FIREBIRD
Directed by Peeter Rebane
Roadside Attractions, et al.
EVEN AS RUSSIA is invading Ukraine and committing war crimes there, Firebird has landed, a film about the smoldering story of two soldiers in the Soviet Air Force at the height of the Cold War in the late 1970s. Against all reason, the two men plunge into a perilous love affair, committing a crime that was punishable by five years of hard labor.
Based on the true-to-life memoir by Sergey Fetisov, his character Sergey Serebrennikov (played by Tom Prior) is a young private who’s weeks away from completing his obligatory military service in the Soviet Air Force in Estonia. He dreams of becoming an actor in Moscow. He works with Luisa (Diana Pozharskaya), an ambitious secretary to the base commander. She is secretly in love with Sergey, but when dashing lieutenant ace fighter pilot Roman Matvejev (Oleg Zagorodnii) arrives on the base, both Sergey and Luisa are attracted to him.
Sergey and Roman connect over their shared interest in photography, a not-so-veiled platform for gazing at men. Roman takes Sergey to a rehearsal of Stravinsky’s The Firebird, which gives the movie its title and becomes a metaphor for the struggle between duty and desire. They share a passionate kiss. Later, they engage in sexy underwater shenanigans during a clandestine midnight skinny-dip in the Baltic Sea, their moans at climax drowned out by two fighter jets with their howling sonic boom overhead in what must be one of gay filmdom’s most erotic scenes.
A year later, Sergey is in Moscow pursuing acting (heeding Roman’s advice to follow his heart), and he encounters Luisa, who informs him she is marrying Roman. Sergey dutifully attends the wedding. When the two men meet a few months later, Roman announces that Luisa is pregnant. Once again, they go their separate ways. Years later, on a training course in Moscow, Roman looks up Sergey on a whim, and this time sparks fly and they resume their secret affair. Risking everything, can they find a way to remain together?
One critic described Firebird as what happens when Brokeback Mountain meets Top Gun—and there’s probably a nod-and-a-wink to both of these movies in Firebird. However, Firebird is also informed by the work of Douglas Sirk, the 1950s German-born Hollywood director (All That Heaven Allows, Written On the Wind, Imitation of Life) with their similar melodramatic plot elements, a visual sumptuousness expressed in saturated Technicolor-like images (thanks to cinematographer Matt Maekivi), and a glamorous, carefully crafted production design with exacting period detail.
Writer-director Peeter Rebane’s dialogue has its clunky moments, as when silence or understatement might have been more effective than talk. The Luisa character, so pivotal in the buildup, is almost forgotten in the second half of the film. But these lapses pale in light of the electric chemistry between Prior and Zagorodnii, which propels the narrative from start to finish.
Though Firebird is set 45 years ago, viewers will realize that the same repressive system is still destroying lives; little has changed. The film focuses less on politics than on how authoritarian regimes impact ordinary people’s lives, crushing love and inflicting pain and suffering on everyone it touches. And yet, even in such a hostile society, even when the odds are stacked against them, people can still find love.
Firebird urges us to treat other people, including those who are different from ourselves, with openness, respect, and empathy. In this period of catastrophic wars abroad and our own bitterly divided country, this inclusive message is one that we ignore at our peril. Within its swooning context of two dreamy, stunning leads, Firebird succeeds as a bittersweet gay male love story in the tradition of Brokeback Mountain or Call Me By Your Name.
Note: Actor Oleg Zaorodnii is from Ukraine and, despite the war, is doing fine. He’s in constant communication via WhatsApp with both Prior and Rebane.
Brian Bromberger is a freelance writer who works as a staff reporter and arts critic for The Bay Area Reporter.
