Mark Reviews Movies: FIREBIRD

Firebird, Roadside Attractions

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Review by Mark Dujsik | April 28, 2022

The story of Firebird depends on us believing, understanding, and genuinely feeling the central romance. If that doesn't come through, there's little reason to care about what befalls this pairing, beyond the fact that their longing and misery are caused by a culture and a legal system that see their relationship as something to be despised and illegal.

That's a necessary point to make, of course, especially since co-screenwriter/director Peeter Rebane finally frames this tale of socially forbidden love during the 1970s and '80s of the Soviet Union within the context of laws adopted by Russia in the 2010s. As much as things seem to change, the underlying problems remain. One doesn't need much of a primer in the history and politics of post-Soviet Russia to see that idea in practice.

Much of this tale, though, takes place in Soviet-occupied Estonia, and it follows a young, low-ranked soldier in the Soviet Air Force and the officer who catches his eye at first and, soon after, his heart. The screenplay, written by Rebane and star Tom Prior, suggests that this love is the be-all and end-all for Prior's Sergey Serebrennikov, the private who must keep his sexual orientation a secret and his affair with the pilot even closer to his chest. The main issue, perhaps, is that the script is so busy setting up obstacles and complications for these two that the movie never bothers to convince us of their love in the first place.

The story—based, to some degree or another, on the true one of a man named Sergey Fetisov—begins in the late 1970s, with Sergey, a country boy serving a two-year conscription into the military, caught up in an intentionally unconvincing romantic triangle with Luisa (Diana Pozharskaya) and his friend Volodja (Jake Thomas Henderson). The three, all assigned to the same base, often sneak away for some night-swimming at a nearby beach, and while Volodja pines for Luisa, everyone assumes she and Sergey are destined for love.

Enter Roman Matvejev (Oleg Zagorodnii), an ace pilot assigned to fly vital escort missions of nuclear weapons into Russia. Sergey is clearly smitten with the handsome officer, which we can tell from the long and loaded stares he points in Roman's direction. After they connect over a shared hobby of photography, the lengthy and pointed stares become a shared hobby, too.

Quickly, the stares become personal conversations, a trip to the ballet, a stolen kiss in the forest while hiding from soldiers, and late nights of sex at the beach (where a couple of jets amusingly fly overhead at the climax of passion) or in Roman's private quarters. Such scene possess about the same depth as the shots of the two men staring at each other, which doesn't bode well for the inevitable turn of this plot.

Sergey suggests the two run away together, but Roman is a patriot, who can't imagine leaving his homeland. When Major Zverev (Margus Prangel) receives an anonymous report that Roman is sexually involved with an enlisted man on the base, the pilot puts an end to the affair in order to protect Sergey.

The rest of the story more or less keeps Sergey and Roman separated as months, then years, and then some more units of time pass. Sergey sets out to fulfill his lifelong dream of becoming an actor, where he is apparently chaste, having been ruined for any other romantic or sexual prospect by the man who loved and left him. This seems unlikely, given that Roman isn't the first man Sergey has loved (The fate of that first is a detail he holds a secret—until the revelation is intended to do a lot of heavy lifting in regards to the importance of the central relationship). More importantly, there's also the fact that their romance is so rushed here that the years of pining for Roman never really registers.

Meanwhile, Roman remains at his post, and at least one of those rumored office romances comes to pass As a result, whatever could or might become of a reunion between Sergey and Roman is going to be complicated by their respective loyalties to that third party.

In case it isn't clear, Rebane and Prior's screenplay bypasses all of its potential aims and approaches—developing a sincere and intimate bond between these characters, forming a relationship that could come into conflict based on disparate goals and philosophies, dissecting the politics of the military and the ones of the Soviet Union that put these two men and so many more in this impossible position—for simple, straightforward melodrama. Matters and events—family, the government, a surprise visit—become more vital to what happens in this story and between Sergey and Roman than the characters themselves.

Obviously, that's primary intention of Firebird, since it's about how much in this time and place come between these two men and their potential for happiness, as well as bring the tale toward inevitable tragedy. Without a real sense of these characters or their bond, though, the whole affair is too hollow to be effective or affecting.

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