Hipsters | Review

You won’t find any of the protagonists of Hipsters, a new musical period piece from Russia, singing anything like “Back in the U.S.S.R.” Set in 1955 Moscow (which is well before The Beatles sang their classic tune), director Valeriy Todorovsky (son of director Pyotr Todorovsky) has made what is perhaps the first Russian musical since the 1930s and 40s, back when the genre had its heyday in the old Soviet Union. A sugary, bebop confection with ambling historical aspirations, the film feels like a time capsule picture that came out of the glamorous studio system; lots of melodrama strained over a lot of watered down issues. But that’s not to say that, despite a hefty running time and an escapist state of mind, you won’t have a toe tapping good time.

Beginning with a group of youths known as “hipsters,” dressed in the loud, kitschy tradition of the doo-wop American youth culture, the film quickly sets up a high-strung rivalry with the culturally acceptable Communist youth when its steely, drably clothed members, hell bent on breaking up hipster parties, crash the scene. Led by the beautiful Katya (Evgenia Brik), the Communists cut hair and tear dresses. One young lady hipster, Polly (Oksana Akinshina), dashes off into the woods and hurts herself as she’s accosted by Mels (Anton Shagin). He instantly falls in love with the alluring woman, and one song and dance number later, he has transformed himself from Communist to hipster in order to pursue her, Americanizing his name to Mel, as is customary for all the hipsters. This blows the lid off Katya’s hidden love for Mels, and, upon rejecting her, she has him trounced out of the party as a traitor. As Mel becomes more entrenched in the hipster scene, he begins to fall in love with jazz, a style of music considered Western filth. Channeling the spirit of Charlie Parker, Mel picks up a saxophone and learns to play. But when Polly begins to return his affectionate feelings, she learns she is pregnant, testing their relationship and their outlet for creative expression.

As a whole, Hipsters sports an extremely high production value, its glossy, exuberant colors glowing on the screen. The bleak, pallid Communists are shown in distant, gross juxtaposition to the violent, glaring and even garish close-ups of the luminous faces of the hipster rebels. But while these hipster youth cherish everything American, the film backs off from showing the stark reality of postwar Communist Russia, where people were jailed (or worse) for “kowtowing to the Western ideal.” Behavior exhibited by these rebellious youths that may look like bravery to today’s Western audiences, was, in fact, more often foolhardy and dangerous. Pregnant unwed mothers, interracial liaisons and ridiculous hair all seem like scandalous slices from a Nicholas Ray or Douglas Sirk flick, but cultural attitudes of the time period are definitely downplayed, and to the films detriment. And while it does feature quite a number of well orchestrated song and dance numbers, they tend to feel like filler rather than showstoppers or narrative devices (with two exceptions being when one character is being prepared to work for the Russian embassy in the USA, and the other when Mel is drummed out of the Communist party).

And while all the performers are glossy and competent enough, they tend to suffer from the regular genre blunder of looking like they’re obviously mouthing the words to songs, especially those involving rigorous physicality. On the other hand, of considerable note is the talented Oksana Akinshina, who many will recognize as the ill-fated Lilya from Lukas Moodysson’s Lilya 4-Ever(2002), standing out here as the petulant and rebellious. Todorovsky’s film takes pains to allude to the power of being outside the norm and much is made by the hipsters about how good it is to be different. Sure, they’re markedly different from the Communists, but the hipsters are just as interchangeable with one another. Because it strays away saying anything very serious, we can’t take any of its characters very seriously, and thus both them and the film itself feels like a rather superficial treatise on the power of what it means to be different. And while Hipsters is certainly entertaining, it’s definitely too light on plot and substance to register as anything more than the musicals and the passions it pays homage to.

When one character comes back from the USA and announces that “there are no hipsters actually walking down Broadway,” Mel reacts angrily. While it’s obvious his friend has become a member of a different party (a Capitalist!), he tells Mel, “the freer the person, the simpler the outfit,” an allusion to the fact that the label, in America, means more than the clothing itself. But none of them seem to realize that the freer the person, the less they concern themselves with emulation, labels, and the ideals of everyone else.

Rating 2.5 stars