FILM REVIEW: "The Whisperer" by Andrea Odezynska (10/16/05)

FILM REVIEW: "The Whisperer" by Andrea Odezynska

by Jennifer Wollerman

When the Yara Arts Group visited a small village in Ukraine several years ago to research and collect traditional Ukrainian songs, Andrea Odezynska, a frequent collaborator of the group, tagged along as videographer to informally document the process. We soon learn in her intensely personal and moving short documentary, that she had another reason for being there: she was a refugee from frustration and disappointment in her own life.

The opening sequence takes us to a remote region of western Ukraine, near the Carpathian Mountains. The newly arrived band of Americans is greeted by a gathering of village elders assembled loosely into a kind of octogenarian chorus line, and who are, apparently, the keepers and resident expert performers of the folkloric music the researchers have come to hear. And the villagers are eager to demonstrate. With broad smiles all around, both performers and audience seem to acknowledge the hint of lunacy in this moment.

The visitors are invited to a wedding where they will be assured of hearing hours of traditional songs, although even this will not be enough for the ancient ones. They complain that things have changed and they talk of the old traditions, which included much more singing on such occasions. As we get to know the town's characters and traditions, the songs are ever-present and spontaneous, as is the narrative.

Just as we begin to feel that it's time for the songs themselves to take over the storytelling for a while, the filmmaker's fluid and relentless flow of narrative sweeps us around a bend in the river, leaving the story of collecting songs behind and moving into much deeper water.

We learn that there is a connection between the old folk songs and medicine, and that the best singers are sometimes also healers. The village happens to have such a healer, and the travelers are urged to visit her. Each of them will have a healing session with Baba Anna and Ms. Odezynska is permitted to film one of them.

Baba Anna does not have a mystic quality about her. She is, as Ms. Odezynska puts it, rather "down to earth." But her faith is real and her methods are excruciatingly detailed and ritualistic.

Nature is her partner, and in one of the film's most interesting sequences we learn about the "tools" of her trade. The chrysanthemum flower is used for healing women (or for helping them to find a boyfriend). Garlic has teeth; "he bites." The egg - "she" also is for healing women, and Baba Anna has eggs in two colors, one for blondes and one for brunettes. Her other simple tools include a bowl, a spoon, a knife, wax and water.

And then there's God, on whom Baba Anna calls for strength. Her method is part divination, part banishment (of evil spirits) and part psychology. She's also known to give more practical prescriptions such as hot baths and shots of vodka.

Ms. Odezynska's recounting of her session with Baba Anna, which she had greeted with no small degree of skepticism, culminates in an emotional climax that rises so quickly and overwhelmingly that it seems to come out of nowhere and yet has been carefully built from the opening moments of the film. As Baba Anna gives her a lasting image of herself as a vessel of overflowing joy - an image previously elusive to the filmmaker - the seed of healing has been planted.

Alternating between scenes of the "old country" and "talking head" sequences in which the filmmaker tells her story to the camera, this is a hybrid experience - part documentary, part personal odyssey. Using a typical documentary structure that moves from the general to the specific, this film makes that arc twofold: as we venture deeper inside the world of these country folk and learn the intricacies of their resident healer's methods, we are at the same time drawn deeper into the filmmaker's personal story.

As if to enhance the fluidity of the transitions, the film is rich with water imagery. From the images of rain-streaked windows through which we first see the narrator/filmmaker, to the special water collected from streams used in Baba Anna's rituals (which must be poured out in a remote place by the healed three days after their session), to the tears that well in the filmmaker's eyes, to the powerful central image of the film, a life-giving stream that explodes jubilantly as it fills and overflows the shallow vessel of a spoon, water is the irrepressible force behind the story.

Ms. Odezynska's trademark and gift as a storyteller is the casual humor that allows her to deliver a documentarian's detail without being tedious and to explore emotional terrain that most couldn't touch without moving into sentimentality. Her eye is drawn irresistibly to the incongruous and the ridiculous, and her frank narrative style is both disarming and respectful - all of which have a way of highlighting the humanity in her story.

Kathryn Barnier, the film's editor, was clearly a crucial partner in the storytelling. A triumph of editing, the film is pieced together from informal filming in Ukraine and after-the-fact video including, most conspicuously, the interview segments. Shot entirely on video, the slight graininess appropriately adds to the dreamscape quality of the "film." Together, filmmaker and editor have woven a richly textured, surprising and satisfying journey. This "video" is first-class filmmaking.

DVDs are available for purchase by sending an e-mail to AndreaO@erols.com.

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