252. Russian director Ilya Khrzhanovskiy’s debut feature film “Chetyre” (4) (2004), based on a script by post-modern author/dramatist Vladimir Sorokin: A perplexing, absurdist, and depressing study of contemporary, post-glasnost Russia

“Exhausted by hunger, he ate in secret. He thought he was stealing food; but that was better than stealing from strangers”  

-- Narrator of a TV program on dogs, viewed by Oleg in the film 4

The film 4 was made in 2004 and won 11 major film awards across Europe, the Americas and Asia.

Khrzhanovskiy’s  debut film 4 is no ordinary feature film. Four stray dogs on a Moscow street at night open the film. Four persons (3 customers and a bartender) accidentally meet at a bar late night. The three drinkers (Marina, a female prostitute; Vladimir, a male piano tuner/musician; and Oleg, a male wholesale-meat supplier) construct their alternate fictional professions as they consume alcohol and attempt connecting with each other. 

Bar scene: (left to right) Vladimir, Marina and Oleg

As the film progresses, we realize Marina is one of 4 sisters. Marina (played by actress Marina Vovchenko) meets up with two of her other sisters (possibly played by her real life sisters, if we go by their surnames and physical similarity) in her village. The fourth sister has just passed away. Marina travels with three strangers in a train compartment (they too add up to four). Asked by one of her co-passengers about where she is heading, she responds “To shoot a grenade launcher—my psychiatrist’s advice to clear the head. It helps against suicide.” More allegories, more symbols, more absurd connections. The person who asked her the question returns much later in the film as a thief stealing a watch from a car-accident site.

At the early bar sequence, the conversation among the three drinkers are about dogs and humans, after Marina curses a man who has run over a dog at night. “A dog’s life is shit,” says one. “Man’s life is shit” is the terse response. “A dog’s life is comfortable, actually” is a follow-up comment from Oleg, the wholesale-meat seller. “Hit a dog on the road and bad luck follows you; hit a man and good luck follows,’’ adds Oleg. “Dogs are closer to God,” says Vladimir, implying thereby that humans are comparatively less close to God.

"Dogs are closer to God"
Four stray dogs on a Moscow street open the film

Dogs are everywhere, following all the characters--at the meat factory, at the village to eat up the dolls (made up of chewed bread!), following the thief who robs a watch off the hand of Oleg, who has just minutes ago crashed his car in an effort to save a stray dog crossing the road (Oleg, at the bar scene earlierin the film, had professed his love for dogs, constituting an Aristotelian structural balance to end the meandering script of 4).

There is a Muslim, who sells meat of bizarre round piglets (genetically modified?) and kicks a dog (both animals that devout Muslims avoid dealing with) and is promptly reprimanded for his action by the non-Muslim Oleg, who loves dogs and watches dog programs on TV at home, surrounded by spic and span dog statues and stuffed dogs,.

Four planes take off with prisoners (including Valdimir) forcibly trained to be soldiers to fight at some unknown frontier. What’s this strange fascination with the number 4? In one of the comments made at the bar, Vladimir ironically states that 4 legs lend stability to a table.

Old women of the village mourn at the fresh grave
of Marina's sister

Marina’s village reminds one of the derelict world of Tarkovsky's film Stalker. The population of the village is strange. It is surrounded by barbed wires and caution notices warning trespassers of high-tension electrical cables. But Marina knows how to navigate those barriers. The village seems to have survived in a time warp, complete with imposing but closed Russian orthodox churches and where the poor aged inhabitants sing hymns at burials and sell weird dolls to survive. There is just one male in the village, otherwise populated by females. Most of the women are toothless and old. Even in their advanced age, they talk of sex and continue to be proud of their breasts, when inebriate with vodka. The only two young female inhabitants of the village are Marina’s siblings and one of them has just died and had been adept at making the dolls.  En route to her village, Marina passes a truck/shop storing the genetically modified round piglets. (Everything in the film script is connected, if you are observant!) The odd male in the all-female village commits suicide after perfecting the faces of the last four dolls, using up all his savings. 

