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#Katya and Sofia literally own my heart
dr-rato · 1 year
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I’m sorry but Goncharov has got me on a chokehold
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artemis-pendragon · 1 year
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Red and White: A meta analysis of color and the subversion of morality in Martin Scorsese's Goncharov (1973)
Katya Goncharova
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By now everyone knows that Katya is the Woman in White. Aside from the obvious ghost/haunting implications of this color scheme, white can be used to signal purity, something Katya should, by all accounts, have left far behind.
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So is this a subversion of a cliche and outdated ideal of purity (although not at the time of the film's creation, making this possibility even more daring and subversive), or is there another meaning? Virginity and innocence are only two types of purity. There is also love, and the complex purity that often accompanies it. Katya is, at her heart, a very emotional and loving person. She may not show it as openly or loudly as Sofia, but it's undeniably there: her love for her husband, and, of course, for Sofia.
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It's also an interesting departure from the red/black femme fatale/black widow color schemes of Soviet women spies and assassins in films made around the same time. Katya is a killer and a player in this deadly game, yes, but at her core she wants so desperately to be a good person, to escape the life her husband has condemned himself to. Katya hopes, against all odds, that love can redeem her. Perhaps her insistence on always wearing white is meant to hint at her longing for innocence and purity, even though her hands are already stained red.
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Love and its complexities, as well as the discussion of traditional red and black color schemes used for femme fatales brings me to
Sofia
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Sofia is both Katya's foil and mirror. She challenges Katya's morality by upholding her own, living off a value system that, while twisted in its own way, is ultimately one of the strongest moral compasses in the film. Her descent into the role of killer is not only Katya's doing; Sofia was destined for bloodshed long before they even met, and only comes into her own as a real player after the cocktail scene. This is demonstrated through Sofia's red and black color scheme, which, as I mentioned earlier, is typically associated with femme fatales and black widows.
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However, Sofia also wears white, notably at the end of the film after the Boat Scene, after her descent into destruction and The Life. This shot is especially powerful, as it uses a red backdrop to emphasize the change that Sofia has gone through, and her merging with Katya while also retaining her own history and morality.
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While she starts out as Katya's foil, over the course of the film the two women begin to merge, their twisted morality aligning until Sofia's femme fatale false persona become her truth. It is only then that she comes into her own and begins wearing white, and, interestingly, that half white/half red color pink: the mixed feelings and emotions of a changing woman.
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Ultimately, color plays a critical role in Goncharov, especially in the portrayal of Sofia and Katya and their complex, emotional, and ultimately tragic joined fate. Sofia loses the vibrant reds and deep blacks of her scheme after the Cocktail Scene, which is when it seems that she's finally accepted her feelings for Katya and lost herself to that lifestyle. She has spilled blood, and the red of her clothes becomes the red on her hands.
For example, this is Sofia's outfit before and during the Boat Scene:
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This is her outfit directly before the Cocktail Scene:
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Tumblr won't allow me to add another image (reached my limit ranting it seems lol) but in Sofia's final scenes, she is seen in all white, just like Katya.
Winter has, truly, come to Naples, and it has swept Sofia up in its bitter white embrace--the embrace of a colder, more calculating mindset and morality, as well as the literal embrace of Katya Goncharova, her salvation and her doom.
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mst3kproject · 1 year
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Goncharov
Why the hell is an MST3K blog rising from the dead to review a forgotten Martin Scorcese film?  I'd never heard of this movie until it suddenly became a meme, but I had a day off work and I figured I might as well see what all the fuss was about.  Now I want to talk about what I saw, and this is the only movie blog I have, so I'm doing it here.
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Ivan Goncharov is the biggest, baddest motherfucker east of the iron curtain, richer than a tsar and colder than a Siberian winter.  He's got a beef with Neapolitan mafioso Mario Giglioli, so he heads to sunny Italy to confront him in person. His closest confidante, Andrey, thinks it's suicide to do this on Giglioli's home turf but accompanies Goncharov anyway out of loyalty. What follows is a two-hour dick-measuring contest as Goncharov and Giglioli try to out-intimidate each other, culminating in an orgy of gunfire where only one will be left standing... and this is the kind of movie where you can't take it for granted that it'll be the guy whose name is the title.
That's the ostensible plot, anyway.  What makes Goncharov a far more interesting film than such an outline might imply is that the argument between the mobsters is just a backdrop.  Having set up Goncharov's hard as steel, cold as ice reputation in the first act, the movie then sets about deconstructing it.  Goncharov goes from a terrifying figure devoid of all morality to a tragic antihero, a man who has come to believe his own hype so completely that he can no longer let himself be human.
