The Nose or the Conspiracy of Mavericks

The film is inspired by the short story The Nose by Nikolai Gogol and the opera The Nose by Dmitry Shostakovich. Their works presented avant-garde ideas that intrigued the public. However, the works especially the opera received meager publicity during the Stalinist government of the 1920s. By 1960s, Russia during the Krushchev Thaw, decided to adapt a cinematic rendition of the short story. Andrey Khrzhanovsky was noted as the ideal director for such an adaptation and even the composer Shostakovich himself sent a postcard of approval. The first time Khrzhanovsky heard of the opera The Nose was at a 1974 play rendered by the composer Gennady Rozhdestvensky.[1] Thereafter the director developed the concept of a film that is estimated as taking over half a century in production. Production was spent in bringing in different creative thoughts and ideas. The director denoted Gogol's works are like natural-made storyboards for animated films.[2]

The time at production was spent honing on the details of the script with collaboration by Russian screenwriter Yuri Arabov. The script describes the innovators and mavericks in arts and science from the twentieth and twenty-first century who came at the crossroads of authoritarian societies. Condensed into three parts, the script references an unprecedented meeting of such people as Sergei Eisenstein, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Bulgakov, Gogol and Stalin.[2] Developed as a farcical drama, allusions to other artists are made such as Surikov, Picasso, and Kazimir Malevich.[1] By the end of the third act, the script became a tribute to the Soviet artists.[3]

The inspiration for converging the time periods of the two centuries that the film presented, came when the director was on a flight. Many bright screens of the airplane played different movies of different eras and countries despite the cabin room being closed off from light. The director was inspired by this event to create a multi-screen collage approach to edit and combine different fragments and stories with stylistic switching.[1] Media compared the film to the 2001 film Russian Ark.[1][4]

The Nose developed the concept of Russian pictorial realism. As Khrzhanovsky himself stated Gogol is one of the founders of realism and surrealism.[2] Therefore, the creators of the film tried to evoke the Russian avant-garde semblance to the original work in the animated film.[5] The film tried to re-order the discordant chronological events in the same way a museum orders the culture and heritage "into a coherent, intelligible whole." Without limited to the space and time of historical discontinuity, the film uses the cinematic space to join creative forces of history into a single frame.[4]

The director states the film is a can be categorized as an auteur artistic exposition film.[2] The film is intended for an educated audience who understands the relations of the government and culture over the decades.[6] The director also states the film has can't be limited to one genre.[2] The film has the elements of drama, musical, and biographical film.[7]

The film explores politics and history through animation. The events described are based on real life events. The character Nose depicted as a living monument, is developed as a totalitarian symbol.[8] The film's conflict explores the Nose and in general the oppression of the arts during the initial years of the Soviet Union by the reference to the editorial Muddle Instead of Music written by the leader of the Soviet Union, Stalin himself in the Soviet newspaper Pravda.[9][10]

The animation team drew the film using cut-outs, drawings, and live-action collages to bring to life the phantasmagoria sequences of the script.[5] They used stop motion to move the cut-out designs.[11] A review found that animation was the only technique that can put to life The Nose.[5] Collage animation is the main technique used for the film as it juxtaposes anecdotes with a document or a newsreel with a painting.[1] Character outlines are glued with daguerreotype faces.[3]

As news of a possible Andrey Khrzhanovsky adaptation of The Nose reached the public media in 1969, composer Dmitry Shostakovich personally sent a postcard to the director stating authorization to use the opera as the soundtrack for the film. Compiled in 1920s, the opera was put on the shelves after censure from the Stalin authorities. However, in the year 1969, the opera at the Bolshoi theater as well as the literary novel by Gogol received critical acclaim again. The film that has been on the works for over half a century, finally saw the cinema halls in 2020 at Rotterdam. The soundtrack of the film is rendered under the operatic sopranos of Dmitry Shostakovich.[2] A review found the musical aspect of the film became so convincing that it could be seen as a separate part of the film.[6]

In 2020, the film debuted at the International Film Festival in Rotterdam. After a circuit of film festival expositions, the film was released in Russia on 11 September 2020 as the opener for the 31st the Open Russian Film Festival Kinotavr.[12][13] The film received the Jury Prize, the second highest distinction of the 2020 Annecy International Animation Film Festival.[14][15] The award became Russia's first such award in the history of Russian animation.[6] On 12 December 2020, a jury of over three thousand members of the European Film Academy will decide on whether the film will be Europe's best animated film of 2020. The film is competing alongside only three other animated films.[16]

Stas Tyrkin states the film is a "symbiosis of cinematic genres." The review stated, "allowing the improbable to take place - creative alliances and human encounters-for example, Gogol, Meyerhold and Shostakovich. Khrzhanovsky boldly mixes formats, painting genres and techniques - he comes out with a radical and cool collage that combines the seemingly incongruous - the aesthetics of Russian pictorial realism and revolutionary futurism." [5]

Kino Teatr stated, "The musical side of the film becomes so winning that at some point it literally separates from the visual series and hovers over a slightly chaotic plot that mixes Imperial Petersburg and limousines, Naum Kleiman and Bratkov from the nineties, Stalin and his inner circle with Nabokov and Aeroflot planes, Anton Dolin and Volga boatmen in one cauldron."[6] Veronika Khlebnikova reviewed, "In Khrzhanovsky's film, iconic figures of the Russian cultural code are placed in an eccentric collage. The latter, in turn, becomes an element of avant-garde theater and the principle of theatrical constructivism embodied by Meyerhold. In his play The Earth Stands on End (1923)."[3]

Anton Dolin believes the film isn't movie but is instead an exposition of music and literature: "Khrzhanovsky's utopian plane, in which his friends and like-minded people gathered, where everyone has their own movie and their own freedom on the screen, soars in the air like a bird or an impossible machine with a perpetual motion machine. And it's not going to land."[8] French Annecy review by Mathieu Le Bihan remarked the film is a unique form of animation: "It deviates from the beaten path and plays with eras to better develop them on the screen."[17] Film.ru review thought although the film has "ideological heaviness" that is possibly probably due to its lengthy production, the film is "full of anachronisms and references meta-narrative." One such anachronism that the review pointed out was when a 19th-century bureaucrat "runs an old pen on a graphic tablet, displaying words in Microsoft Word."[18]

PM Cicchetti of Filmexplorer states the film is a postmodern collage/catalogue of "smattering of images, styles, media, from across the centuries." The film is "layer upon layer, mixed-in rather than overlaid, its animation burbles with allusions: each frame a nod, a wink, as tides of images wash over the viewer."[4] Film-rezensionen.de review believed the animation studio School-Studio "Shar" "had fun with the design: "Optics is one of the great strengths anyway: The Nose or Conspiracy of Mavericks uses a variety of techniques, but especially those of Cutout Animation. This special form of the Stop-Motion process uses cut-out paper figures that are moved."[11] Little Big Animation review stated why the nose is given such importance, "Art is to politics what the nose is to the face. Essential, essential and revealing meaning." The film is like a "pop-up book, proving to be a history of Russian art."[19] Sule Durmazkeser of Out Now from Germany gave the film 4.5/5 stars stating, "The Nose or the Conspiracy of Mavericks is an elaborately staged animated film, whereby much emphasis has been placed on details. The film is cleverly constructed and offers a huge variety of information with countless quotations from art, culture, history and politics."[10]