Vitaly Mansky’s gloomy, sombre and garrulous film is a portrait of his extended family and of the divided nation of Ukraine: it makes an intriguing companion piece to Sergei Loznitsa’s Maidan, about the revolution of 2014. Close Relations is about relations growing further apart: the divided loyalties that have come painfully to the surface in Ukraine. It tracks the period from May 2014 – just after the anti-Russian Euromaidan moment – to May 2015, when Ukraine finds itself in an eastern war with pro-Russian secessionist rebels, and also finds that Russia has annexed Crimea.
Mansky is Ukrainian born but a Russian resident since his student days in the Soviet era and he feels a strong sense that Russian sympathies are an authentic, longstanding Ukrainian tradition. It is almost the equivalent of unionism in Northern Ireland, and in one testy conversation, the situation is compared to the Kurds and Turkey, with the Russian rebels in the Kurdish role. Yet pro-Russian sympathies are clouded by a resentment of Vladimir Putin’s nationalism and bully-ism. Conversely, Ukrainian nationalism and a yearning to join the EU are compromised by memories of the wartime Ukrainian nationalist Stepan Bandera, who was associated with Nazi Germany. With a subdued, almost conspiratorially whispery voiceover, Mansky travels the country visiting his relatives. Many of the scenes in this film are simply of his aunts, uncles and cousins talking, talking, talking – and rowing. An argument on Skype threatens to explode with rancour. It is an intriguing, painful study.
