Oleg y las raras artes

Just like his compositions that mix consonance and dissonance, Oleg Nikolaevich Karavaichuk is an ever-changing character in this affectionate portrait, which retains a certain mystery. When the androgynous octogenarian passes through the corridors of the Hermitage Palace to sit at Tsar Nicholas’s magnificent piano, his remarks on the contrast between the snow-covered streets of Saint Petersburg and the architectural and historical force of the place set the tone of the film: each digression in his conversation and music is anchored in the intensity of his feeling for textures and matter. So Oleg concludes a political anti-Putin lament with a note of olfactory melancholy: “Why does the fruit at the market no longer have a smell?” What indeed, in today’s Russia, no longer touches the senses, or even the sentiments? The pianist, who wrote scores for Sergei Parajanov and Kira Muratova, sometimes seems almost delirious, but above all he incarnates in a single body his country’s recent upheavals. The disaffection he mentions is echoed by the splendid shots of his deserted dacha, where the library is intact but for a Lenin lying forgotten on the floor. With his high-pitched voice and often tactile metaphors, this artist – who seems to have traversed the centuries – is in himself a Russian ark. (Charlotte Garson)