There is a strange connect between the muddy exteriors of Marina’s village and the mysterious mud that gathers on Moscow streets as though there has been a recent flood that require truck-based bulldozers to clear the detritus.

The sole male inhabitant of the village
carry four unfinished dolls (note the mud)

Thus the film 4 presents you with animals who behave like humans and human beings who behave like animals. Some of the animals are alive, others are now dead carcasses. And some of the carcasses are possibly the result of banned/mad/state-supported scientific experiments to be sold as prized meat to high-end restaurants that exist but do not seem to have much patronage/clientele.

Just a few minutes into the film and any intelligent viewer will know that the tale is a political allegory of Russia today. 

As this writer reviews the film 4 during the worldwide Covid-19 pandemic, the shrill video messages of Wuhan residents pleading for global help are recalled. In 4, stray dogs are suddenly disturbed by sudden arrival of earth-moving equipment to redo a Moscow street at night that did not seem to require major repairs or reconstruction. The dogs and humans in Russia (and now in Wuhan, China) are at the mercy of forces that are incomprehensible to the respective denizens. And yet life trudges on, in an absurdist reality that reminds you of Ionesco's plays.

Vladimir, who was observing fishes, turtles and strange water eels in glass water-tanks, in the film 4 is picked up by the police off the street and later interned in a prison camp and forcibly re-trained to be a soldier to be packed off like hundreds of others to fight an unknown national enemy in 4 huge aircrafts.

The well-to-do Oleg has a father Misha who was/is a scientist constantly worried about dangerous microbes and is a fanatic for health safety to the extent of washing his garbage cans each day. Misha loves his dead wife and wants to visit his wife’s grave with his son Oleg. Misha is a scientist who firmly believes in the power of hell. This is where Vladimir Sorokin’s contribution surfaces as the novelist/playwright/scriptwriter is apparently a devout Christian, getting baptized at 25 and refusing to join the Komsomol, the youth communist cadre. Sorokin subsequently won the People’s Booker prize and other international prizes with his works translated from Russian into more than 20 languages. Sorokin’s tongue-in-cheek aside in 4 that perhaps only die-hard chess enthusiasts will spot includes the names of famous Russian chess players Bronstein and Lukin, dropped nonchalantly by Vladmir at the bar scene as the names of famous genetic engineering scientists in the tale he fabricates.

There are visuals of streets getting cleaned in 4 by water-spraying trucks and bulldozers clearing mud. At the end of the film, you do see a cleaned-up road. But ironically who is using this clean facility? A dirty thief and a stray dog. No detail in this film is non-allegorical. When the village women eat and relish the meat of a dead pig, there is food for thought. When the pig’s head is thrown into a pig sty for other pigs to hog, there is food for thought. When dolls made of chewed bread are eaten by stray dogs, there is food for thought.

These are just some fascinating elements of the film (script by Vladimir Sorokin). Does the film belong to the director Ilya Khrzhanovskiy (his debut feature film) or to Sorokin or to both? The film is audacious and critical of modern Russia, reminding one at times of Joseph Heller's book Catch 22, subsequently made into a feature film by director Mike Nichols. Somewhere, the mad script of 4 comes together. It reminds one of another nihilistic recent debut film--this time from China—Bo Hu's An Elephant Sitting Still (2018). Only Bo Hu committed suicide soon after making his film, while Khrzhanovskiy has finally made his second film. The film 4 could well have had an alternate fitting title “4 dogs not sitting still," on the lines of Bo Hu’s film.

