Love Island

Tõnu Karjatse writes about Corrida, a psychological drama by Olav Neuland that reflects Estonian cinema in the beginning of the 1980s when the Soviet Empire began to show the first signs of deterioration.

By Tõnu Karjatse Photos by Estonian Film Institute & Film Archive of the National Archives of Estonia, Villu Reiman

Olav Neuland’s (1947–2005) Corrida from 1982 has the initial makings of a chamber drama – a lonely island, three people (or unequal love triangle), and a herd of animals. Man against wild nature, his urges, fears, and desires. Osvald Rass (Rein Aren), a man in his sixties, his wife Ragne (Rita Raave) who is about half his age and full of life, and her ex-lover Tarmo (Sulev Luik), have reached a decisive point in their lives where important choices need to be made. The isolation of a lonely island sets the characters face to face with each other, depriving them of social safety measures. It should help them to evolve eternally, but whatever they have brought to the island is of no help any longer. The rudimentary animality that manifests itself in various ways in this situation, strongly challenges the habitual rationale.

Director Olav Neuland wished to bring modern psychological drama to Estonian cinema with this Bergman-esque chamber piece. First, he introduces the customary dramaturgical stereotypes, and then tries to cancel those via themselves, as the story progresses. Teet Kallas’ initial novel of the same name the film is based on, proved to be an obstacle rather than an inspiration in this process, because instead of the moral and ethical development of the characters, we remember great acting work and seemingly endless wrestling with the bulls.

Every piece of art comes with its own temporal context that it inevitably expresses. Teet Kallas wrote the novel Corrida in 1979. Olav Neuland’s film was released in 1982. For Neuland, it was the second feature after the immensely popular Nest of Winds (1978), considered to be one of the landmarks of the so-called new wave of Estonian cinema, and a fresh generation of filmmakers and their first works in the end of the 1970s.

THE BEGINNING OF THE EIGHTIES

1982 was a good year for Estonian film in general, bringing Peeter Simm’s children’s adventure Arabella, Daughter of the Pirate, Peeter Urbla’s musical psycho-drama Schlager, Ago-Endrik Kerge’s drama Under the Black Roof, and Leo Karpin’s musical film Doppelgangers. The same year, Tiina Mägi made the socio-critical documentary Where Shall We Play Today? about the living environment of kids in Tallinn Old Town, and the struggle with careless Soviet bureaucracy. A year later came Nipernaadi by Kaljo Kiisk that definitely belongs among the evergreen classics, and Raul Tammet’s Sidewind, a sports film that has unfairly never received the praise it deserves. Taking into account some earlier titles like Dandelion Game (1977), a trilogy of short stories from then-beginners Peeter Simm, Peeter Urbla, and Toomas Tahvel, and Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel from 1979 by Grig-