The Vanquishing of the Witch Baba Yaga opens with a brooding monologue on the wild. Over the centuries, humans have escaped its clutches. We have built houses, roads, cities, fences, and now we have ‘nature reserves’, which perhaps are something of a joke. We flaunt our power over the wild, our complete subjugation of its once enveloping and dangerous energies. Safe in our houses, apartments, suburbs, we don’t fear nature anymore, but each other. And now and then we find ourselves yearning to return to the wild, or perhaps, to fate, to God. Especially after having been through so much war, so much horror at human hands, how could God be crueler than humans?
Jessica Oreck’s film essay on this topic is delicate and spectacular. Experimental to its core, we are given not exactly a documentary, but something closer to a meditation. It alternates between two simultaneous modes.
Russian-narrated animation of the titular Slavic folktale provides the most ostensible structure for the film, as we follow the tale of two children forced to flee their home and look for refuge in the forest. The other, greater part of the film consists of excerpts read in Polish from the work of thinkers such as sociologist Theodor W. Adorno, mythologist J. E. Cirlot, and contemporary Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk, as well as Oreck’s own commentary. Visually, we are given a montage of images – forests, cities, and villages – cut together like one big road-trip adventure through some of the most enchanting places in the world. The setting is given in story-book style as “Eastern Europe, some time after the 20th century”.
Oreck is particularly possessed with the act of mushroom hunting. She notes that it is a formative memory for her, and through various scenes, we see the hunting, picking, collecting, cutting, drying, selling and cooking of mushrooms of all different sorts. Mushrooms also feature in the fairy tale. The two children, having met an evil witch, Baba Yaga, in her strange forest house, are commanded to prepare dinner for her or be eaten themselves. But the task is a trick, as the witch’s promised grain stores are empty. Despairing, they are saved by the instruction of a little forest mouse, who suggests they go into the forest and collect mushrooms. They do so and are able to prepare a meal. There is something mythical about the realm of the forest; in it, one can die of hunger or exposure, or worse, meet a monster like Baba Yaga. Yet simultaneously, the forest can provide helpers, glimmers of hope, and unconventional ways to survive.
Underlying these ponderings on the magic of the wild, a more troubling reality can be seen to swell in the background. Haunting images of trees being cut down, destroyed buildings, and shots recalling the wars that tore through Eastern Europe, invite us to wonder about the fate of this mystical realm. Will the forest outlive humanity?
The Vanquishing of the Witch Baba Yaga is not what you expect from a film, but you leave it with a broader idea of what film is and can be. It allows itself to be meandering and indulgent, but it never feels purposeless or banal. And even if its ideas don’t satisfy, Sean Pride Williams’s gorgeous 16mm camerawork, and Paul Grimstad’s delicate, swelling electronic music are sure to impress.
4/5 stars
