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Perestroika (2009)

1 rating: 5.0

A movie directed by Slava Tsukerman

An astrophysicist returns to Russia after emigrating to the US seventeen years earlier. Formerly branded a traitor by the government, he is now seen as a hero, as the period of Perestroika (The Restructuring) has turned everything upside down.

Tags: Movie

Cast: Ally Sheedy, F. Murray Abraham, Sam Robards, Jicky Schnee, Oksana Stashenko

Director: Slava Tsukerman

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Reassessing Lives

Oct 3, 2009

by amoslassen
posted in Movie Hype

Rating:

"Perestroika"

Reassessing Lives

Amos Lassen

New from Strand Releasing is "Perestroika", a film that looks at Russia during the period when public and private lives are reassessed radically. Sasha Greenberg worked as an astrophysicist in the United States for 17 years when he is invited to his native country to speak at a congress on Cosmology. He now has to face colleagues and deal with several unanswered personal questions. He begins to witness the social and sexual upheavals as a civilization crisis takes place and he understands that his own obsessions are a mirror reflection of the universe, itself.
I love this film even with all of its confusion--it is both talky and crowded but it is also adroitly done. Sam Robards is Greenberg who put himself in self-imposed exile in the United States almost 20 years before the movie begins. He left Russia as a traitor in 1992 but he returns as a hero and he discovers that he is torn between his two countries and between science and morality. Then he also has four women that tear at him as well. His wife, played by Ally Sheedy, is not the kind of woman most would want to come home too so he has looked elsewhere. His return to Russia forces him to confront his past and in doing so he learns a great deal about himself.
Ably directed by Slava Tsukerman ("Liquid Sky"), the movie uses flashbacks to show Sasha's past and the shifts in chronology often seem to distract. We watch as dream sequences turn into reality and the visuals are both provocative and stylish and the screenplay is brilliant but the one thing lacking here is emotion. The film is a combination of documentary and fiction, politics and science, important structure and incompetent drama. There is plenty on the screen to see as the director is a maximalist but the confusion provides for some thought provoking moments. I found the film to be compelling as well as funny in a touching way and even though it is a bit strange, it is completely entertaining.

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