by John Noonan
Worth: $16.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Dmitry Muratov
Intro:
… disconcerting …
Drop a frog in a cooking pot of water and it will swim around to its heart’s content. Even if you were to light the hob underneath, the frog wouldn’t think to escape even as the water around it grew hotter and hotter. This old school metaphor comes to mind when watching Of Caravan and the Dogs. However, what if there were two frogs in the pan and one tried to warn the other? What would happen then?
Russia currently has over 100 different media organisations banned for being ‘foreign agents’, a nebulous term that Putin himself tries to explain to Nobel Prize-winning journalist, Dmitry Muratov at the start. Essentially, you can say whatever you want about Russia – no, really – but if it turns out that your opinion is being influenced from overseas, then the Government are really going to have a problem. And so, as the film counts down to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the filmmakers show the audience what that really means.
First to come under Putin’s scrutiny is Memorial, the HRC founded to examine human rights violations committed under Stalin’s reign. To the Russian government, though, it is a group that is maliciously spreading a false and unpatriotic image of Russia, guided by – you guessed it – dirty foreign cash. It’s fortuitous that the filmmakers are around to capture the moment that Memorial’s staff are shoved onto the streets, as it underlines that no one is without sin, apparently.
Once Russia steps onto Ukrainian soil, the heat is turned up under the local press. They are warned to only refer to what is happening as ‘the special operation of Russian military forces’. Say anything other than that and it’s a huge fine. And you better watch out, if the Government feels that you’re spreading ‘fake news’.
In a bleakly humorous moment, Novaya Gazeta’s Deputy Editor in Chief, with a ciggie bouncing on his bottom lip, oversees an article to ensure that it meets Government coding. Apparently, the use of ‘fucking’ can stay, but ‘war’ cannot. Elsewhere, the owner of Radio Ekho Moskvy, a station that has been pushed to being only able to air on YouTube, sardonically tells an interviewer that he’ll have to use banned words if the likes of Joe Biden or Boris Johnson use them. The station is closed down soon after.
Although a dry piece of work, the co-directors (one anonymous) deliberately make no effort to sanitise or gloss up the events on screen, making Of Caravan and the Dogs incredibly chilling. Meetings in Novaya’s offices have Muratov announcing that he can only afford to have up to 10 members of staff leave the country if they feel they are in danger. Forthright and professional, he announces it in the same tone as if to say lunch breaks will have to be shorter. What else can he do when overt panic will achieve nothing for morale?
Putin’s dominance over the media is not just concerning because of the Government’s authoritarianism. It’s also disconcerting because you can’t view this through the comfort of distance or time. This isn’t something that happened decades ago; it’s happening right now as you read, and not just in Russia. Of Caravan and the Dogs is a stark red flag to those countries under new administrations, whose citizens might need to start paying attention to whether the temperature around them is rising.
