Viktor
(Ukraine/USA, 89 min.)
Dir. Olivier Sarbil
Programme: Platform (World premiere)
A bleak truth about the war that continues to ravage Ukraine is the increasing number of stories that are ripe for telling in documentary form. Over the last few years, we’ve seen dozens of them, and it’s been more than a year since we offered an overview about how so many of the best employ elements of fiction films to craft their telling.
This tragic opportunity fuels another film that fits this grim community of stories, with Olivier Sarbil’s very fine Viktor a sumptuous aesthetic achievement. Its Hollywood class sound design is one of its highlights, employed to showcase the titular single figure, a deaf war photographer, navigating the vagaries of a nation at war.
It’s no surprise that a veteran war photographer would be able to precisely hone in on such a compelling story, but the Frenchman Sarbil’s achievement goes beyond mere reportage. He uses his footage to quite literally get inside the head of his subject, employing subjective swings in the audio soundtrack to either mute or muddle what’s being perceived, bringing hearing audiences into the compromised sonic space of Viktor himself.
If this sounds a bit familiar, it’s no coincidence that it’s the same core sound team behind the stunning Sound of Metal, Darius Marder’s punky fiction feature that stormed through TIFF back in 2019—one won two Oscars including for its sonic design. Just as with that film, the deeply cinematic integration of sync sound and coherent picture is shifted, even at times broken, all to provide something both surreal and discomfiting while making sense of the nonsensical.
Viktor , provides his own baritone drawl to serve as our guide. His on-screen penchant for black and white photography is mirrored by Sarbil’s own choices, and it’s again no surprise that the director is also credited as his own cinematographer. We follow Viktor from the early days of the war, nestled in his small home with his mother, where he speaks of his late father’s lessons about “military spirit,” and how that’s reflected into a kind of code for the man. At the same time, there’s an overt fascination with The Strategy of the Samurai, Miyamoto Musashi’s famous tome by a venerated swordsman that broadly gets conflated with the bushido code.
Swinging his katana around, and reflecting upon his own desire for service, Viktor evokes another lumpy, driven, dynamic fictional character, Ghost Dog from Jim Jarmusch. Extreme situations often encourage certain levels of performance, and the murky divide here between playing the brave warrior and becoming one is detailed in an extraordinary way.
As Viktor seeks to participate in this conflict and overcome his frustrations, as his deafness compromises his desire for active duty, we see his preternatural skills on display, while honest conversations about certain impossibilities are engaged with. He’s a crack shot, to be sure, and even the trainers are somewhat shocked about how his book learning has so fitfully translated into on-the-ground competence. He eventually settles into the role of a war photographer, capturing silent images that themselves speak so much, slices of a new normalcy within the chaos of combat.
Of course, it’s not as if Viktor is suddenly some grand success, and he bemoans how he is yet to sell his photos to the world media increasingly turning away from such imagery. Yet Viktor’s images feel like those not destined for the daily grind of the photo pool but of more serious reflection, a unique perspective that benefits not only from more focussed consideration, but also perfectly fitting within the grander canvas of a documentary such as this one.
As for the soundscape, the work that Peter Albrechtsen, Nicolas Becker and Heikki Kossithe accomplish is truly stirring, mixing muted sounds in orchestral, musique concrète-like ways. The impact is immediate yet never overwhelming to the subject at hand, intensely artistic without ever succumbing to pretense.
Among the slew of producers is Darren Aronofsky, himself a filmmaker who is no stranger to the interplay between actuality and surrealism. Yet despite the experimental swings that echo Viktor’s slashing sword movements, there’s nothing indulgent at play here. The form, as overtly self-conscious as it is, makes for a perfect mode in which to get into Viktor’s headspace, to illustrate the contradictions inherent in communicating when one can’t comprehend, and finding ways to not only cope but to thrive.
Beyond any hearing ability, one of the most redolent moments where this dynamic takes place is when Viktor is finally embedded with a crew, yet he’s unable to parse their preferred language. Growing up in the Eastern part, Viktor’s native language is Russian. Through lip reading and his hearing aids, he often copes quite well, but when native Ukrainian speakers arrive at the front that there’s a breakdown in communication. Taken alone, this scene is but one facet into the fascinating and complex history of the region. It underlies both subtly and exquisitely the tragic civil nature of this particular conflict, as well as how the complicated history of something as fundamental as one’s native tongue speaks to centuries of political and social complexity in the region.
Viktor briskly and compellingly provides another remarkable, vital chapter in this era of Ukraine’s story. But beyond the specifics of the conflict, this is indeed a fascinating portrait of a main, his nature and his outlook far more universal in scope. The film manages to be both highly specific and grand at the same time, a true triumph of non-fiction filmmaking that resonates far beyond the border town that Viktor calls home.