This is demonstrated mainly by watching the breakdown of his relationships over the course of the tense three days in Naples.  The most important person in Goncharov's life is Andrey, the only one he comes near being vulnerable with. Their relationship is depicted as very touchy-feely in a literal sort of way, with Andrey helping Goncharov with his coat and shoes, lighting cigarettes for him, and touching his shoulder or arm as Goncharov confides in him.  The framing emphasizes these touches in a very homoerotic way, and I don't think I've got my tumblr goggles on here.  These guys have fucked.
As Goncharov becomes more and more obsessed with being tougher and more ruthless than Giglioli, whom he sees as an effeminate softie, Andrey tries to persuade him that the other man is not worth this sort of obsession.  Whatever Giglioli did to insult Goncharov (we never find out), Andrey is of the opinion that they should just leave a dead horse in the asshole's bed and move on.  Goncharov's pride will not allow him to do that, and the less subtle Andrey is in his attempts to dissuade him, the more Goncharov pushes him away, finally abandoning him entirely.  The tragedy of the ending comes from the fact that Andrey refuses to abandon Goncharov in turn.
We also see Goncharov with his wife Katya.  He is frequently cruel to her, and she tolerates it because he gives her expensive gifts and because she is seeking a vicarious mending of her relationship with her abusive father - she was never able to earn his love, but perhaps she can earn Goncharov's.  This is doomed to failure, as much because of Goncharov as because Katya doesn't actually want it to succeed.  Nursing a black eye, Katya pours her heart out to a bartender, Sofia, who tries to help her escape... but this cannot work out, either.  As Katya herself says, she doesn't know who she is without her issues.
I am pleased to note, by the way, that every single major character in the movie is named and I can remember them all, which is a bit of a treat for me (I need to watch good movies more often).  The only exception is Goncharov himself.  The end credits list him as Ivan, but nobody ever calls him that, not even Andrey or Katya.  In a flashback scene with his parents, neither calls him by name.  This flashback, fascinatingly, is filmed in the first person, looking through Goncharov's own eyes.  We are not allowed to see him as a younger, softer man.  He refuses to show that side of himself even in the privacy of his memories.
These quieter moments contrast with scenes of ever-escalating brutality, as the Russians and Italians try to force each other to back down by the murder of underlings.  The fact that it is literally a contest, and that Goncharov is aware of this and describes it as such, makes the worsening violence ever more meaningless.  The death of Giglioli's confessor is particularly awful, and the way Goncharov's goons treat the chapel has to be ten times worse if you're Catholic (fun fact: this scene is apparently removed from the Italian version on Netflix, which must make what Andrey says while waiting for the train into a hell of a non sequitur).
At the climax, the two really can't do anything but kill each other, because it's the only place left to go.  Giglioli's priest and mistress are dead.  Goncharov's men are almost all dead or out of action, and Goncharov believes Andrey to be dead.  The initial insult, whatever it was, is no longer relevant.  They have pushed each other to a place where reconciliation is unthinkable.  Whoever blinks first loses, but both have already lost so much that victory means nothing.  Worse, each recognizes that the other is in the same position, and neither can acknowledge it.
This means Goncharov can also moonlight as an examination of violence in media.  Why do movies showcase violence, and why do we watch it?  The initial posturing serves a purpose - Goncharov wants Giglioli to know he's here to personally demand an apology, and Giglioli wants Goncharov to know he's outnumbered and should quit while he still can.  But once it becomes an exercise in one-up-manship, the 'messages’ vanish and the men are now killing for the sake of killing.  Violence in movies can often be gore for gore's sake, pulling out more and more stops in the effort to shock an audience that has been desensitized by years and years of this.  That is what Goncharov and Giglioli are doing to each other.  Truly distressing moments like the fate of the priest, or what Giuseppe "Icepick Joe" Cozzolino (dressed as a maid!) does to Sofia when he assumes she's Katya because she was in Katya's hotel room, make us wonder why we're watching this - and the mobsters wonder why they're doing it.
In the end, it's all just a blood-soaked version of the sunk cost fallacy.  Goncharov had come too far in his vendetta to stop now.  Andrey has followed him too far to turn back.  Katya has been married to him too long to leave.  Of course, any of them could quit at any time and escape from this terrible spiral, but they are unwilling to entertain the possibility.  Like Goncharov himself, Andrey and Katya are prisoners of the identities they have built for themselves, and because their identities are so tied to him, they have to go down with him.