P.S.  Bo Hu’s debut film An Elephant Sitting Still (2018), a film critical of modern China was reviewed earlier on this blog. (Click on the name of the Chinese film in this post-script to access the review.). The film 4 won awards at the Antalya Golden Orange film festival in Turkey (Best Director), the Athens international film festival in Greece (City of Athens award), the Buenos Aires international film festival of independent cinema in Argentina (Best Director), the Golden Apricot Yerevan international film festival in Armenia (Jury Special Prize), Rotterdam international film festival in the Netherlands (Golden Cactus and Tiger awards), Seattle international film festival in USA (New Directors Showcase award), Sochi Open Russian film festival in Russia (Jury Special Prize), Titanic international film festival in Budapest, Hungary (Breaking Waves award), Transilvania international film festival in Romania (Transilvania trophy and Best Cinematography) and Valdiva international film festival in Chile (Best Soundtrack). Some 15 years later, the film’s director Khrzhanovskiy has made his second ambitious and controversial feature film DAU in 2019. The DAU film project also has writer Sorokin of 4 to prop up Khrzhanovskiy.

247. Russian director Kantemir Balagov’s second feature film “Dylda” (Beanpole) (2019): A Russian Nobel Prize winning work of literature inspires a complex film on the varied tribulations of an unmarried woman

Three very interesting and complex films on women with screenplays written by the film’s own directors are those made by male directors. One of those three would be Kantemir Balagov’s Beanpole.  Balagov has admitted that his main source of inspiration was Nobel Prize for Literature winner Svetlana Alexandrovna Alexeivich’s 1983 book War doesn’t have a woman’s face. The other two films of similar artistic strengths and flavour about unmarried women are the American films: Joseph L. Manckiewicz’ The Barefoot Contessa (1954) with Ava Gardner (in arguably her best role) and Paul Mazursky’s An Unmarried Woman (1978) with Jill Clayburgh (in one of her best roles). Balagov, unlike the two US director-cum-screenplay writers, co-scripted his film with another male scriptwriter, Aleksandr Terekhov. Both Balagov and Mazursky present a quixotic emancipation for their lead characters, while in Manckiewicz’ case the liberation, unfortunately, leads to tragedy.

Iya (Victoria Miroshnichenko) the Beanpole  (Note the use of white in this shot)

Iya, the Beanpole, in another contrasting shot. (Note the use of green
and the deliberate camera angle to capture it)

Balagov’s film Beanpole is not a war film though it is indeed a tale of soldiers just as Malick’s The Thin Red Line (1998) is not a typical war film but rather a film on the “war” within the soldiers’ minds in a war setting. Likewise, Beanpole is an exquisite film on the psychological, social and medical “wars” female soldiers fight, on their return from the frontline for their aspirations for a emotionally fulfilled life.  Balagov is a self-confessed admirer of Russian film maestro Alexander Sokurov and the deft use of the camera, lighting, and visual composition in Beanpole will recall the typical Sokurov touches. (The use of colour and lighting in Beanpole is far superior and intelligently chosen compared to the Oscar nominees of 2020.)

Iya and Masha and the subtle use of contrasting colours in their garments

Victoria Miroshnichenko plays the gangly, former Russian World War II soldier Iya, euphemistically called “Beanpole” because of her lanky height and simplicity. More importantly most characters in the film are aware that Iya is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).   As the film progresses, the viewer will note that “Beanpole” in the film is quite the opposite of the intelligent PTSD afflicted Will (Ben Foster) in the interesting US film Leave No Trace (2018). The PTSD afflicted Iya, who dotes on her military colleague and friend Maya’s toddler son Pashka, unwittingly suffocates the child during a seizure, a fascinating sequence in Beanpole.

Two inseparable friends: Masha (Vasilisa Perelygina) (left)  and Iya the Beanpole

Going by the title of the film Beanpole, one would assume the tale is on Iya’s life. But co-scriptwriters Balagov and Terekhov have scripted a tale of two military women, the simple-minded Iya (Beanpole) afflicted with PTSD and her close street-smart friend and colleague Masha (Vasilisa Perelygina), who has lost her son Pashka while he was in the care of Iya and cannot conceive another child due to war injuries.  The film ignores Masha’s past as it concentrates on her two current objectives: one, to get married to a loving husband, and two, to bring up another child to replace the dead Pashka to fulfil her motherly instincts.

