Small Miracles
It’s no secret that Russians disproportionately adore the New Year. At least we used to, back in Brezhnev’s early ’80s, when it was the only truly private holiday aside from one’s birthday: intimate, all-inclusive, apolitical, non-denominational. The New Year meant a clean break, a new beginning, the promise of a miracle. Year after year, it followed the same unshakable formula: large table spread awkwardly in the middle of the living room, fir tree in the corner, oxymoronic “Soviet Champagne,” presents, frantic midnight calls to the long-distance kin… and the triumvirate of classic Soviet holiday movies alternating on the muted TV. Here they are. If this year, watching a wisecracking angel get his wings yet again feels especially old, try swapping old Capra out for one of these three.
The Carnival Night (1956)
The storyline is perfect in its simplicity. It is New Year’s Eve of 1957, and workers are gathering at their factory’s Palace of Culture for a night of dancing and cutting-edge entertainment (jazz!) lovingly assembled by “activists” Lena and Grisha. At the eleventh hour—literally—the fusty old director of the facilities orders them to substitute the planned concert with a boring propaganda piece. Our young heroes save the night by distracting the bureaucrat and sabotaging the state-approved performances. The show goes on, fun is had by all, and Lena and Grisha manage to find love along the way.
The Miracle: the film satirizes the Party bureaucracy without even coming close to criticizing the untouchable Soviet ideals.
The Irony of Fate (or Enjoy the Steam) (1975)
This one is a touching romantic comedy. Our hero, Yevgeny, is meeting his friends for their annual pre-New Year gathering at the sauna. Yevgeny has a lot to celebrate: he just got engaged and moved into a new apartment in the outskirts of Moscow. Which only partially explains how he manages to get himself sufficiently drunk to mistakenly board a plane, black out during the flight, and awaken in the streets of Leningrad, without realizing he is in a different city. Nursing a monstrous hangover, he hails a cab, gives the driver his Moscow address, arrives at a nondescript apartment building not unlike his own, stumbles in (the key works!), undresses and falls asleep. Upon awakening, he finds “his” stylish East German furnishings slightly rearranged, but does not give it much thought until the true owner of the apartment, a gorgeous blonde, arrives with her boyfriend, and hilarity ensures. The titular irony thus is not that these poor people live in uniform faceless apartment buildings with generic addresses, possessions and keyholes, but in the notion that two of those people might be true soulmates.
The Miracle: the film satirizes drabness of the “central planning” live without passing judgment on Russian men.
The Wizards (1982)
The plot takes place at the Research Institute of Magical Events—an organization not unlike the Ministry of Magic of the Harry Potter films, but with only the cross-fade effect to provide for actual displays of wizardry. The senior executive witch, crumbling under the pressures of maintaining a healthy career/life balance, succumbs to the scheming of her VP Sataneyev (clearly a diabolical figure) and puts a hex on a younger professional witch. The hexed witch forgets the fiancé waiting for her in Moscow, goes out with Sataneyev, and puts all her energy into disciplining her subordinates and organizing the office New Year party. The gargantuan supporting cast spends their allocated onscreen time wandering endless corridors and decrepit labs of the Institute (filmed in the Central Television offices, infamous for periodically swallowing up talk-show guests without a trace) and periodically breaking into disco song and dance routines, while the forgotten fiancé concentrates all his efforts on braving holiday traffic. Will airport delays jeopardize his only shot at true love?
The Miracle: that the film did not flop.
Of course, if you are spending this New Year’s Eve in Russia (and why wouldn’t you?), your entertainment choices are not limited to the reruns of these oldies. Newly nationalized TV plus a steady influx of oil money multiplied by countrywide nostalgia equals big-budget remakes and sequels. The remake of The Carnival Night even has the same director, Eldar Ryazanov, who either has a gambling problem or grandkids hitting private-school age. The storyline goes all meta—a film crew wants to film a remake of The Carnival Night, but the Palace of Culture they chose for their location is about to be converted to luxury condos or some such. The crew manages to postpone the commercialization of culture, and the filming goes on… A sequel to The Irony of Fate has a simpler concept—the heroes of the original, as it turns out, do not stay together. They retreat to their respective cities, marry their old partners and have children. One of these children suffers an alcohol-induced episode, misses his plane, believes that he already disembarked in a different city, etc. As for The Wizards, its director, Konstantin Bromberg, lives in Detroit—happily, he says. Now there’s a miracle.