Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Mara Tamkovich
Starring: Aliaksandra Vaitsekhovich, Valentin Novopolskij
There's a moment in Mara Tamkovich's poiltical drama Under the Grey Sky in which two beleaguered activists are slightly revitalised at a
low point by mouthing along with the lyrics of a Soviet era Belarusian pop
song. The song speaks of being a product of a country known for grey
skies, potatoes, black bread and other unremarkable details, but deciding
to stick around when many others might leave such a glum place. Like the
song, Tamkovich's movie is about what it means to love your country, even
when it seems your country doesn't love you back. If it appears the land
you grew up in is going to the dogs, do you up and leave or stay and fight
to improve things?
That's the question Lena (Aliaksandra Vaitsekhovich) and her
husband Ilya (Valentin Novopolskij) wrestle with. The couple
are journalists who find their profession untenable in Lukashenko's
Belarus, but rather than leave they're determined to stay, believing it's
their duty to document the horrors of life under the brutal regime.
Lena and Ilya are slightly fictionalised versions of real life Belarusian
journalists Katsiaryna Andreyeva and her husband Igor Ilyash,
who found themselves in the same situation in 2020 when Katsiaryna
was arrested for livestreaming an anti-government protest.
Tamkovich opens her film with a reenactment of that event, as Lena
broadcasts to the world from the hidden vantage point of an apartment
overlooking a Minsk square teeming with protesters. When the police get
wind of the livestream they begin banging on doors in search of the
culprit. It's a nerve-wracking sequence, with Tamkovich evoking untold
terrors to come from that thud of a gloved fist on an apartment door. Lena
is so resigned to being caught that she piles on extra layers of underwear
in anticipation of a stay in jail.
Lena's belief that she will simply have to spend a week or so behind bars
proves naive as the regime becomes determined to make an example out of
the rebellious journo. As her prison stay is extended and her fearful
lawyer drops her case, it's left to Ilya to lead a fruitless campaign to
free his wife. When the authorities propose clemency if Lena agrees to lie
on camera and accept responsibility for organising the protest, Ilya
attempts to convince his wife to betray her principles for the sake of her
freedom.
As a snippet of life in a totalitarian state, Under the Grey Sky is certainly effective. Every knock on a door, every mysterious
parked van sends a shiver down the spine. Lena and Ilya are easy to get
behind, unless your're a fascist that is, but the film is only interested
in what they represent rather than who they are. It's an issue that dogs
many a political film more interested in making a point than telling a
story and crafting three dimensional characters. Lena is off screen for
most of the film, her prison experience represented solely by her
increasingly tired appearance each time she receives a visit by Ilya. We
spend most of the film with Ilya, yet he never feels whole, merely a
cypher who is representative of an ideal. Given the subject matter, it
doesn't help the anti-fascist cause when a film is this single-mindedly
propagandistic.