One thing I haven't seen a lot of discussion of on tumblr is the way the film uses the contrast in climate.  Goncharov in Moscow is in his element.  When you see his breath in the wintry air it's as if he's breathing smoke like a dragon.  While other people huddle in the cold he stands up straight and tall.  In Naples, on the other hand, he is out of place.  He wears lighter clothing, but continues to choose long coats and upturned collars, while Giglioli goes around with his shirt unbuttoned.  This should serve to emphasize Giglioli's home field advantage and yet, as we see through Goncharov's eyes, they just make Giglioli look soft.  His apparent weakness makes Goncharov want to appear even stronger.
On a related note, it is interesting to me how sunlight is treated as something very unfriendly.  In Russia, it glitters on ice crystals in the air and lights up condensation, harsh and white and giving no warmth whatsoever.  In Italy it bakes and shimmers on stone and asphalt, casting harsh, black-edged shadows and emphasizing creased brows and frowning mouths.  Outdoor scenes are, as far as I can tell, always hostile interactions.  Even indoor scenes in natural light: the priest dies with harsh sunlight streaming in through the broken chapel window.  When characters are softer with each other, it is always under artificial illumination.  Sunlight is too bright, too revealing.  People like this need some shadows to hide in.
Did I like this movie?  That's a tough question.  It's not really the type of movie you 'like'.  It's definitely powerful and well-constructed, thoroughly absorbing and all that.  There's a taste of Greek tragedy in the inevitability of the ending and the way Goncharov is eaten alive by hubris.  But I wouldn't say I liked it.  The characters are all terrible people whose arcs involve them getting worse, and the whole thing feels deeply claustrophobic, as if I, too, am trapped in Goncharov's downward spiral.  When characters realize their mistakes, it is only when it's too late to correct them - but only in their own minds.  It's a very pessimistic story, about human beings who are overcome by the very worst parts of themselves.
Is Goncharov deserving of all those glowing reviews?  Yes.  Was it unfairly snubbed at the Oscars because the academy was turned off by the violence?  Probably.  Will I ever watch it again?  Fuck, no.
Excuse me, I have to go watch some Pixar movies if I ever want to smile again.
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disghasting · 1 year
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Is anyone else obsessed with how subtly important eye contact is in Goncharov?
Have you noticed how many times he says some form of “look at me” to katya? How, whenever andrey is in a scene his eyes seems to slowly maneuver from object to person to object, as if he’s scanning meaningless information, UNTIL goncharov is in the scene and suddenly his eyes follow him like he’s something worth studying? And what gets me most, how katya, the person who refuses to look at goncharov in the eye unless he all but begs, the woman who has never had the opportunity to yearn for a man because the men do all the yearning for her, looks at sofia like she’s hung the stars and moon, to the point sofia even says something!!! THE DIRECT PARALLELS BETWEEN GONCHAROV’S “look at me, why can’t you ever look at me” AND SOFIA’S “you can’t look at me like that, why do you insist on stopping my heart,” like yeah it was probably meant as a throwaway gag, the way it was said after sofia found katya drunk (don’t even get me STARTED on how katya hid the fact that she was prescribed medication for a preexisting condition from goncharov because she refused to be seen as weak but as soon as she sees sofia’s face in her weakest moment she collapses into her arms and sobs, like???) but that aside it paints such a lovely picture i can hardly stand it.
Heteronormative speculation in the film critic industry has always painted that scene as proof that katya really does care for goncharov because of the flashbacks to him in the middle of her talking to sofia and moments before The Kiss™️, i’ve seen the same take so many times “she was hallucinating that it was goncharov in front of her, not sofia,” but that makes literally no sense considering the way she acts around him for the rest of the film.
The flashbacks were all times that we’d already SEEN in the movie, except the beginning few which were of a younger goncharov, before the beginning of the movie, perhaps before they’d fled russia even. It showed a story, each change in memory was one of him mentioning her always being in her own head, or not paying attention, or even the one scene everyone knows and loves where he asks her what she’s thinking about. The way the first few were grouped together, then became broken up by glimpses of sofia, because the answer to the question “what are you thinking about,” changed as soon as sofia stepped into the picture. She used to dream of freedom from familial pressure, from her husbands line of work, from her countries political agenda, but recently freedom feels less like a pair of wings and more like long brown hair and warm eyes that she can’t help but stare into.
Katya’s character being so underdeveloped in favor of goncharov and andrey mentally fucking for a few more minutes is absolutely deplorable, all i want is for her to find gay peace!
(Btw if you remember any scenes that have to do with the importance of eye contact in the movie that i forgot to mention here, feel free to add on!)
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