Really?? A Political Film??

By far, probably the weirdest film I've ever seen. Even from when it started I knew this would be a long screening: no dialogue, black-and-white, awkward sequence of random shots. My theory was reaffirmed after 70 minutes of total chaos- was this a documentary? If so, of what? Soviet Russian life? I could hardly keep up. One second orchestra music is playing as the camera lays wedged between two trains, and the next you hear a soft melody while a woman gets her hair done. Unusual sequence? I should say so.
Graham Robert's analysis of the film The Man with the Movie Camera definitely answered a few of my lingering questions (more like 200). For starters, Vertov made documentaries, claiming they were "the only valid form of film." I thought it interesting how he referred to this genre of non-fiction as "unplayed film;" in other words, clearly this was unscripted and not rehearsed. I can definitely agree with that- had a pretty hard time trying to uncover any sort of plot. But what really took me by surprise was this film's intent: politics. Rather than a whole lot of everyday life shots in 1920's Soviet Russia meshed into what we call a movie (as I had presumed it to be), this was a testament to "the history of the Soviet Union, of modernism and Constructivism- indeed of the cinema itself."
Wow! Who would have thought that so much political depth lay under the surface of a bunch of shots of people sleeping, elevator doors opening, and women packing cigarettes into tiny boxes? When put into the context of time, however, I can more easily understand how the political unrest and upheaval is mimicked by the chaos of what lies on-screen. All-in-all, knowing the director's intent, I get it now (and can see it from the viewing) that his film depicted "the Stalinist policies (which were) about to unfold: crush resistance in the countryside, urbanize, industrialize, purge opposition."