More than six years after Ilya Khrzhanovsky premiered “DAU. Natasha” and “DAU. Degeneration” at the Berlin Film Festival, just prior to the global pandemic lockdown, speculation arose that the moment for further entries in the DAU Cinematic Universe had passed. However, the immersive multidisciplinary project persists despite allegations of physical and psychological abuse on its sprawling set. The Venice Film Festival has included “Dau” in its main competition, presenting it as Khrzhanovsky’s attempt to distill a quintessential dramatic epic from vast amounts of footage.
The decision to screen the film has reignited ethical debates, though festival organizers have defended the selection on political grounds. Critics note that Khrzhanovsky’s focus on the grim tools of Russian state oppression and imperialism has gained renewed timeliness following Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Nevertheless, questions remain regarding whether “Dau” is an undeniable artistic achievement sufficient to warrant such significant controversy.
Running slightly over 200 minutes, including a mid-screening interval, the film covers four decades in the life of a physicist involved in the Soviet atomic bomb project. While it positions itself as a major work, the narrative feels dramatically and rhetorically thin beneath its impressive auditory and visual construction. It serves as an avant-garde counterpart to American productions like “Oppenheimer” and “The Brutalist,” which also explored historical social turmoil through a tortured individual, yet the protagonist remains something of a cipher.
The character is inspired by Lev Landau, a Nobel Prize-winning Soviet theoretical physicist who calculated the dynamics of the first Soviet thermonuclear bomb. In the film, the fictionalized protagonist, known only as Dau, is played by Greek-Russian musician Teodor Currentzis with wild-eyed physicality. His nationality is Greek-born, though the film does not clarify how he came to the Soviet Union.
Dau is established as an outsider from the beginning, notably wearing glaring red velvet during the first half of the timeline against the sober attire of his peers. Introduced in 1928 Leningrad, the film opens with a kaleidoscopic sequence of filthy streets, bodies, and archival imagery before jumping to mid-1930s Kharkiv. There, Dau appears as a rebel scientist resisting military recruitment, arguing that physicists should discover new spaces rather than defend existing ones. It is in Kharkiv that he meets Nora, portrayed by Radmila Shegoleva, sparking a marriage that will later be corrupted.
By the late 1930s, facing a choice between cooperation or a penal colony, Dau is absorbed into a state scientific research institute in Moscow. The remainder of the film depicts this semi-surreal, oppressive environment where government interrogator Azhippo, played by Vladimir Azhippo, surveils and consumes Dau’s mind and freedom. Dau’s extramarital affairs only deepen the misery of his domestic life, and as time passes, the character recedes rather than develops, offering little new insight into the living nightmare he inhabits.
The film compensates for its narrative shortcomings with visually and sonically startling set pieces that showcase the project’s extreme dedication to world-building. Scenes take place atop steel gratings suspended in mid-air, near gargantuan state sculptures surrounded by extras moving at precise angles, and amidst mountains of cabbages being peeled by scavengers. These sequences highlight the sheer scale of production design and crowd choreography.
However, “Dau” offers only a glimpse of the larger DAU project, conceived as a quasi-“Truman Show”-style experiment where participants lived and worked full-time on a 12,000-square-meter set. As Khrzhanovsky has described the individual films as mere trailers for the overarching undertaking, a more hybrid cinematic form may be required to fully capture the scope and folly of this ambitious creation.
The production design alone is worth watching. That cabbage mountain scene was hauntingly beautiful despite the weak story.
Six years of hype for this? I expected more nuance in how they portray the Soviet scientific community.
Is it really cinema if the protagonist never changes? Looks like a museum exhibit with a running time of three hours.
The visuals are stunning, but the film lacks emotional depth. Watching Dau unravel is more exhausting than engaging.