Maid­an

Even though Sergei Loznitsa’s extra­or­di­nary doc­u­men­tary, Maid­an, is very specif­i­cal­ly con­cerned with the col­lec­tivised polit­i­cal upheaval which occurred in Ukraine’s Maid­an Neza­lezh­nos­ti (Inde­pen­dence Square) dur­ing ear­ly 2014, it also offers a bit­ter­ly uni­ver­sal com­men­tary on what direc­tor King Vidor referred to as ​‘The Crowd’.

The sto­ry arc is as con­ven­tion­al as any Hol­ly­wood block­buster you care to men­tion, with barter-town ide­al­ism and com­mu­ni­ty action even­tu­al­ly scup­pered by the rub­ber bul­lets of gov­ern­ment man­dat­ed law enforce­ment. In fact, it feels more like an opera than a movie, its slow­burn crescen­do lead­ing to calami­tous cat­a­stro­phe, and then segue­ing into a mov­ing epi­logue which offers a moment of qui­et introspection.

The pac­ing is delib­er­ate­ly mel­low, as the film offers a per­son­al reflec­tion on dai­ly life inside the Euro­maid­an encamp­ment, so-called as a ref­er­ence to the protest movement’s com­mit­ment to Ukraine’s bol­stered union with the EU rather than a strength­en­ing of bonds with Rus­sia and the Krem­lin. The cam­era remains sta­t­ic for most of the film, mov­ing only when per­son­al safe­ty dictates.

Loznit­sa stands and observes the melée, and the cam­era at times doesn’t seem to be fram­ing any spe­cif­ic action. You’ll have a guy wan­der in half-way through the shot and start bel­low­ing the nation­al anthem. Or there will be an unseen fig­ure under a pile of blan­kets, and around him/​her, peo­ple car­ry­ing on with food dis­tri­b­u­tion and gen­er­al organ­is­ing. This isn’t a film about indi­vid­u­als, it’s about how peo­ple oper­ate as a mass movement.

The ear­ly sequences present a vision of ram­shackle utopia, where an unspo­ken accord between pro­test­ers leads to the smooth run­ning of this func­tion­ing, sin­gle-serve soci­ety. No mon­ey is ever seen chang­ing hands as peo­ple hand out sand­wich­es and cof­fee, some­times to passers by look­ing for a pick-me-up, often to those who’ve just received a severe police beat­ing. Yet the pres­ence of mon­ey – big mon­ey – is felt, as pro­test­ers car­ry uni­form met­al riot shields, address­es are made from a tin­pot rock fes­ti­val-style stage, and there’s even a jaun­ty Europop anthem which artic­u­lates their woes.

Even though Loznit­sa films from inside the camp, he does lit­tle to actu­al­ly sub­stan­ti­ate his sol­i­dar­i­ty with the pro­test­ers. Maid­an is polit­i­cal by proxy, but it is pri­mar­i­ly a doc­u­ment of process. It’s not about the con­tent of the slo­gans, it’s about the dis­sem­i­na­tion of slo­gans and the for­mu­la­tion of slo­gans. Though the police or the nation­al guard are not per­son­alised in the same way as the pro­tes­tors, there’s still a feel­ing that the depic­tion of vio­lence arrives with­out any real blame attached to it. Armed units cir­cle the square and fire rounds of tear­gas as a dis­per­sal method.

Mean­while, activists cleave up paving stones to lob along­side their Molo­tov cock­tails. Who cast the first stone? The film refus­es to answer. But it does sug­gest that human bru­tal­i­ty is some­thing that is arrived at very quick­ly and nat­u­ral­ly, and can appear fright­en­ing­ly apoc­a­lyp­tic when framed in front of burn­ing tyre moun­tains and screech­ing fireworks.