New to DVD and VOD this week: ILYA AND EMILIA KABAKOV: ENTER HERE
Amei Wallach’s portrait of a pair of influential Russian conceptual artists made its debut at the Moscow Biennale in 2013. It screened at NYC’s Film Forum, and also was included in events such as the Vancouver International Film Festival and Montreal’s Festival of Films on Art.
Wallach’s ambitious but flawed film ostensibly focuses on a massive retrospective of the titular husband and wife team’s work held in 2008 in Moscow, but constantly undermines itself by overreaching. While biographical details are essential for an artistic team that is likely not well-known outside of the art world cognoscenti, these too frequently are presented in utterly conventional ways that rob the energy and interest in the subjects and their intriguing work – the construction of multiple, complex life-size installations in various locations around the Russian capital, the first time the pair have worked in their native country since they left the USSR in the late 1980s. Supposed creative flourishes just end up looking cheap, such as the unfortunate repetitive use of gauzy superimposed talking heads over random scenes, subtitles which snake around the screen in different spots, the distracting use of dubbing vs subtitling for some subjects for no discernible reason, the overdramatic enacted voiceover of letters from Ilya’s mother, and sweeping shots of the artwork that barely allow viewers a chance to take any of it in. While Ilya and the strangely sidelined Emilia have clearly had a fascinating career – and one whose intersection with the social, artistic, and political history of Russia lend it significant weight – the film seems a missed opportunity to explore it.
what (not) to doc 