of the audience’s understanding where the story is taking us considerably in advance of our arrival at its conclusion. 3 cats
“Seen Saturday, March 22, 2014, New Directors/New Films at the Walter Reade Theater, Film Society of Lincoln Center, New York.”