This is an excerpt from a screenplay by the legendary Ingvar Stig Ogvsbrotkulniiskaa. This was his last work before his death in 1994 of lutefisk poisoning and also exposure. Notably, it is the first screenplay ever to require audience participation in the form of sound effects during the diabetic baby fight scene, which was nominated for a Golden Ice Pick at the Kirovsk Novelty Film Party in 1993. His works focused largely on the unknown and some of the known, though in some cases he also included the marginally familiar as well as some of the fairly obvious (though this was rare and indeed included merely as satire). In retrospect, there is a clear progression of political views in his works from pure ignorance to ignorant indifference to confused apathy that has made his film adaptations of newspaper articles compelling for so many disaffected youth as well as the illiterate.
Mr Ogvsbrotkulniiskaa was known for translating his works into many different languages himself, a remarkable talent in its own right especially since it is almost a certainty that he only spoke Finnish and a few words of Russian (enough, it has been rumored, to get him arrested by the MVD once in 1958 for public lakeside pessimism in Novgorod; he was later released following revocation of his ice fishing license and a promise never to return).
Now, I include the author's own English translation of the first scene of Providence's Wildebeest, a powerful condemnation of cowardice and theft and a loving collage of stunningly poignant dialogue. In this, the opening scene, we learn that knowledge is ignorance and age is meaningless in a world where years are frozen to the ceiling like icicles that may fall at any moment and hurt someone--or worse, cause an insurance flap.
INT. ROOM -- NIGHT
The room is dark. There is 1 window through which light from a street lamp comes. But even the light is dark. A man sits at a table. We see him from behind. The door opens behind us and a yellow rectangle briefly dances on the man's back around the silhouette of another man. The DOOR CLOSES.
MAN #1
(Staring out the window, motionless.)
I knew you'd come.
MAN #2
(Still out of view. He has a deep, aged voice.)
Quiet. You know nothing.
We see MAN #1 jump out of his chair and face MAN #2, and now we see that MAN #2 is dressed in a black three-piece suit and thin black tie set against an agonizingly starched white shirt. He is smoking an ivory pipe filled beyond the bowl-brim with rarefied yak hair.
MAN #1
(Wide-eyed, panting, savoring the smoke.)
Your yak hair is magnificent.
MAN #2
Indeed. Your sense of smell is profoundly uncanny. My yak hair is cut fresh morningly with a pair of cheap aluminium scissors. It was the way of the ancients.
MAN #1
(Starting to pace.)
You abuse your position sir. You know it and I know it.
MAN #2
(Slaps MAN #1 with a velvet undergarment from Belgrade.)
Silence. I've brought you here for more than your sassy insolence.
MAN #1
(Weeping.)
You promised me that which was undeliverable. I should have known!
MAN #2
You had the longing of a broken heart. Fool! Yes, you should've known that the banana-Nutella-banana crepe you desired was not attainable.
(He removes his spectacles and peers into MAN #1's nostrils.)
No man has the acumen to place Nutella between two layers of banana. No man would dare to even try. Cardinal Greigel von Nusselkopf-Schokolade himself was excommunicated for merely slicing a plantain near some cocoa not a half-century ago. That for which your loins pine is implausible.
MAN #1
(Removes an unconscious wildebeest from his pocket and now wears a look of horrified indifference on his gaunt face.)
You leave me no choice, old man.
MAN #2
Come to your senses child!
The streetlight flickers and the sun rises immediately. A glass of orange juice from the countryside appears on the table, which we now see is made of wax. We can also now see that MAN #1 is MAN #4, to whom we have not yet been introduced. We gasp.
MAN #1/MAN #4
You bastard!
MAN #2
(His handkerchief is ablaze and he savors the acrid smoke like a connoisseur.)
You have brandished your last wildebeest, ignorant roach!
MAN #2 waters his suit with the orange juice. A beautiful plant sprouts from his lapel and flowers before our eyes. It bears an ugly poisonous fruit which kills MAN #1 with a blow to the spine. The sun sets and the streetlight flickers on and we fade to black. MAN #2's VOICE can now be heard, menacing, old, and decrepit.
MAN #2
It was not hate that was this man's undoing, nor was it love. It was apathy. And a vicious genetically-modified apple with an unlicensed firearm.
END SCENE
When Yignaz Boroslovosibirskov directed this masterpiece in his film of the same title in 1993, it is said that he exhausted his body's supply of tears and resorted to a lacrimal gland transplant to regain his ability to weep (he has since died of complications of immunosuppressive therapy for graft rejection). The entire film was shot on location on the smooth side of an ancient mud-brick wall in Kamchatka in glorious black and grey for a grainy look that pummels the heart with relevance and gravitas. The writer of this note himself has only just recovered--after 15 years and 3 colonoscopies.
HMR, December 27, 2008
Helsinki
