It’s nice to feel like Ukrainians are living in a comedy once in a while, especially when it’s the good, thoughtful kind of comedy.
“My Thoughts Are Silent” is just that, a film both immensely fun and keenly observant about life and people in Ukraine and anywhere, really.
This oddball comedy-drama about a son and his mother on a road trip in westernmost Zakarpattia Oblast is also a rare marvel for Ukrainian cinema preoccupied lately with patriotic themes, highbrow tragedies or the opposite — vulgar humor.
While written, directed and performed mainly by newcomers to the feature film business, “My Thoughts Are Silent” has an amusing story, ingenious music and colorful sets. But its greatest strength are relatable characters who perfectly deliver a kind of deadpan humor throughout their dialogue and silence.
Having won a couple of awards at film festivals last year — the special jury prize in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic and audience prize in Odesa — the film has demonstrated that it engages both sophisticated viewers and wider audiences.
But the most evident proof of its appeal came during its wide release premiere on Jan. 14 in Kyiv, when the audience of the 1,200-seat Kyiv Rus cinema hall laughed and cheered throughout the whole movie.
The premiere in Ukraine’s largest cinema hall was a happy coincidence: in a tragicomic turn of events, the distributor transferred the screening to Kyiv Rus from the Cinema City theater in the Ocean Plaza mall. The mall was flooded after a hot-water pipe ruptured nearby the night before.
Fortune seems to favor the film at other times as well: it has won awards at every film festival where it competed and received only favorable reviews from critics so far. Even the sheer fact that the film came out so well is just an accident, says its director Antonio Lukich.
“I just wanted to tell a funny story, to go a little crazy. But it just happened that we managed to exploit some feelings: the love for parents, empathy for a tall young man who is in serious trouble,” Lukich, 27, told the Kyiv Post half-jokingly about his feature film debut.
“My Thoughts Are Silent” tells the story of 25-year-old and two-meter- tall Vadim, who works in Kyiv as a freelance sound recordist and dabbles in electronic music. Lanky and awkward, Vadim seems out of place everywhere. But he gets a lucky break: If Vadim manages to record the sounds of some animals, one rare duck especially, for a video-game company in Canada, he may land a job there.
“Vadim is a symbol of our generation,” Andriy Lidagovskiy, 27, who debuts as the main character in the feature film, told the Kyiv Post. “He’s a freelancer who can barely pay for a rented apartment, he dreams of getting out of Ukraine and he has problems with his parents. Just like everyone else.”
Lukich, who also co-wrote the screenplay, based it on a real story: His friend, a sound engineer, traveled across Cherkasy Oblast with his father to record the sounds of local animals. But the director changed two big things: His character goes to Zakarpattia Oblast and travels with his mother instead.
“I grew up in a society where strong father characters seemed to have disappeared. And strong mothers are very convincing. They are often the heads of the families,” Lukich says.
The team that made “My Thoughts Are Silent,” a comedy-drama, present the film at its release premiere at the Kyiv Rus cinema on Jan. 14. This is the first feature-length film for many of them, including the screenwriters, director, cinematographer, lead actor and producer. (Oleg Petrasiuk)
Vadim travels to his home region of Zakarpattia, where he goes on a road trip with his estranged mother, Halia, to record the animals and catch the sound of the mythical “Restless Duck,” or “Anas Rapidus” in Latin. Halia is single and becomes desperate about the prospect of a lonely old age if her son leaves for Canada.
Vadim and Halia end up in a dialogue between two generations of Ukrainians: the young, who want to follow their dreams abroad and value self-realization, and the old, who value family and a stable, “normal” life and work at home.
“You’re a fool, Vadim,” Halia tells her son in one of the scenes. “I’m not a fool, I’m a musician. I mix trap music,” Vadim responds while his mother looks at him sarcastically.
Halia is played by perhaps the most experienced member of the film’s crew — the excellent theater and film actress Irma Vitovska, a household name in Ukraine. While Lidagovskiy’s enormous figure naturally attracts the eye on screen, Vitovska, in contrast, is much shorter, but captivates with her acting, which Lukich calls “a pure rhythm.”
“It’s hard to make a funny scene. Some moments required a very timid, candid and even tragic acting, psychologically and physically,” Vitovska, 45, told the Kyiv Post. “But you try to build the scenes to be funny while experiencing tragedy inside.”
Besides the great leads, “My Thought Are Silent” pleases the eye with beautiful locations across Zakarpattia, a picturesque region in the Carpathian Mountains. The scenes benefit from the local color and dialect, lovingly brought into play by Lukich, who comes from the region.
But there are a few scenes where the film exploits stereotypes about the locals. The border guards in Lukich’s Zakarpattia are unapologetically corrupt, although still quite likable. In the most egregious case of stereotyping, a shot of Vadim’s boots being stolen on a train follows a shot of a Roma woman walking by his train compartment.
While the film is a fun ride full of surprises, the story fails to reach a moment of true bonding between Vadim and his mother, or at least some emotional closure for the main character. Instead, the ending feels rushed and disconnected from the rest of the story.
Only a song saves the climax emotionally. In the last scene, Lukich connects the modern and the traditional that conflicted throughout the movie with the Spice Girls’ pop hit “Viva Forever” sang by a choir in a church. In general, the movie’s mostly electronic soundtrack, aptly integrated into the story, deserves a special compliment.
The Ukrainian public almost unanimously praised “My Thoughts Are Silent,” and the international audience at the Karlovy Vary festival received it just as well. The only difference, Lukich says, is that while Ukrainians mostly empathize with the mother, the western public mostly sides with the son.
As for Lukich, the three years of working on the film helped him understand the mother’s point of view — the values of family and “normal” life.
“’My Thoughts Are Silent’ can be therapy for parent-child relationships. That’s why it’s a good idea to take your mom to see it,” he says.
