Table Talk: Russia 1985–1999: TraumaZone (2022)

Aren: The last time Adam Curtis released a film, Can’t Get You Out of My Head, on February 11, 2021, it seemed like an event (if minor) within the film world. Despite the film’s eight-hour runtime, numerous critics watched it and wrote about it, popular podcasts had Curtis on as a guest to discuss it (we discussed it on 3 Brothers Filmcast that month as well), and it ended up on several Top 10 lists (including both of ours). HyperNormalisation (2016) had made Curtis something of a household name on Film Twitter and Can’t Get You Out of My Head seemed something of a coronation, anointing Curtis as one of the most significant documentarians of our era.

And then Curtis secretly edited together another film, Russia 1985–1999: TraumaZone and dropped it at Telluride this past year. It was eventually released on the BBC iPlayer (like his past films) in seven hour-long parts on October 13, 2022. The announcement was met with zero fanfare and as of this writing, I haven’t seen a single article from the same people who wrote about Can’t Get You Out of My Head in February 2021 and claimed to be massive Curtis-heads. It seems that Curtis went overnight from must-watch documentarian to just another obscure artist making extremely long movies.

So what happened in the interim? Russia invaded Ukraine. And what is TraumaZone about? As its full title suggests, it’s about Russia, specifically Russia in the lead up to the new millennium, when the Soviet Union collapsed and was replaced by a free market economy that was immediately hijacked by oligarchs. I believe that the subject matter is the best explanation for why TraumaZone was mostly ignored by critics outside the UK. No one wants to talk about Russian culture at the moment, much less spend seven hours examining why the country is the way it is nowadays. But that is precisely why TraumaZone is such a powerful work.

Anders: Exactly. Contrary to the impulses of the moment and the discomfort of doing so, taking a look at Russia in this period isn’t just powerful, but might be essential in terms of grappling with the changes that are happening in the world right now. But I agree that both the subject matter and the length of the film are barriers to some people engaging with the film. As are some of the formal choices Curtis has made in this film, such as the decision to forego voiceover narration. However, I agree that it’s still baffling that this film hasn’t gotten more attention, simply for being so relevant to the current moment.

I don’t want to be too glib here, but I also think there’s a bit of the fact that people don’t want to hear from voices who challenge the accepted wisdom in particular ways. When HyperNormalisation came out in 2016, Curtis was praised for identifying the ways that the world of the post-2008 financial crash really hadn’t changed much and that people were just carrying on, business as usual, much as they did in late Soviet Russia. But Curtis also presciently included Donald Trump in his documentary, anticipating the role he would play in politics and how he has dominated news ever since. I think a lot of people assumed that meant that Curtis’s politics were clear: he was for the “good guys” and against whatever it was that Trump stood for.

But in films like Can’t Get You Out of My Head, and especially if you go back and dig into his other films like Pandora’s Box (1992) and All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (2011), you see that his critique goes beyond simply a political critique of right wing politics. His work is more a critique of technocracy and rationalism and the idea that we can engineer a perfect world. That’s a critique that might alienate both “sides” of our current culture war. With TraumaZone, he makes even more clear, going so far as to make his point explicit in this Guardian article, that he’s aiming to suggest that what doomed the Soviet Union and Russia may not be either communism or capitalism, but the pursuit of a rationalist society.

TraumaZone as a Formal Outlier

Aren: Can’t Get You Out of My Head was subtitled as “An Emotional History of the Modern World.” TraumaZone is an emotional history of Russia, charting the breakdown of Soviet society and the corruption and predatory capitalism that filled the void. The entire film consists of BBC archival footage—unseen until now—filmed in Russia and the former Soviet states between 1985 and 1999. Curtis edits the footage together in a mostly chronological order, focusing on recurring characters and themes in each episode, while also following larger political figures such as Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin, and Yegor Gaidar. He also documents the rise of the Russian oligarchs and the domestic transformation of the nation’s citizens, as food prices skyrocketed and manual labour in factories ceased to provide an income. 

Unlike Curtis’ films over the past two decades, TraumaZone forgoes some of his key stylistic approaches, such as narration and the use of pop music. Instead, Curtis relies entirely on the footage itself and the occasional on-screen titles to describe time, place, and impact. Rather than making the film dull, the decision to limit his stylistic influence creates an emotional immediacy and breaks down the barriers of time. During its runtime, it allows us to feel as if we are living in Russia and sharing the emotional turmoil and confusion caused by its decline.

Anders: Removing his stylistic trademarks—the descriptive narration in his easily identifiable accent, the use of ironic or striking musical accompaniment, footage chosen for its non-diegetic emotional valence—definitely heightens the impact of the film. It might also be necessary simply because the Adam Curtis trademark voiceover,  “And then a strange thing happened…,” has become so effective that it’s easily parodied. This film breaks from that familiarity, granting more power to the footage itself to speak to the viewer. It really does create that sense of emotional immediacy you mention.

