
The poem “Porcelain War” describes the life of a Ukrainian couple engaged in two opposing activities. The driven Slava Leontyev trains local civilian fighters against Russian aggression, and together with his partner Anya Stasenko, they make porcelain and paint figurines inspired by Ukrainian flora and fauna and traditional crafts. The couple are passionate ceramic artists and dream to restore and give new life to depictions of their homeland. The title, at least hints at the difference in that consideration, while the restaurant views Leontyev and his American co-director Brendan Bellomo doing their best not to emphasize how such a stance is hard to justify, “Porcelain, we are told, is ‘delicate, yet everlasting, can be restored after hundreds of years’. In the case that the emphasis is still not clear, the couple, who provide voiceover for the film, later explain more explicitly: “Ukraine is like porcelain, it’s fragile, however, it can never be quite completely shattered.” The metaphor is clear enough, so it suffices to say in order to wrap it up. But whether it’s quite complex enough to bear a documentary of a long succession is another question. As the title symbolizes, “Porcelain War” essentially consists of opposites of which the most harrowing is most of all.
Slava and Anya enjoyed a rustic life with primitive pleasures in Crimea prior to its occupation and annexation by Russia in February of 2022. However, the movie is often quite jarring in its transitions from stunning golden hour shots of the recent past. Now they are languishing in Kharkiv, a city devastated by the war after the two made a decision to stay in the country rather than flee to safety. There, she continues her work to produce art and he uses his military skills but as part of one struggle: love amid warfare, and brutality tempered by art.
Mesmerized by this although theoretically unified dichotomy, Leontyev and Bellomo do not delve too much into the practical contradictions of everyday life or its implications on the couple’s loving union. The stark contrast between the benign chronicles of their family life (complete with the light beautiful art that follows) and blood-curdling first-hand experience of the battle into the Bakhmut frontline is striking purposely so, giving this otherwise simply conceived documentary a raw force that probably contributed to its success in winning the Grand Jury Prize award in the U.S. Documentary section. What is absent are the closer shots, the consequences surely moral and psychological, of Slava and Anya’s last standing in this extraordinary day-to-day activity routine of theirs now forced to undertake both creation and destruction.
Leontyev, for example, depicts the sensory details of his personal wartime history as an artist, more precisely, the tasks of a camera, sometimes controlled by his companion Andrey Stefanov, and the music group DakhaBrakha, which self-identifies as “ethnic chaos” and is based in Kyiv. The feeling of anxiety, which is not so easy to articulate, gives way to a focus on more poetic ideals and images. Hand-painted porcelain figurines of frogs and rabbits scattered among the trees in dense landscapes are intended to be contrasting but positive symbols of the destruction and fear of what he does today. For small items such as these, really are quite effective, or even ‘hands-on’. Much later, Slava and Anya manage to escalate the situation even further when Anya decides to paint one of the bomber drones from Saigon, which is an ominous title of a ragtag volunteer formation: We later see it in action over pinpointed Russian foot soldiers, a colorfully striped dragonfly of death.
The filmmakers utilize bountiful footage shot by the drones to capture the action of these other drones in flight and the drone warfare that ensues. It is thrilling yet disturbingly, over the top. A visual effects senior supervisor, Bellomo worked on the Sundance hit Beasts in 2012. As such he understands the shaking effects of war both on the ground level and in the air and his artistic subjects are not surprising to him. In a few of the humorously animated parts, those works of art come off the paper, and with, I should say, a bit too much of that effortless glamour that the animators call beauty.
However, Bellomo is not that kind of an acute observer or an interviewer who could elicit such raw human psychological inconsistencies out of his two leading male characters, who otherwise do not speak about it but feel it and together they feel as though exclusive proof, more inspirational, almost prayer-like than something seeking further explanation. They created a philosophy: “it is very important to smile from time to time”, Anya says of their works and adds: “I create art for myself, for this moment, for this country.” But for now, fiancée Anya is predominantly seen in the mood of a cheerful lunatic. An effective example is the affectionate image of a battle during World War II, the cute parts.
Stefanov’s frustration as a cameraman radiates in the film when his eulogy overshadows the plight of his suffering hometown. The perspectives of women coming from war-torn Aleppo are covered with thoughtful deliberation. His intermediary drawings depict incomprehensible moments of uprooting one’s family amidst chaos: fighting through a line of cars, out of gas, crossing sniper fire, and having to rush to kiss his wife and daughters goodbye as they pass through the borders. This doesn’t sit comfortably with the rest of the ethnography. It’s a harrowing testimony for its position on a sideline. At the same time, he did bear cognizance of his unscathed emotions when speaking about distance and connectivity with kids in the future, which led to the children being great, children bringing one closer to the work’s main actor, Anya. One of her statements that can be viewed while watching her images states “A refugee is a snail without a shell.” In relation to this, simile works especially well in ‘Porcelain War’, when the country is in a state of ruins. Thus one manages to reveal in full measure both times the living in a shell and living without, and yet being able to interpenetrate and even embrace themselves.
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