Leonid is back in his village in the Ukrainian Carpathians after a smuggling trip to Poland. He is happily reunited with his wife, Olena, and their son, Nazar. But now, at the very moment when Leonid intended to give up his criminal side, a costly blunder by Nazar pushes him to accept this proverbial “last blow” which we know can only end badly.
A film about gangsters in a rural context carried by a captivating performance by Oleksandr Yatsentyuk and a no less fascinating production – his first – by Dmytro Soukholytky-Sobtchouk. Pamfir’s Oath has the pleasure of bewitching.
The title in this case refers to Leonid’s former nom de guerre, Pamfir, a word designating a type of stone. It’s appropriate since the protagonist, whatever loving spouse and father he is, exudes a raw, primal energy. Moreover, he will be, during the plot, associated with all the elements: at the base a dowser, or water diviner, he emerges at a moment from a muddy ground, teaches warlike breathing to his son… This while a fire is at the origin of his perilous mission.
Which mission is to smuggle cartons of cigarettes into adjacent Romanian territory. The problem? The smuggler must, in doing so, cross a forest over which reigns a dangerous criminal and his henchmen. This makes for a gripping fight sequence. The hyperdynamic, very fluid and immersive style of Dmytro Soukholytky-Sobtchouk, which is reminiscent of that of Park Chan-wook in his Revenge Trilogyis never put to so much use as in this passage.
Although upstream, other sequence shots, such as the one where Leonid and his mother run laughing before dropping into a pile of dead leaves, attest to a taste for visual poetry and neat compositions.
A fantastic aura
Another great quality of the film lies in the atmosphere forged by the young filmmaker. In fact, when Leonid finds his family at the beginning, we are about to celebrate Malanka in the village. During this winter carnival, men don demonic masks and straw capes, then release the destructive impulses they have repressed during the year.
Even if no supernatural event occurs, a fantastic aura hovers over the action, sometimes diffuse, sometimes palpable.
In addition to being remarkably well mastered (Sukholytky-Sobtchouk made a documentary on Malanka in 2013), this bias allows the film to access an almost surreal dimension where formal extravagance and narrative verisimilitude go hand in hand. During the forest scenes, all of bristling trunks, it’s like being in a hallucinated fairy tale…
Apart from that of Park Chan-wook, we discern here and there the influences of Andreï Tarkovski (Stalker in the burnt church, Ivan’s childhood in the woods) and Elem Klimov (Requiem for a Slaughter, through close-ups of Olena, towards the denouement). It is in the fusion of these influences, coupled with the strong artistic personality that Dmytro Soukholytky-Sobchuk clearly possesses, that the originality and the hypnotic power of the film reside.
Filmed on the eve of the conflict with Russia, Pamfir’s Oath can be perceived as a patriotic metaphor: Leonid is the proud and strong representative of Ukraine, while the vile and omnipotent mafia boss refers to Putin. This reading is defensible, but it brings the film back to considerations, however tragic, down to earth. In effect, Pamfir’s Oath transcends with fury and virtuosity the prosaic to better reach the mythical.