A fascinating and powerful interaction: Sasha's mother
meets Masha, her aspiring future daughter-in-law over a formal meal

Masha does find her ideal “future” husband in another military man Sasha, who is smitten by Masha and intends to marry her.  But Masha’s dream of marriage is short-lived following a fascinating encounter with Sasha’s mother over a formal dinner.  That dinner sequence depicts a war without bullets fired or tantrums exhibited by either woman. The iciness in the conversation and camera positioning will probably not be forgotten in a long while by any astute film viewer. Sasha’s mother was simply magnetic in delicately underscoring the social differences between her son and her future daughter-in-law. The build-up and the eventual break-up of Masha and Sasha are not of two individuals in love but indicative of the differences between the artificial social equality in the military with its uniforms and the real world where money and class matters either in Leningrad (now St Petersburg, where Bolagov and Sokurov have spent most of their lives).

Masha identifies the possible sperm donor for Iya's future child,
as a replacement for Masha's dead child Pashka
(Note the colour of clothes and the background in the shot)

Balagov’s Beanpole trudges onward to grapple with Masha’s second objective of bringing up a child that she can call her own to replace her dead child Pashka. The film then presents a new complex scenario. Masha cannot conceive a second child due to a war injury. Masha gets her close friend Iya, who is not interested in having sex with men, to conceive a child to fulfil Masha’s emotional needs following the death of Pashka. The outcome is not as important as are the effects of war on men and women alike off the battlefield that Beanpole presents as a larger picture.

Beanpole mirrors Alexeivich’s 1983 Nobel-prize-winning literary work that explored the myriad problems faced by women soldiers after a war concludes.  There is hardly any political undercurrent in Beanpole except when 6 year old Pashka is asked to bark like a dog by friendly elders and is stupefied and unable o respond.  An elder comments that there are no dogs left in Leningrad for Pahka to know how they bark because they have all been eaten—a rare indirect political comment of the food situation within the film.  Beanpole is thus essentially a social and psychological commentary on the plight of women soldiers after a war, either traumatised or injured for life.

The camera accentuates white in this shot by intentionally
incorporating the floor to add white colour to the shot

Beanpole is a significant film as it introduces a major new talent among contemporary Russian filmmakers in Kantemir Balagov, who writes his own original screenplays, and deserved his Best director award at Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section.  The various honours at other film festivals for its cinematography (Kseniya Sereda) and the performances of the two female leads confirm the intrinsic worth of this film. A remarkable cinematic work of 2019 from a promising 29-year-old man making his second feature film!

P.S.  Beanpole is one of the author’s top 20 films of 2019. The film won the Best Director award and the FIPRESCI prize in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival; the Silver Apricot Award at the Yeravan Film Festival of Armenia; the Best Film award at the Montreal Festival of New Cinema; the Impact Award at the Stockholm Film Festival; Achievement in Cinematography and Best Screenplay awards at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards; the Special Jury Prize at the Lisbon and Estoril Film Festival;  the FIPRESCI prize at the Palm Springs International Film Festival (USA); and the Best Actress award at both the Antalya Golden Orange Festival (Turkey) and the Sakhalin International Film Festival (Russia). Two films mentioned in this review The Thin Red Line and Leave No Trace have been reviewed earlier on this blog (click the names of the films to access the reviews).

195. Colombian director Ciro Guerra’s “El abrazo de la serpiente” (Embrace of the Serpent) (2015) (Colombia/Argentina/Venezuela): An amazing film with deep insights on nature and civilization dedicated to “peoples whose song we will never know.”

