Gogol. Nachalo. / Gogol: Origins (Putinia, 2017)

Another cutout DVD that we perhaps would not have bought had we been paying more attention. Not because Gogol: Origins is bad — it isn't — but because it is not exactly what we would call a "real movie". Indeed, it is not even a "real" first movie of a trilogy à la, say, Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings (2001 / trailer).

No, while entertaining, what Gogol: Origins is, and obviously so, is two or three episodes of a very well-made television show — and probably not even a two- or three-part movie special similar to Tobe Hooper's Salem's Lot (1979 / trailer), but an actual multi-episode TV series — strung together to make a movie, sort of like they used to do with shows like the Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964-68) TV series, which regularly strung multiple episodes together to make B-movies (namely: To Trap a Spy [1964 / trailer], The Spy with My Face [1965 / trailer], One Spy Too Many [1966 / trailer], One of Our Spies Is Missing [1966 / trailer], The Spy in the Green Hat [1967 / trailer], The Karate Killers [1967 / trailer], The Helicopter Spies [1968 / trailer] and How to Steal the World [1968 / trailer]). And as such, watching Gogol: Origins conveys less the feeling of watching a real movie, or the first installment of an announced theatrical trilogy, than it does that of a binge-watching night of a well-made and intriguing supernatural show* that is suddenly cut short after just 2.5 episodes.

* As we found out it is: Gogol ran for eight episodes in its homeland and on Amazon Prime.

Trailer to

Gogol: Origins:

The basic idea of the movie(s) and/or the original series is functional enough: take the real life character of the Ukrainian-born writer Nikolai Vasilyeich Gogol (1809–1852) and plop him, like some Romantic Age Agent Mulder, into the center of a bunch of supernatural situations at the start of the early 19th century, some of which — if perhaps not all (we don't know his work well enough to be sure about that) — are inspired by his actual stories and life.

Something similar was done with Edgar Allen Poe in the non-supernatural thriller The Raven [2012 / trailer]. But the genre movie that Gogol: Origins calls to mind most is Tim Burton's excellent Sleepy Hollow (1999 / trailer), for much is similar: the period setting, a remote small town with secrets and deaths, a nervous, overwhelmed and out-of-place investigator trying to solve the mystery (in this case mysteries), the beautiful and endangered local woman as a romantic interest that needs saving, and, most notably, the demonic horseback rider killing people (or, in the case of Gogol, young women). Tim Burton's movie, however, even now, over a quarter century after it was released, remains far superior in every way, be it visual scope and creativity, narrative clarity and progression, acting, and special effects.

Gogol: Origins opens with a wonderfully horrific interlude that introduces the demonic horseback rider, who first enters the scene looking simply like an unidentifiable rider in black who just might save the naked girl who's about to be raped by her three kidnappers. The rider, however, quickly reveals his demonic nature by sprouting huge horns all over his upper torso; he makes short, bloody work of the three thugs before slitting the dirtied but nubile-looking lass's upper chest and draining her of her blood.

A great start that makes one think that one has stumbled upon a bloody and possibly frightening Russian horror flick with exploitation tendencies, but unluckily the scene is never topped. There might be more naked women and bits of violence and blood, but nowhere in the rest of the movie does Gogol: Origins achieve the same fascinating and visceral level — and, for that matter, never again does the Dark Rider sprout his horns; whenever he appears thereafter, his horns are already hard and erect.

N. Gogol 

by Fedor Antonovic Theodor von Moller (1840)

From there, the movie introduces its eponymous character, Gogol (played by Alexander Petrov of Anna [2019 / trailer], looking close to the real thing). A young and unsuccessful writer, working as an on-site scribe documenting murder cases for the St. Petersburg police, Gogol, when not working, busies himself, much as he did in reality, by buying up all copies of his self-published book of poetry (Hans Küchelgarten, by "V. Alov") and burning them. Unluckily, when working, he has a tendency to have fits when confronted by blood. And so he does as this "movie" opens, at the murder scene of a dead young woman, but the almost camp special investigator called in for the crime, Yakow Guro (Oleg Menshikov of Attraction [2017 / trailer] and Invasion [2020 / trailer), comes to realize that Gogol's visions during his seizures have clues to solving the crime...

