It's a rare film that draws your attention to what is not onscreen. While watching the Russian movie Cargo 200, a deadpan horror film set in the twilight of the Soviet era that looks to have been shot in a lesser developed Pittsburgh, I was captivated by the missing elements to which filmmaker Alexey Balabanov draws our attention. Humanism, morality, and personal responsibility are banished from every frame of his movie along with God, regard for the environment, and a basic belief in civil society. Da, survivors would agree. Such was life in the final rotting years of the communist experiment.
All of your typical indicators of a collapsing system are here. We see inefficient government administration, backroom dealings, underground economies, an untenable war, and the fetishization of propaganda symbols by the younger generation. The end is clearly neigh. Like anything well-intended, what starts off as a seemingly innocent story of young people making the best of their dealt hand quickly turns into I Know What You Did Last Summer at the Dacha. From the younger generation's underground reel-to-reel dance parties to the older folks who see a religious city on the hill, the growing immoral chasm between the haves and the have-nots is doing strange things to the Russian soul.
Cargo 200 is not only set in 1984, but designed to look like it was made in that era despite its 2007 release date. The movie further enhances its off-kilter tone by meandering between characters and subplots, each more gruesome than the last. It's the same effect as letting your eyes wander across a Bosch painting. Balabanov, who made his name with the hard-hitting 1997 Russian prison classic Brother, doesn't just kick a dead horse, he blows it up and urinates on the pieces. I could list the gross indignities that the characters in the film endure, but that would ruin the fun. What tempers the grand guignol is the outlandish decay that seems to inhabit every sputtering facet of the communist machine. Factory smokestacks spew pollution, bathroom walls drip with slime, and drunk grannies watch black and white variety shows on the television without caring to find out the source of the flies that have overpowered the room. And there's the title, a euphemism for the returning cadavers of the Afghan war. If you've ever thought that Requiem For A Dream was a tad too uplifting, Cargo 200 may be the movie for you.
