Leningrad, the early 1980s: the Soviet Unions stranglehold on its citizens continues, glasnost is not even a glimmer in Gorbachevs eye and it feels as if the Party will never end. The one thing that does seem to be thriving, however, is the citys underground rock scene, albeit one with a crowd stifled by authoritarian apparatchiks. (A fan tries to hold up a homemade sign for her favorite rock band. A man in a suit shuts down this oh-so-revolutionary action down ASAP.) The applause-ometer may never allowed to go above polite in the state-sanctioned club, but this is the micro-kingdom that Mike Naumenko (Roman Bilyk) reigns over. The lead singer and guitarist for Zoopark, his band plays a glammed-up version of garage rock that treats the Stones, Stooges and Sex Pistols as the holy trinity. All sunglasses and shag hairdo, Mike is the most charismatic frontman in the Eastern Bloc. Imagine Joaquin Phoenix playing the Brian Jonestown Massacres Anton Newcombe. Youre almost there.
Mick Jagger wouldnt get you, someone sarcastically sneers at Mike. He doesnt have Natasha, he replies. Thats his girlfriend and the mother of his child; as played by Irina Starshenbaum, shes the rock stars Rock of Gibraltar. Everything seems hunky dory in their world until two men, guitars slung over the backs, waltz into an afternoon beach hang. One of them, Viktor Tsoi (Teo Yoo), turns out to be a hell of a songwriter. Soon, the whole gang is joyfully screaming along to his catchy anti-conformist tribute to beer-swilling slackers everyone except Mike. He doesnt know whether Viktor is a rival or a worthy protg. As for Natasha, shes pretty sure from the moment she bums a smoke from the new kid that she wants to get to know this young, long-haired Bowie obsessive better.
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If you know the story of these real-life Soviet-rock icons, then Leto works as a wonderful stream-of-conscious biopic riff, one thats more interested in tangents than hitting every gamechanging gig and Eureka! moment. But its almost better if you go into director Kirill Serebrennikovs nitrous hit of nostalgia cold; its easier to concentrate more on the gorgeous, grungy, achingly sad memory piece elements. Filmed in black and white with occasional Kodachrome-ish snippets thrown in maximum remember-when effect kudos to cinematographer Vladislav Opelyants, who also shot Serebrennikovs brilliant gut-punch The Student (2016) this look back at Brezhnev-era below-the-radar rockers brims with the rush of rebellion. The camera likes to circle, tag along and try to keep pace with the characters, as if its just another crazy twentysomething high on the illicit narcotic of freedom. Occasionally, people will suddenly, collectively break into song, warbling The Passenger or Perfect Day or Psycho Killer (the latter by, we are told, Heads That Talk). The visuals temporarily switch to what you could call Early 80s Music Video Chic. A bespectacled representation of the repressed Id (Aleksandr Kuznetsov) keeps informing us during these interludes that This didnt really happen.
The whole thing is a blast, which doesnt mean you dont sense that the stakes are high or that the tension between this threesome isnt threatening to smother a great creative collaboration in the crib. When Viktor has to submit his lyrics to the Leningrad Rock Clubs in-house censor, you can feel him chafing. And when Mike convinces her to let his friends group play because theyre a comedy band, very satirical, you understand that smuggling in these subversives with their cutting folk-rock ditties is the next step in this scenes evolution. Hearts get broken, and love triangles skew their corners, and people become disillusioned. Some become famous and others learn to be forgiving. But the music must go on.
Leto translates roughly to Summer; it not only provides the name of the movies breeziest earworm song (Sun is out, and Im fried/No money, but Ive got time/And I dont need money anyway) but the sense that a fleeting moment is being celebrated even as its passing quickly by. Its an ode to the importance of rock and roll as a symbol, a promise, a lifeline in a clamped-down society. And its also a valentine to how that forbidden fruit gave a subculture of Soviet youth a sort of tribal identity a flipped bird to call their own. The fact that Serebrennikov has made such an intoxicating, invigorating movie about freedom percolating under a past toxic regime while having his own rights trampled upon in the present makes the look back that much more ironic. But it doesnt dilute the joy of experiencing it, one three-chords-and-the-truth number at a time.
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