A Film Canon

Arsenal presents an impressionistic depiction of moments from Ukrainian history and folklore, all of which are structured around an elusive buried treasure, presumably a symbol for some essence of Ukrainian identity itself. Although this treasure has a definite resting-place - the hill, or arsenal, of the title - it is increasingly characterised as the property of the entire natural universe, which Dovzhenko transforms into a single, curvaceous, protective membrane, evident in a proliferation of water surfaces that elide the real world or, more accurately, collapse it into its own reflection, explaining the young treasure-hunter's proclivity for blowing bubbles. At the same time, however, this treasure is cast as that part of the Ukrainian identity prepared to engage in communism and, more specifically, in collectivisation's disruption of the very natural order for which it originally stood. The result is a slightly contradictory tone - or, perhaps more accurately, a poignant evocation of a national identity in crisis - most evident in Dovzhenko's attempt to transform the requisite factory into a condensation of nature, subordinating machinery to the play of water, steam and fire that it produces, whose blinding whiteness is tantamount to a surrogate sky. Yet Dovzhenko's (recently renounced) nationalism re-emerges in his attempts to construe the human face as just another natural surface - especially facial hair, reduced to so much vegetation. Not only does this suggest that the buried treasure is as inherent in the Ukrainian physiognomy and psychology as in its topopgraphy, but it contextualises the lengthy digression on the ancestral Viking heroine Roksana who, after being killed, awoke to find her hair transformed into reeds, her eyes into caves and pools.