Twelve Chairs

Leslie Felperin, Variety,Los Angeles/New York, February 16-22, 2004
Notorious for docus and avant-garde features sabotaged by punishing running times, helmer Ulrike Ottinger stays true to the form with "Twelve Chairs", a three-hour-plus adaptation of Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov's oft-Filmsd early Soviet-era novel. A picaresque black comedy set in the '20s about a trio searching the Ukraine for treasure, "Twelve Chairs" mines a rich vein of comedy. Pic is shot deliberately anachronistically, with costumed actors mixing with non-professionals in a modern landscape. More accessible than helmer's usual fare, "Twelve Chairs" could find a place at select fest tables, but won't be putting many paying butts on seats.
One fateful day, former aristocrat Claudia Ivanova (Svetlana Dyagilyeva) tells first her son-in-law Ippolit Matveyevich Vorobyaninov, then Father Fyodor (Boris Raev) that she hid her best jewels in the seat of one of the 12 salon chairs before they were seized during the Revolution. The two men set off on a race to track down the now-dispersed set of Tsar Alexander II-period chintz seats.
Vorobyaninov soon hooks up with Ostap Bender (well-known local stage thesp Georgi Deliyev), a con artist as slick as his multi-colored satin suit, who soon starts draining naive Vorobyaninov's meager resources. Vorobyaninov promises Bender a share of the loot if they find the chair, and they set off on the chase, Father Fyodor criss-crossing their path.
Some of the more entertaining set pieces include a scene where Vorobyaninov blows all his cash at an upscale joint while pitching woo to pretty student Lisa (Oxana Burlai), and a farcical interlude in which Bender poses as a chess grandmaster to pull a sting on some chess-crazy rubes. Often the wittiest lines are in the dry voiceover, lifted from Ilf and Petrov's book but translated into German. (Cast speaks mix of Russian and Ukrainian.)
Underscoring just how little the more provincial corners of the former Soviet Union have changed in 80 years, Ottinger and her team barely need to dress the small-town set in the Ukraine to make it look like 1927.
But if brevity is the soul of wit, "Twelve Chairs" is lacking, although many quirky, surrealist moments are provoked by the use of non-professional extras who seem unfazed by the period-garbed actors mixing among them. The grubby, impoverished-looking urban landscape, all peeling paint and smashed buildings, adds a resonance to the source book's satire on capitalistic acquisitiveness. These people seem to have little more now than their great-grandparents had when the Revolution came in 1917, apart from trainers and Coca-Cola.
Nevertheless, Ottinger films the terrain with great affection, bringing out its tawdry beauty and sharp Mediterranean (or Black Sea if you prefer) light. An acclaimed still photographer, she does own lensing here, favoring arty, pleasingly off-center framing and long-held, tableau-like set ups that create a curious sense of stasis in a film about people always on the move. Music is almost all source throughout.
For the record, original novel has been adapted several times already in Russia, most recently in 1977 with a 305-minute mini-series, once by Cuban auteur Tomas Gutierrez Alea in 1962, and once by Mel Brooks for a now almost forgotten, of not forgiven, version starring Frank Langella and Ron Moody from 1970.

Hans-Jörg Rother, Der Tagesspiegel, Berlin, 8. Februar 2004
Ottingers Film verschränkt die Zwanzigerjahre des Romans mit der neurussischen Gegenwart, in der sich nur die Gerissenen nach oben arbeiten. Gut drei Stunden schickt sie ihre Helden zudem durch Bilder von Städten und Landschaften, deren Schönheit und Farbenpracht einem den Atem verschlägt. Ilf und Petrow hätten es sich nicht träumen lassen, dass ihr satirisches Pathos einmal der Erinnerung des Vergangenen statt der Beschwörung der Zukunft dienen würde. Am Ende, wenn sich Worobjaninow seines Kompagnons entledigt, steht uns die Gegenwart bar jeder Romantik vor Augen. Der Reichtum ist aufgebraucht.

