Cargo 200: Bad Soviet Memories Keep on Curdling

JEANNETTE CATSOULIS, NY Times: Art house meets grind house in Cargo 200, Alexey Balabanovs morbidly compelling thriller set in the Soviet Union.

http://www.amazon.com/Cargo-200-Natalya-Akimova/dp/B001PKPVRG

It is 1984, the economy and the party are collapsing, and the bodies of slain Soviet soldiers — code-named Cargo 200 — arrive regularly from the war in Afghanistan. Seeking distraction, a number of loosely related characters stray into the countryside, where dancing, drinking and unreliable vehicles kick-start a tale of unpredictable jeopardy and escalating depravity.

Pulling roughly on several narrative strings, Mr. Balabanov conjures a political and moral landscape drowning in corruption and pickled in black-market vodka. People cross paths and disappear, only to show up later wielding firearms or unexpected official identities. Connecting them is a hollow-eyed police officer named Zhurov (Alexey Poluyan), whose abduction and abuse of the innocent daughter of a party official is the movies grandest act of sadism.

All this punishment can at times obscure the point; but the cinematographer, Alexander Simonov, coaxes a savage beauty from sad skylines and the gaunt shells of silent factories. As Zhurovs drunken mother sprawls in front of an absurd television show, steadfastly ignoring the horrors in the next room, Cargo 200 plumbs near-comical depths of anti-Communist fury. Not many people will be laughing.