Feelings - CLASSICS

Original title: Jausmai

Directed by: Algirdas Dausa, Almantas Grikevičius 

Country: Lithuanian SSR (Lithuania, USSR)

Length: 91 min.

Year: 1968

Premiere: /

Availability: Klassiki

Synopsis: In 1944, Kasparas flees to his twin brother and his wife's home. His arrival with his own twins leads to a series of tensions.

RATING: 4/5

DISHARMONIES

The dodecaphonic score that accompanies, during the opening credits, the closeup shots of flies and insects that move across leaves, introduces perfectly the overall perception of the film: that of a world that is diquiet, but that underneath hints at a lost harmony. Feelings often plays with this possibility, its story could easily be of conciliation, solidarity in duress, fraternity; the opening scene with a dreamy woman, lying in the bushes and looking at clouds seems dreamy at first, but what she sees in the sky are the war planes. It is not a sense of disharmony that necessarily leads to a representation of war as a spectacular chaos. The intuition of Feelings is, instead, that it leads to absolutely nothing, no feeling.

UNSPOKEN FEELINGS

Feelings' sense of disharmony is of a stoic nature. In this drama that sees an intricate drama between two twin brothers and the wife of one - who had been a lover previously to the other - has the making for an intensity, but instead, the impression is that of coldness, of sterile relationships. Diffidence dominates interactions, while machinations occur, especially between Kasparas and Agne, the former lovers, though hardly anything emerges emotionally on the surface. Everyone has a secondary interest - Kasparas isn't bothered by being a collaborationist with the occupying germans until he is informed that his cow might get seized; Agne admits to wanting the twin children of Kasparas for herself, not having had children of her own; even the partisans, who appear almost blinded by their patriottic idealism, are more keen on their own interests than those of the three protagonists. 

STERILE WAR

The image that Feelings conveys of war's effects center mainly on its destructive effects on social institutions, rather than the more traumatic aspects that can be seen in 'The Ascent' or 'Come and See'. Warfare is nothing to be glorified, soldiers of either factions are just characters like the others of the film - though there is somewhat more sympathy for a german soldier than the russians, an aspect that is definitely partly influential in the controversial notoriety of the film. Being set at the very end, Feelings offers a glimpse at the geopolitical assimilation of Lithuania in the Soviet Union, and its disatrous effects, which is definitely the main reason why the film was heavily censored.

LITHUANIAN IDENTITY

The careers of the two co-directors were shaped by this film greatly: Dausa barely directed anything afterwards, while Grikevičius centered most of his filmography on WWII narratives. The film's emphasis on the national lithuanian identity and its hardships, the entirely open criticism at stalinist USSR that emerges in the epilogue are aspects still impressive to notice today, especially in a film from 1968. Post-Soviet Lithuanian cinema has often revisited this same context, for example with In the dusk.