Andrej Plachow, Kommersant Nr. 69, Moskau 16. April 2004
Sie hat keine deutschen, sondern Odessiter Schauspieler engagiert und mit ihnen einen Film gedreht, von dem viele Generationen sowjetischer und postsowjetischer Filmregisseure vergebens geträumt haben. Denn sie haben sich dem Roman nur auf Zehenspitzen zu nähern gewagt und mit dieser Haltung die Zuschauer auf Jahrzehnte vom Geschmack einer solchen Prosa abgebracht;[…] Ulrike Ottinger war unbelastet von solchen Ängsten, und ihre Schauspieler (die sowohl aus dem Muratowa-Umkreis wie aus der „Maski“-Show kommen), allen voran Georgi Delijew und Genadi Skarga, sind hier goldrichtig.
Aber das größte Verdienst der Regisseurin besteht darin, dass sie den Schlüssel gefunden hat, um den Roman in die universelle Filmsprache zu übersetzen. [...] der spezifische Odessiter Humor von Ilf/Petrow galt immer als unübersetzbar, und somit schienen auch die Figuren des Romans, insbesondere Ostap Bender, unter Ausreiseverbot zu stehen. Nun haben sie ein Schengener Visum erhalten.

Claudia Schwartz, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Zürich, 13. Februar 2004
Die deutsche Regisseurin schlägt aus der Geschichte zweier Lebemänner in der frühen Sowjetzeit jenes Fünkchen Wahrheit, nach dem sich die Mentalität einer Gesellschaft über die Perestroika hinaus buchstäblich in die neue Zeit rettete.
Die Geschichte über einen proletarisierten Adeligen und einen Ganoven, die in einer burlesken Schatzsuche dem Ideal vom Helden der Arbeit ihre individuelle Überlebensstrategie aus List und Improvisationsgeist entgegenstellen, ist eine stilsichere Parabel auf die postsowjetische Gesellschaft. Ottinger giesst Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, literarische und filmische Motive, russische Darsteller und deutsch gelesene Romanauszüge, malerische Schwarzmeerküste und farbenprächtigen Hyperrealismus mit einer Gelassenheit in Form, als würde sich all dies wirklich vor unseren Augen abspielen.

Leslie Felperin, Variety, Los Angeles/New York, February 16-22, 2004
Ottinger films the terrain with great affection, bringing out its tawdry beauty and sharp Mediterranean (or Black Sea if you prefer) light. An acclaimed still photographer, she does own lensing here, favoring arty, pleasingly off-center framing and long-held, tableau-like set ups that create a curious sense of stasis in a film about people always on the move. Music is almost all source throughout.

Arthouse Movienews Nr. 83 - 7 / 8 / 2004
Ulrike Ottinger hat den Osten schon immer geliebt. Sie hat in der Taiga, in Schanghai, in Osteuropa Filme gedreht: Theatralische Spielfilme und feinfühlige Dokumentarfilme, die seit Jahren Kult sind. […] Im Jahre 1927 spielt Ilja Ilfs und Jewgeni Petrows Roman, Ottinger jedoch hat „Zwölf Stühle“ in den „natürlichen Kulissen“ der Ukraine von heute gedreht. Resultat ist ein bilderprächtiger „Reisefilm“. Der gewährt den Zuschauern, wie Ottinger es formuliert, tiefen Einblick in die „dichten Schichtungen der Geschichte“ und es fällt in ihm kongenial zusammen, was Ottingers Schaffen kennzeichnet: Ethnografische Sorgfalt und humorvolle Verspieltheit.

