It’s summer in Ukraine. The trees in the gardens and parks seem to be exploding green, the sun is shining in the courtyards of the magnificent Soviet buildings. On a dark theater stage in Kyiv, five young Ukrainians shout in each other’s faces. They speak of understanding and anger, of their comrades’ bodies and of their first rifle.
It is 2021. At that time nobody expected a large-scale Russian invasion. The war in Donbass has been raging for years, at the same time it was very close and far away. On the theater stage, the young people ask questions that are not otherwise asked: What is that, a war? A body? What is Ukraine anyway? What is all this doing to us? It is a double art project: a theatrical production inspired by scenes from Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” and Heiner Müller’s “Hamletmaschine” and a film by Polish directors Elwira Niewiera and Piotr Rosołowski, who filmed during rehearsals.
Understanding quickly reaches its limits in war. Under the guidance of the theater director Rosa Sarkissjan, the five young Ukrainians try to find answers to this present, which is so difficult to grasp. They are trying to understand what is going on in their country, which is threatening to be torn apart between Russia and Europe, between the older generation, who still know the Soviet era, and the younger generation, who dream of the West and still want to be something of their own because they know that for them Europe is ultimately just the alternative to the Soviet Union. You can feel the narrowness and the fear when these young people in front of the camera and on the stage try to find an expression for what happened to them and what is going on in their minds.
Captured as a woman? Better die then
There is Katya, who volunteered for the army in 2014 and fought in Donbass. The film begins with images and sounds from the war. Tracer bullets fly through the night, screams can be heard over crackling radios, people can hardly be made out in the darkness. Katya knows how it feels to be in the middle of a fight like this. She says she always kept one of the hand grenades back and carried it right under her heart, in a breast pocket. This grenade was not intended for the enemy. As a woman, she did not want to be taken prisoner under any circumstances. She says her comrades died fighting for Post 32. She has deep scars on her arm.
How do you actually hold a gun? The soldier Katya (right) shows it to the actress Oxana.
(Photo: Scout Film Production/dpa)
Actress Oxana did not fight. She wants to talk about feminism. But is that still possible after Katya’s story? Who cares about the greatest injustice when a woman who always carried a hand grenade spoke beforehand? The war seeps into every area of society, it fills in all the gaps and at the same time dissolves what was connected. Later, Katya says that when she went to the front, there were no uniforms for women. Her mother didn’t want her to fight for her country. Some blamed the soldiers for the war.
Some also heal under enemy fire
The character of Hamlet is central to this exploration of Ukrainian society, as the Prince of Denmark has also been betrayed of his future and his life because he too sees ghosts and notices that something is rotting in his country. Even the hackneyed “to be or not to be” takes on new weight when these young Ukrainians quote it on stage. You can feel that when the nervous paramedic Roman tries not only to talk about the war, and yet he can only talk about the war.
Behind it lurks the question of what that actually is, being? Rodion re-enacts the scene of Hamlet talking to the skull of the jester Yorick in the graveyard. He wears a full beard with long hair dyed blond. The young man fled Donbass not only because of the war, but also because of his conservative mother, who does not want to accept his homosexuality, and the local police, who threatened to beat and rape him. The Yorick skull is the head of a mannequin in Rodion’s interpretation.
Its history shows that the war seems more complex than just deepening the rifts in Ukrainian society. Some also heal. Rodion, for example, became friends with Slavik and even became his child’s godfather. Slawik is also a soldier and tells how his opinion on the subject of homosexuality has completely changed since he met Rodion. Between rehearsals, the filmmakers show how Katya, Rodion and the others confront their parents with these generation-to-generation questions. Nothing remains unsaid.
They didn’t know the pistols were unloaded
That the war brings people together – that’s exactly what the attackers and the separatists in the East don’t want. Slawik tells how he was captured in 2015. There are recordings of it, the filmmakers show them: Slavik tied up and with a white blindfold. Then he talks on the theater stage about mock executions – how the separatists forced the prisoners to shoot comrades if they didn’t all want to be killed. They didn’t tell them the pistols weren’t loaded.
Ukraine is not just war, and at the same time it is currently unthinkable without this war for its independence. In the film and on stage, the many interconnections, the wishes and concerns of the people, the whole violence of the present can be felt – like air that is pressed out of the lungs by a blow. And then the air comes back, and with it the words and the stories, the theater and the cinema, which make it possible to understand everything. But it’s not quite that far yet.
Katya, Slavik and Roman have been fighting for the Ukrainian army again since Russia attacked a year ago. Rodion sews uniforms. Oxana fled to Poland.
The Hamlet Syndrome. Poland, Germany 2022 – Direction, script and camera: Elwira Niewiera and Piotr Rosolowski. Real fiction, 85 minutes. Theatrical release: January 19, 2023.