Movie Director Serebrennikov explores the abysses of Eduard Limonov

SDA

28.1.2025 - 07:00

Edouard Limonov (1943-2020) was a passionate provocateur who mutated from a punk and opponent of Putin to his admirer. Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov has dedicated a film worth seeing to this abysmal man. "Limonov: The Ballad" is screening today at the Solothurn Film Festival.
Edouard Limonov (1943-2020) was a passionate provocateur who mutated from a punk and opponent of Putin to his admirer. Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov has dedicated a film worth seeing to this abysmal man. "Limonov: The Ballad" is screening today at the Solothurn Film Festival.
Keystone

The biopic "Limonov: The Ballad" is highly recommended. The film revolves around the Russian cult figure Eduard Limonov (1943-2020), who went from punk to fascist. The work by Russian filmmaker Kirill Serebrennikov is being shown today at the 60th Solothurn Film Festival.

Keystone-SDA

The film begins with Eduard Sawenko (Ben Whishaw) living in Paris. The 1980s have turned the former factory worker, dishwasher, butler and punk poet into a smartly dressed novelist. He presents himself as casual but mysterious, and he sternly corrects anyone who mispronounces his self-chosen surname Limonov.

Having reached the middle of his life, the writer looks back on an eventful past. The most important stages are summarized by a journalist in the opening scene, an interview situation.

Arrogant rebel

Limonov was born in the Ukrainian region of Donetsk, spent the 1950s and 60s in Kharkiv and later lived in Moscow. In 1974, he left the Soviet Union, not entirely voluntarily, after several acts of rebellion and began a new life in New York. A writer has to be thrown out of his homeland in order to thrive, he romanticizes exile in the film. But there was much more to it than that.

Flashbacks show how the young Limonov, a radical leftist at the time, attracted attention with his arrogance. He trampled on rules, wrote brutal poems and was irascible. Limonov moved in artistic circles, where he always felt superior to everyone. And when he courted the love of Elena (Viktoria Miroshnichenko), he showed his physically aggressive side. The fact that he was the focus of the KGB secret service: somehow obvious.

The movie has barely begun before you feel uneasy. At the same time - as the screenplay, the 2011 novel biography "Limonov" by Frenchman Emmanuel Carrère, has already shown - the main character is captivating. Limonov provokes out of passion, first as a punk, later as the leader of the National Bolsheviks and an opponent of Putin - and suddenly as his admirer.

Intoxicating staging

Limonov's political commitment, which regularly landed him in prison, is not the main focus of the film. It is much more about his jobs, sex and other personal escapades. But the insight is enough to arouse interest in this man, who was not even stable in his political views, at least to begin to fathom them.

Perhaps this fascination with the abysmal is the reason why "Limonov: The Ballad" is recommended. It is certainly Serebrennikov's intoxicating staging. The film, opera and theater director mixes documentary excerpts with dance performances and scenes like in a music video. In this way, he contrasts art with a highly repulsive biography. And shows how art helps us to endure the horrors of the world.

*This text by Miriam Margani, Keystone-SDA, was realized with the help of the Gottlieb and Hans Vogt Foundation.