That part of the movie was surely the first episode of the series, for the section works as a closed story, independent of the whole Dark Rider aspect. Gogol, ends up travelling with Guro, now as his assistant, to the small village of Dikanka — where, as Gogol infers in the movie and is factually true, he lived as a child. A young woman has been murdered, and she proves to be not the only one, and in the course of solving that case — which likewise works as an independent episode — the Dark Rider starts showing up again, as do diverse female ghosts (most notably the reoccurring Oksana [Yuliya Frants of Evrey (2023 / trailer)]) and a flesh-and-blood romantic interest for Gogol, the married Liza (Taisiya Vikova of Ded Moroz. Bitva Magov [2016 / trailer]). The Dark Rider is present mostly on the shores of the next interlude, which liberally dips into Gogol's short story The Fair at Sorochyntsi, tweaking it as needed to fit the supernatural structure of "Gogol, Detective of the Uncanny".

By the time Gogol: Origins wraps up into a truly loose and untidy bow, one major character has died but seems poised to return, Oksana is on the cusp of being either a good or evil character, and Gogol, aside from learning to better control his mysterious powers, has managed to put together a motley crew of compatriots that includes his servant, Yakim (Evgeniy Sytyy of The Blackout [2019 / trailer]); the drunkard doctor, Blomgart (Russian character actor Yan Tsapnik); the minor civil servant of the town, Tesak (Artyom Suchkov of Mafia: Game of Survival [2016 / trailer]), and the man of the series that demands a full frontal nude scene, the mega-muscular DILF blacksmith cum artist Vakula (Sergey Badyuk, below, not from the film, of Search and Destroy [2020 / trailer]).

Okay, Gogol: Origins really doesn't work as a standalone movie, particularly since it works less as one continuous world-building entry — as do, for example, the visibly higher budgeted Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone [2001 / trailer], The Hunger Games [2012 / trailer], the previously mentioned Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings, and the first film of the series that never happened, Cirque de Freak: The Vampire Circus [2009]) — than as a narrative patchwork of diverse extended interludes jammed into a roughly 107 minutes. 

 

For that, however, it does a good job at recreating its period setting, and the acting, even after dubbing, is generally acceptable. There are occasional moments of gratuitous nudity, which can hardly be complained about, and some of the supernatural scenes are rather effective, even unnerving at times. The violence, but for one shooting scene that calls back to the suicide in the back seat of the van in the first Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake (2002 / trailer), never manages to achieve the impressive level of the opening scene, but whenever violence raises its head it isn't shyly done. And, in general, as episodic and unresolved as Gogol: Origins is, it is both interesting and engrossing, and leaves you feeling you want more.

And therein lies the rub for us, to say the least. We, for example, found our DVD amongst the cutouts at the local Euro Store, and it is highly doubtful that we will ever stumble upon the follow-up filmic entries, Gogol: The Demon Viy (2018) and Gogol: Bloody Revenge (2018). Okay, we could rent and stream them online, which would cost us a good ten times what the DVD cost — and, really, we're not sure Gogol: Origins is good enough to warrant that. Also, truth be told, if we have to stream something, we personally prefer streaming series, as we generally prefer binge watching and killing the run as quickly as possible.

Which is why we come to the conclusion that if you're planning to watch Gogol: Origins, perhaps you should first check to see if your streaming service has the series on offer. Then you get everything, including whatever was trimmed to streamline the running time of the film versions, and you can take in as much of the narrative as you want whenever you push "Start". The movie is good enough that it does inspire a desire to see more, but if you have access to the series, why suffer the visual coitus interruptus the "movie version" offers?