Full Description
KHROUSTIALOV, MY CAR! is a stunning avant-garde achievement, in lustrous black and white, by a master of Russian cinema. The action is set in the winter of 1953 in Moscow. Yuri Glinsky is a Red Army general, a brain specialist in charge of a big State hospital and the head of a large family. He spends his time between the hospital, his home and adulterous affairs accompanied by generous amounts of vodka. The state has set off a monstrous wave of anti-Semitism that will have terrible consequences. Members of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee and Jewish poets will be shot. Jewish theatres will be shut down, and Jewish newspapers will be banned. At home, the General deals with this crisis by hiding his two Jewish nieces in the closet whenever someone comes to visit. He believes his rank might protect him, but his world falls apart when he becomes embroiled in an unsavory affair. In one of the most harrowing scenes ever depicted in cinema, Glinsky is caught, tortured and raped. He is freed in time to pay a doctor’s visit on Stalin, who is on his deathbed. The film’s dense visual poetry is a metaphor for the chaos of a time when everyone is sure something catastrophic will happen, but no one can predict how, where or when.
Filmmaker Bio(s)
Alexei Gherman
FILMOGRAPHY
The Fall of Otrar (screenplay, 1990)
My Friend Ivan Lapshin (1982)
20 Days Without War (1976)
Trial on the Road (1971)