However, what is also fascinating to me is how the decision to forego those particular stylistic conventions I mentioned doesn’t make this any less identifiable as an Adam Curtis film. In fact, some of those occasional on-screen titles function essentially the same as Curtis’s narration in his other films. I couldn’t help but hear his voice when they appeared on screen. Such is the lingering power of his style.

Aren: Absolutely, especially when he’s detailing Gaidar’s “Shock Therapy” in the mid-1990s, when Russia introduced an unregulated free market system that went further than any capitalist system before, which led to hyperinflation and allowed the oligarchs to buy up the country’s infrastructure for pennies on the dollar. The titles have that touch of irony that is so essential to Curtis’ narration.

Anders: It also draws attention to how good Curtis is at editing this footage together. In going through the thousands upon thousands of hours of BBC footage of the era, mostly unseen until now, as you said earlier, he manages to create a coherent and engrossing narrative. We end up with characters with complete story arcs—for instance, we follow a little girl in the first and last episode who begs along the road in Moscow, complaining to the cameraperson that they’re wasting her time if they aren’t going to give her money. She is quite the character. We see the contrasts, and similarities, between the people setting up Vogue Russia and also a prostitute working in a Moscow hotel. These small portraits are woven between the larger plots and side plots, such as Yeltsin’s rise to power, the fall of Gorbachev, attempted coups, wars, and finally, Vladimir Putin’s ascendance. And it all makes sense to the viewer. Granted, compared to some of Curtis’s earlier films, unless you speak Russian, this isn’t a film you’re going to just be able to throw on and watch while doing other things, which might be another reason this film has been less watched. But I valued how by demanding my attention, it not only helped me experience more about late Soviet Russia, but a greater appreciation of Curtis’ skill as a filmmaker.

Aren: Exactly. I’m at that point where I actually appreciate when a movie forces me to turn off all distractions, resist looking at my phone, and simply stare and move with the pace of what’s unfolding on the screen. I recently watched Michael Snow’s avant-garde landmark, Wavelength (1966), after his death, and that film demands you stare and watch and wait, since it’s mostly one unbroken, ultra-slow zoom shot of a single room. TraumaZone is not nearly as radical on a formal level as Wavelength, but it does similarly reward your attention, as the relatively slow pace and unadorned editorial approach creates an overwhelming effect. You’re truly drawn into it.

Of course, we should be clear that Curtis is still editorializing here. He demonstrates a remarkable breadth of focus, with lots of footage of the Chechen War and the various civil conflicts in former Soviet states such as Georgia and Armenia and Ukraine. As well, the footage skews towards Moscovites, as it was much easier for the BBC to get footage in the Russian capital (or acquire footage made by wealthier Russian cosmopolitans) than it was to get footage of the furthest reaches of Siberia or the Stans. That said, we still do get geographic diversity in the footage.

Anders: Granted, given the thousands and thousands of hours of footage Curtis has, even editing it down to seven hours means lots and lots is left out. I do wonder if the film does edge a bit too far into becoming “misery porn,” especially if someone doesn’t grasp the larger critique of our current moment he is making. Out of all those thousands of hours, surely there were some moments that weren’t miserable? But such is the prerogative of the storyteller, and the story he’s telling here is a compelling one.

Aren: It’s true. You can say that the film reinforces the Russian stereotype of being a miserable people. But at the same time, perhaps there is a reason we think of Russia as such a miserable nation. They’ve suffered such upheaval over the course of the last 30 years. No wonder the people were so desperate and dejected with their lives. Curtis’ film shows why they have every reason to be so upset with their lot in life.

TraumaZone as an Adam Curtis Film

Anders: Part of the appeal of an Adam Curtis film is the exposure to narratives that, if not lost, are often forgotten if you didn’t live through the moment. By going back to the original footage, he brings the receipts, so to speak, showing us a view of what has happened in the past and how it might relate to our present. 

There’s an esoteric thrill to an Adam Curtis film. You feel like you’re being shown some kind of secret knowledge, which I think is a key part of the appeal. With TraumaZone, it’s almost like science fiction in the sense that the film feels almost like an alternate history compared with the narratives we’ve all been fed the last decade about Russia. He shows how the devastation and collapse of the society in Russia during the late-80s and through the 90s wasn’t simply the obvious result of the failure of communism, as the standard narrative in the West goes, but amplified and accelerated by particular decisions made by leaders at the time. But he’s also not afraid to show the failure of the Soviet system, how cheap and unwieldy it was. He’s not making propaganda for either wing of the typical culture war narrative.

Aren: You’re correct about the appeal of an Adam Curtis film and how he seems to be unearthing some occult knowledge or unravelling a conspiracy in his films, letting us in on the secret of the recent past. Of course, the thing that makes his films so effective is that he’s not actually bringing up anything occult or conspiratorial. He’s simply revealing facts that we’ve collectively forgotten, demonstrating that you don’t need to have elaborate conspiracies to unlock the reason the world is how it is. You simply have to pay attention to the decisions that have been made and follow the line of consequences. 

