
The epic roleplaying stunt Dau is now churning out epicly bad movies - nkurz
https://www.polygon.com/2020/4/23/21232719/dau-natasha-degeneration-review-russian-epic-movies-now-streaming-ilya-khrzhanovsky
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duxup
Is there more of a summary of what this film or thing ... is?

My reading comprehension sometimes escapes me, but to me the article starts
like I already know what it is talking about. So these people went about their
daily lives being constantly filmed only on set? Round the clock? They lived
there? They chose to do this?

~~~
watwut
The first paragraph seems to answer most of your questions:

> The cinematic behemoth was meant to unfold in a living, breathing three-acre
> recreation of postwar Moscow, built in the Ukrainian town of Kharkov.
> Cameras would follow hundreds of non-professional actors and thousands of
> extras day and night, as they lived life as if under the watchful eye of the
> KGB

~~~
duxup
I felt like that left more questions than answers as to how this played out
exactly. Who chose to participate, what did hey know, how do they feel about
their experience, why?

It seems like an extraordinary system like that should involve ... a bit of
elaboration.

The article seems to question more than just the quality of the film but the
treatment of the actors, and other topics, but doing so without understanding
how such a strange film was actually made seems off...

~~~
watwut
Isnt that odd information to expect from what seems to be primary movie
review?

Even if the article wants also criticise some abuse that happened, the whole
"who chose to participate, what did hey know, how do they feel about their
experience, why" still seems like too much information/expectation. Just
getting interviews and verifying them would take awful lot of work for
basically review.

~~~
duxup
Normally I don't watch a movie and think the people on screen are actually
being abused.

I feel like they raised the issues that sort of ask those questions.... did
abuse happen?

Then yeah you kinda should explore that fact or not.

~~~
watwut
They did not raised questions. They directly stated that abuses happened.

They did not went into bacstories and motivations of people who were actors or
participants.

~~~
duxup
Raise questions, directly state it. I feel like either way they should explain
that a little.

Looking at other article I'm not sure that it's a given fact or such. There
are lots of vague articles but none seem particularly factual as far as what
actually happened.

It seems strange to me to raise the question or say it happened but not
actually address if it happened and the we say discuss how "well it's a movie
review so I don't have to explain that".

~~~
ajzinsbwbs
These are good questions to ask, but I wouldn’t expect a movie reviewer to do
investigative journalism and hunt down the people from this film. It’s not
really in the job description.

~~~
Klinky
Okay then why bring up the abuse from the production at all? Just review the
film as-is? It sounds like not a very good film and the more interesting story
is the story of its making, which this article brings up multiple times
throughout.

~~~
watwut
Because it was reported by other journalists and it is relevant. It is part of
what movie is as-is.

------
tweetle_beetle
Interesting that auteur theory is being applied to the morality of the
production of film - usually it's just for artistic content. In much the same
way that it's not fair(?) to attribute the artisitic merits of a finished film
which is touched by hundreds of people to a single person, there must have
been dozens of people directly enabling or contributing to Khrzhanovsky's
abusive behaviour.

This is quite the list of participants of the film (from Wikipedia): European
Cinema Support Fund Eurimages; Arte France Cinema, Société Parisienne de
Production; WDR/Arte, Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, Mitteldeutsche
Medienförderung, Essential Filmproduktion; Swedish Film Institute, Film I
Väst, Plattform Production; Hubert Bals Fund, AG Interfilm B.V.

I wonder how a young inexperienced director was able to access such backing
with apparently so little oversight.

~~~
watwut
> I wonder how a young inexperienced director was able to access such backing
> with apparently so little oversight.

He is 45 and this is not the first movie he made. Got some prizes for
previously too. Why did you assumed he is young or inexperienced?

