Review: 'Porcelain War' profiles two artists trying to maintain their work and their souls amid the destruction of the war in Ukraine
We measure war by the losses we can count — people killed, injured or displaced, or square miles of territory affected. But in the documentary “Porcelain War,” directors Brendan Bellow and Slava Leontyev show what the current war in Ukraine has cost the people in it in less tangible but still deeply felt ways.
Slava is one of the subjects in the movie, along with his wife, Anya Stasenko, and their friend, Andrey Stefanov. Slava and Anya live in Kharkiv, a city that is routinely hit by shells and missiles fired by Russian forces. They persevere in their apartment with their tiny dog, Frodo, and try to carry on with their art — sculpting and painting small porcelain figurines.
Porcelain, Slava tells viewers in a voice-over, is easily broken but never destroyed — which makes it an apt symbol for Ukraine as it nears the end of the third year of the Russian invasion.
The film shows Slava and Anya making their sculptures, and the division of labor involved. Slava creates and pours the molds to create the delicate porcelain figurines, while Anya paints them — often with intricate images of flowers and insects that she’s observed walking in the woods and meadows outside Kharkiv.
The couple takes the time to make art in the middle of a war because they firmly believe that Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin, wants to destroy Ukraine’s culture. Keeping hold of one’s culture — the art, the literature, the language — is how one keeps a country alive, Slava and Anya say, so they must keep making art.
Slava also serves in a Ukrainian special forces unit, all former civilians like him, who are tasked with flying drone aircraft over Russian-occupied areas. The drones are used for surveillance, and also to drop small bombs on Russian troops and their vehicles.
One shot in the film, in which a drone drops an incendiary bomb precisely through the top hatch of a Russian tank, is particularly harrowing. We know there are soldiers inside that tank, and so does Slava. The fact that this man, whom we have met as a peace-loving artist, would be able to cause another human’s death shows how much Ukrainians like Slava have accepted the need to commit violence to save their country.
The bulk of the movie’s documentary footage was shot by Slava, often on his iPhone, and by Andrey, who is the cameraman for Slava’s special forces unit. Other footage is captured by the unit’s drones, and by GoPro cameras mounted on their colleagues’ shoulders.
That footage captures the destruction of the war, as well as the boredom the unit has to fight off between operations — and the fear they try to hide as they get to work. The filmmakers also use the porcelain figures, with animation inspired by Anya’s painting, to illustrate Anya’s dreams for a life after the war.
“Porcelain War” shows, in intimate detail, the sacrifices Slava, Anya and Andrey have made and continue to make to defend their little piece of Ukraine. It’s also a sharp reminder that wars are fought by armies, but the living and dying is done by people just like us.
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‘Porcelain War’
★★★1/2
Opens Friday, January 3, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Rated R for language. Running time: 87 minutes; in Ukrainian, with subtitles.