Thus, with TraumaZone, we come to understand why Russia operates the way it does today as an undemocratic state united by nationalism and an adversarial relationship to the West. Curtis never needs to go past the election of Vladimir Putin as president, since we know that that moment, when the oligarchs and the Western powers solidified around Putin as their “chosen leader,” would lead all the way to the present day where Russia attempts to regain its national relevance through war with a Western proxy state. (It’s also interesting to compare the film’s depiction of the Russian war in Chechnya with the current war in Ukraine. It seems that whenever it is faced with a time of crisis, Russia tries to distract its population from domestic problems by focusing on a war abroad. It happened in Afghanistan and then Chechnya and now Ukraine.)

Anders: It’s interesting how much TraumaZone also functions as a revisiting, and even a focusing, of some of Curtis’s key thematic interests: the failure of rational societies, whether communist or the free market, to grant real freedom, the irrational nature of human societies, and the ironic twists of history.

Aren: In some ways, the larger Adam Curtis project seems to be to explain why our modern world feels so unreal and to draw the throughlines that explain where this unreality came from. TraumaZone fits right into this larger vision.

Companion Piece to HyperNormalisation (2016) and A Warning of What’s to Come

Aren: HyperNormalisation takes its title from Alexei Yurchak’s phrase used to describe the psychological phenomenon in the Soviet Union during the 1980s, when ordinary citizens knew the society was breaking down, but continued acting as if it were working because they couldn’t think of any alternatives. Curtis’ film used that idea as a means to examine the entire period of late capitalism that we’re living in now, reframing modern civilization as experiencing a grand level of hypernormalisation that goes beyond Russia. 

TraumaZone goes back to the source of this thinking in examining the psychological and economic disintegration of Russian society and the way that hypernormalisation led to Russian citizens rejecting democracy almost immediately after the formation of the Russian Federation. It makes the film a companion piece to HyperNormalisation.

Anders: I agree that it functions as a companion piece to that film with the direct parallel between our own time and late-Soviet life. Basically, this film functions as a kind of fleshing out and detailing of that observation that gave his 2016 film its title.

I think it’s also interesting how both this film and Can’t Get You Out of My Head are films that consciously reference the emotional experience of living in history. The 2021 film was subtitled “An Emotional History of the Modern World.” This film is subtitled at the start of each episode, “What It Felt Like to Live Through the Collapse of Communism and Democracy.” So, there’s that emphasis on “emotional” and “felt.” These films are trying to get at a particular experience that isn’t purely rational.

Aren: That focus on the emotional is what makes Curtis a filmmaker more than a journalist. He might disagree with the classification, but he is using the tools of filmmaking and specifically the ways that cinema creates an emotional immediacy and replicates the experience of reality in ways other artistic mediums cannot, in order to have us rethink the way we view our own society. The primacy of the emotional experience, both in the footage and in the way that Curtis’ edits the footage together, is essential.

I also can’t help but see TraumaZone as a warning about where our Western society might be heading within a few decades.

Anders: I think it’s key that the film begins, as I said, with “What It Felt Like to Live Through the Collapse of Communism” and then slowly fading in “and Democracy.” It kind of undercuts any triumphalism from someone who just wants to take pot shots at the failure of communism because it also shows how the attempt at democracy was thwarted in Russia as well. It’s meant to get us to think about that “and democracy” part. What is it that caused democracy to collapse?

Aren: And if we watch the film, we get a clear picture of the answer to that question. The Russian people briefly embraced democracy as an alternative as it promised to get rid of the corruption and dysfunction of the geriatric Soviet state. But the transition was co-opted by predatory business leaders and oligarchs and directed by a young hyper-rationalist bureaucrat, Yegor Gaidar, who had no understanding of the consequences of his systemic actions. Gaidar treated Russia and Shock Therapy in a purely intellectual manner, thinking that the market would regulate regardless of the realities of Russia that he was facing. In that sense, Gaidar failed to take into account human psychology much in the same way the communist leaders did. Thus, the film comes back to being a warning about structuring human society (a decidedly non-rational construct) along purely rationalist terms. Curtis is trying to emphasize that humanity is not an experiment to be played with!

Anders: The sad thing is Curtis has been warning us for ages. He literally called one of his earlier films on rationalism and science Pandora’s Box. But perhaps the more appropriate reference to Greek myth is Cassandra, fated to prophesy and never be believed. 

Aren: Pandora’s Box from 1992 is also the first film that could be said to be an “Adam Curtis film” as it introduces his collage editing and narration style. However, it is also focused and chronological, with each episode following a particular scientific project in a single country, such as national banking in the UK or mining and the power grid in Ghana. 

TraumaZone acts as a nice bookend with Pandora’s Box. It brings Curtis’ career full circle and proves that he has carried out an ambitious warning and indictment of our rationalist modern society over the past 30 years. He might be as much a prophet as a filmmaker, a Cassandra for our time.

Russia 1985–1999: TraumaZone (2022, UK)

Directed by Adam Curtis.

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