Plus, the above mentioned institutions wont be on the set with you.

~~~
tweetle_beetle
He was 30 when the project started, just 7 years in from his directorial
debut, with just 2 films to his name.

As far as I know, it's very unusual to be raising large amounts of money and
backing for a personal project under those circumstances.

Yes his film "4" had some critical acclaim in a few second circuit indy
festivals, but his family tree probably held a lot of sway too.

(This is all pulled from Wikipedia, happy to be corrected)

------
jarofgreen
Wasn't this the plot of Synecdoche?
[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0383028/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0383028/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0)

~~~
mistersquid
There is structural similarity between the two, but in _Synechdoche_ , Caden’s
(the director) life is the explicit subject of the intradiagetic (in-narrative
world) film. [0] The subject of the OP uses Soviet-era Russia and its
surveillance state as the (um) synechdoche to stand in for the apparatus of
the cinematic production.

To my mind, this project more closely resembles the disastrous subject of the
documentary _We Live In Public_ [1]

[0]
[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0383028](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0383028)

[1]
[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0498329](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0498329)

------
tqi
It troubles me that so much of this article is focused on how bad the films
are. If the director had succeeded in making a masterpiece, would the
conclusion have been that the ends (at least partially) justified the means?
The article briefly mentions directors whose methods we now condem but whose
work we still celebrate, but even then I felt like the message was "at least
those directors produced great art."

~~~
hilbertseries
I don’t really trust polygon for reviews of art films. Looking at some critic
reviews, it seems like Natasha the first film in Dau has had some rave
reviews. For instance the guardian gave it 5/5

[https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/feb/26/dau-natasha-
rev...](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/feb/26/dau-natasha-review-
russia-ilya-khrzhanovsky)

~~~
tqi
But does the quality of the film matter? I don't think making great art
justifies or excuses being a tyrannical/abusive artist, and feel that in
general we should have consistent standards of acceptable behavior that is
divorced from outputs.

~~~
dbspin
Of course it matters... If art has any utility at all, then its impact must be
factored into utilitarian calculations about suffering / opportunity costs and
so on.

Whether the suffering that's alleged to have taken place in its production was
'worthwhile' is an open and complex question, and its a perfectly valid moral
position to believe that it was not. But to suggest that behaviour should be
'divorced from outputs' is not a logically consistent position.

~~~
TheNorthman
I think you are a bit quick to dismiss the entirety of deontology. Could you
expand on what you mean when you say that deontological ethics ``is not a
logically consistent position.''

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rurban
Terrible movies? Critics beg to differ. Highest rankings all over.

[http://cannes-ratings.herokuapp.com/Berlinale](http://cannes-
ratings.herokuapp.com/Berlinale)

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throwanem
Zimbardo, interpreted by a wannabe Kubrick.

Are we really talking about whether a story that can only be told by
traumatizing the hell out of unwilling people is a story still worth telling?
Why assume that the story _can_ only be told that way, rather than that it
takes an incompetent hack of a director to decide that the best way to tell a
story is to just shoot a million feet of film and figure out the rest in the
edit suite? That seems to me at least as likely as the other.

I mean, it's not like we don't know how to tell stories about evil without
behaving evilly ourselves. It doesn't take a working extermination camp to
make a _Sophie 's Choice_ or a _Schindler 's List_. Even if it did, would you
think about excusing that?

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tpmx
Somehow I doubt that polygon.com is going is to provide any kind of truth
about this movie. It's like asking PETA to review a shotgun.

~~~
nkurz
What's Polygon's reputation? I posted this because I was looking for an update
on what was happening with Dau, and this was the best article I could find
with a 2020 dateline. I don't know anything about their site otherwise.

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Y_Y
Wasn't this supposed to be about Lev Landau, famous for writing physics
textbooks?

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JoeAltmaier
And, likely, lawsuits to follow. The degeneration of women, abuse of actors,
physical intimidation are being exposed in many industries and vilified. This
project next?

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cortesoft
Most ambitious art stunt in history?

I would think something like the great pyramids would be a more ambitious art
stunt.

~~~
fastball
Are tombs an art stunt?

~~~
pasquinelli
those aren't just any tombs.

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yters
Call anything art and it becomes acceptable.

