“Porcelain War” is remarkably different from its Ukrainian relative “Honeymoon” I watched earlier this month at The 65th Thessaloniki International Film Festival”. “Honeymoon” was the story of two Ukrainian artists, newly married, trapped in their flat surrounded by the Russian army. It was a film of fear and desperation. “Porcelain War” is a story of defiance through both art and military action.
Slava and Anya are husband and wife artists in Kharkiv working with porcelain. Slava crafts the porcelain figurines while Anya paints them. Slava trains riflemen, all civilians, while with his unit named Saigon, he patrols the perimeter around Kharkiv and through drone usage fells invading Russian troops and destroys their tanks. The Russian military strategy is to consume its infantry like fuel substantiated by the recent Russian directed documentary “Russia at War” which was strangely subject to Ukrainian protest during the last Toronto International Film Festival.
Anya notes porcelain is fragile and everlasting with an analogy to Ukraine as it is easy to break but impossible to destroy. The porcelain figures of Slava and Anya are shown throughout the film both in combat and in peaceful and nonthreatening locations. Through animation on the porcelain figures themselves the stories of the Ukrainian war are told.
Through actual footage the brutality of combat and the toll on both Russian soldiers and Ukrainian civilians is captured in a gruesome fashion. The destruction of Ukrainian infrastructure and the hellhole of Bakhmut is also captured.
For Slava and Anya art is resistance and through it the Ukrainian people can avoid elimination. If you destroy art in effect, you destroy a country’s identity.
The documentary is powered by the eccentric, bizarre, powerful and captivating music of Dakhabrakha. It will have a 6December2024 theatrical release in Toronto and Ottawa then move to Vancouver on 29December2024 and thereafter to other Canadian cities.
RKS 2024 Film Rating 85/100.
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