‘Air’: Tokyo Review

Dir: Alexey German Jr. Russia. 2023. 151mins

An airfield near the beleaguered Leningrad front, 1942. A group of young female pilots and engineers joins the fight against Nazi Germany. But the Russian planes are slower, the crew barely trained and even their radios are inferior to those of the Germans. The life expectancy of a pilot is vanishingly brief – they are like “butterflies”, says the commander, bleakly. In focusing on the women who fought alongside their male colleagues in the Second World War, the latest film from Alexey German Jr (Dovlatov, Paper Soldiers) takes a fresh perspective on a well-worn genre. But, otherwise, it’s an accomplished but far more conventional work than we might expect from German Jr, who has hitherto established himself as a master of unapologetically philosophical themes and densely detailed mise en scene.

An accomplished but far more conventional work than we might expect from German Jr

A Russian war movie is a tricky proposition commercially right now, even one which shows, in gruelling and painful detail, the horrors of conflict. But while it would be hard to argue that this is a movie that glorifies war, it does take a stirringly patriotic stance on the courage and self-sacrifice of the combatants, The comparatively formal approach and message of sacrifice for the greater good can also perhaps be viewed as an indication of the pressures facing filmmakers working within Russia right now. It is worth remembering that German Jr’s most recent films House Arrest (which premiered in Cannes Un Certain Regard in 2021) and Dovlatov (Berlin’s main Competition, 2018) were markedly more thematically challenging and subversive thematically, both dealing with individuals falling foul of the oppressive brute strength of the state. Whatever the reason for Air’s conventional tone, this is likely to be a picture that will perform most successfully domestically.

The film opens with a devastating and troubling scene; an indication of what is to come. German planes are strafing a road leading out of besieged Leningrad; on it, a convoy carrying women and children. It is brilliantly directed and powerfully staged but, with its wide shots of a tiny weeping toddler alone next to the body of its mother, it is also skirting the line where emotive tips over into manipulative. It is hardly an unusual technique in a war movie, to depict the impact of combat on the lives of innocents, thus implying a moral superiority to the side not doing that particular round of bombing. But it is a crass device at the best of times, which is here used to brutal, nuance-flattening effect.

The introduction of the fresh-faced young women and their commander Rita (Elena Lyadova) is a consummate lesson in the arbitrary nature of survival in the Russian Air Force. And, in the superb aerial sequences and the fractious bonds that grow between the women, the film finds the two engines that drive the story. One woman, Zhenya (Anastasiya Talyzina) becomes the main focus of the picture – in her combination of steeliness and fragility (she trained as a ballerina before she became a pilot), she’s a fascinating and magnetic presence. And while some of the dialogue feels rather declamatory, and Zhenya’s brief romance with a male officer, Alexey (Sergey Bezrukov), is a cursory digression, there’s authenticity in Talyzina’s pale, terrified eyes when she momentarily loses her nerve; and in the mud, despair and stench of death that sticks to everything.