Ulrike Ottinger

In the making

In 2001, for my film, Southeast Passage, I traveled in search of blind spots in Europe, sites that have been neglected by the media. Beginning in Berlin, I traversed through Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, before reaching my final destination of Odessa. At the same time, I embarked on a literary voyage and studied the novels, short stories, and poetry of these countries. At this point I came across the highly intriguing novel, The Twelve Chairs, penned by the Odessa writers Ilja Ilf and Jewgeni Petrow. Published in the late-twenties, it is one of the most amusing accounts of the turbulent conditions during the post-revolutionary period in Russia. Today, this novel is once again timely and can be taken as an allegory of the present state of the former Soviet Union.
During two additional research trips to the Ukraine I discovered what would become the film's central sites. These include Wilkowo, a small village on the Moldavian-Romanian border that with its canals resembles a miniature Venice; Nikolajew, formerly a powerful trade center at the intersection of two tributaries of the Dnjper; the Tartar villages in the mighty Kriem mountains; the elegant nineteenth century spa towns on the coast of the Black Sea that rival the resorts of the Côte d'Azur; and Odessa, with its mixture of dilapidated back courtyards, splendid passageways and descending stairways to the harbor. Every step through Odessa summoned images from Eisenstein's revolutionary film Battleship Potemkin. These geographies are not only the setting for The Twelve Chairs; they also serve as active visual structures that both constitute everyday life and trigger the action of the film's two protagonists, Ostap and Ippolit, as they pursue their quest for material wealth. The result is an exciting story woven out of a dense tapestry of characters and places that tells of yesterday and today.
The film's two main actors recall the authors of the novel, Ilf and Petrow, in a number of ways. Georgi Deliev, a native of Odessa who plays the conman Ostap Bender, is a popular actor who in his own theatre fosters the tradition of Burlesque. Furthermore, through his appearances in the television series, "Mask Show," he is widely known throughout the Ukraine. Genandi Skarga, who plays the tragicomic figure of the former nobleman, belongs to a dynasty of actors from Odessa. He not only plays roles from the classical repertory of Russian drama, but also acts in and directs contemporary American theatrical productions.

Christine N. Brinckmann, Excerpt from the catalogue of the 34th International Forum of New Cinem

Ulrike Ottinger's picaresque universe

Ulrike Ottinger quickly adopted the picaresque style. Even her early films have no psychologically sketched characters. Their structure is episodic and lacks an overall theme. Instead there is plenty of detail that temporarily binds the arranged figures into a composition until this is replaced by a new ambience, new shades, new circumstances. She also soon began incoporating satirical elements as well as a love of heterogeneity, the grotesque, the baroque.
The picaresque style is basically a form of baroque. It arose in 16th-Century Spain, not least as an ideological counterpoint to the noble aspirations and characters of the knight epic. The picaro is the hero of the lower classes, a rogue who survives by his wits and knows exactly how to profit from every situation, be it financially or amorously. He wanders through the contemporary world with a satirical eye, making and losing friends, straying from the path, having to flee and squeezing himself back into situations that are none of his business. He is clearly related to the sly trickster and the fool, who is at once both naive and clever. The picaro does not develop personally. The episodic nature of the picaresque style of storytelling alone prevents psychologising. It is open to addition and abbreviation, and its baroque richness often contains far more events than any individual could possibly experience.
Ulrike Ottinger's TWELVE CHAIRS is based on a novel that itself has picaresque traits. It transports its protagonists through the after-shocks of the Russian revolution, and we are amazed at how inventive they prove. Their country has more than its fair share of crass contrasts, chaos and asynchrony. The persona of the picaro is fanned out into a dispossessed upper-class man and a crafty crook, an unevenly matched pair united by greed and flanked by a third figure; a hapless priest. This trio attracts a bizarre group of supporting characters who react in very different (current) ways to the new social order. Ottinger has managed to transfer this material to the screen with humour and storytelling skill, keen attention to detail and an inexhaustible imagination. This is where she can apply her apsychological, eagle-eyed narrative style, create elaborate vignettes, mix poetry with action, the stylised with the absurd. Heterogeneous elements from Shakespeare, the Commedia dell'arte, "Stationendrama," tragicomedy, Gogol, Eisenstein, spaghetti Westerns, documentary filmmaking, the avant-garde and even romantic landscape painting are all woven together.
Consequently, she pulls out all the stops, and her Ukrainian cast keep up. Ottinger gives the actors ample room for spontaneity, but masters the narration in expert style. Each vignette is a surprising, accurately-applied tableau, every shot an opulent painting. The narrative rhythm is generated by a static composition that invites the eye to linger and a lively performance that could almost burst out of its structure. Overall, this corresponds to the twin movement of com-pleting a numerical task (that of searching for the twelve chairs, piece-by-piece and beyond) and unfolding within the autonomy of the individual episodes. Such structures take a lot of composing. Ulrike Ottinger's film should not have been shorter, for the picaresque spirit unfolds only in volume - and time.