How does culture survive in the midst of a war? Rule of Two Walls––written, directed, and edited by David Gutnik––asks the question and attempts to answer it. Filmed in Ukraine from April to November 2022 (just after Russia invaded the country on February 24 of that year), the film is a narrative feature driven by documentary footage. The film’s title references the safest place in the home when there is no proper shelter: the corridor. A narrow space between two walls is the best chance of surviving incoming artillery. We follow a group of Ukrainian artists that has decided to stay in country and use the conflict as a means to create and express themselves. Their fears. Their hopes. Music played loud, full of pain and unease. Paintings depicting the murders of women and children. Since its start in 2014, the Russo-Ukrainian War has been fueled by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s insistence that Ukraine has no identity of its own. That it is essentially just a part of Russia, going by a different name.
The existence and persistence of these artists, their art, their families, and the history of their families directly dispute that persistent lie. These friends sneak out to the remaining restaurants and bars when possible, amidst rubble and sirens. They laugh, talk about movies. Attempt to grasp at some sort of normalcy. We watch the harrowing footage they’ve captured. Burnt bodies. Dead children. City blocks reduced to crumbled rock and metal. There’s an extended scene in which a young man remembers his late grandmother, and wishes he’d been nicer to her while she was still alive.
Before long, the film’s crew directly takes over the narrative. After all, Rule of Two Walls itself is a piece of art made in Ukraine by Ukrainians during the war. This meta-textual commentary underlines the immediacy of everything we’re watching. Crew members give context to how they find themselves in the line of fire making the film, where their family is or might be, memories that linger, etc. A concert held in fall 2022 serves as a powerful final statement to the docudrama narrative.
Gutnik has a nice sense of frame and a welcome penchant for brevity. There’s a particularly arresting shot of Lviv Municipal Art Center Director Lyana Mytsko’s feet as she explains how many who once ignored traditional customs have begun to embrace it as a means of celebration. “Culture is an action and product of a people. So it is not possible to have a nation and not have a culture,” Mytsko says. “When Putin says we have no culture, he means we have no nation.” This is a short, punchy bit of work. It’s hard to parse the fiction from the non-fiction, which is certainly the point. The people surviving through this war are keeping the cultural candle lit for future generations of Ukrainians. Both legend and fact must live on. Amidst the forlorn images and scorched earth, there is some sort of hope.
Rule of Two Walls opens in limited release on Friday, August 16.