Both posters above are predominantly in black and white,
while colour is utilized sparingly and effectively,
 as in the film

“The display I witnessed in those enchanted hours was such that I find it impossible to describe in a language that allows others to understand its beauty and splendour; all I know is that, like all those who have shed the thick veil that blinded them, when I came back to my senses, I had become another man.” ---German scientist and explorer Theodor Koch-Grunberg’s (1872-1924) writings, quoted at the opening of the film

The year 2015 witnessed the release of three outstanding films from South American countries: Land and Shade from Colombia, The Pearl Button from Chile, and Embrace of the Serpent a co-production from Colombia, Argentina and Venezuela. Each of the three films deals with history and economics. Each film present a combination of fact and fiction, the last two blending history with actors playing fictional roles that have some facts to rely on. Each of the films provide the viewer an unsettling perspective of reality that you rarely encounter in cinema these days. Each of these three is an artistic work that will satisfy a sensitive viewer who is looking for entertainment without sex, violence, and escapist action. All three films are bolstered by outstanding cinematography, direction, and incredibly mature performances by little known actors that can make big Hollywood names pale in comparison. And more importantly, these films have been made for a fraction of the cost of an average Hollywood film.

First journey: Koch-Grunberg (Bijvoet), Manduca, and young Karamakate,
with material possessions, including a phonograph

Embrace of the Serpent is a tale of two scientists/explorers: the German Theodor Koch-Grunberg (1872-1924) (played by Jan Bijvoet of Borgman) and the American Richard Evan Schultes (1915-2001) (played by Brionne Davis of Avenged). Both men were seeking a medicinal flower “yakruna” from a native shaman Karamakate (played by Nibio Torres, when young, and Antonio Bolivar, when old), who lives on the banks of the Amazon and its tributaries. 

There is a 20-30 year gap (1909 to 1940) between the two encounters of Karamakate and the two explorers from the developed world. Koch-Grunberg was an ethnographer who had fallen ill while studying the Pemon natives of Venezuela and is brought to the shaman Karamakate, who knows about yakruna and where it can be found. This flower Koch-Grunberg had been told could cure the sick explorer. Karamakate distrusts Koch-Grunberg and Manduca, Koch-Grunberg’s native companion and recently freed slave. Karamakate refuses money as he takes the German and Manduca to Colombia along the Amazon only to find Colombian soldiers misusing the plant as an hallucinatory drug and growing it in untraditional ways for profit and drug abuse. The drugged soldiers and the plants are destroyed by the enraged young Karamakate. Koch-Grunberg is thus not cured and dies even though he is sustained for a while by Karamakate blowing a hallucinogenic powder up his nostril. However, Koch-Grunberg’s detailed notes of his trip with young Karamakate and the yakruna that he saw before the plants were destroyed, survive his passing. 

Second journey: American Richrd Evan Schultes (Davis) and the older
Karamakate (Bolivar), reach where the last yakruna grows

Decades later, the American scientist Richard Evan Schultes, having read the detailed notes of Koch-Grunberg, locates Karamakate, now much older and possibly with memory fading (or at least affecting to fade) and less temperamental than in his youth. The American is also searching for yakruna for commercial reasons because the genetic resource of the flower’s seeds can apparently make rubber trees disease-free adding to the profits of the global rubber industry chain, from forests to factory. Old crafty Karmakate shows him the last yakruna flower and cleverly cooks it for Schultes. The outcome shown in Embrace of the Serpent is, to say the least, fascinating. 

What is the serpent in the title of the film? It is the Amazon. The Amazon does look like an anaconda when viewed from the sky. It appears as a massive snake that populates the Amazon banks and the director cleverly shows the birth of young anacondas early in the film. To add to the visual suggestion, there is a clever line in the script that states the natives believe the snake came from the skies. (This is not far removed from similar analogies within the traditional beliefs of natives of Chile in The Pearl Button.) 

Two aspects of this important film stand out for any viewer. The two native actors who play Karamakate overshadow the performances of professional western actors in this film. The credit not only goes to the native actors but to the script of director and co-scriptwriter Ciro Guerra, co-scriptwriter Jacques Toulemonde Vidal and the cinematographer David Gallego. One has to admit considerable fiction has been enmeshed with the two historical trips on the Amazon river separated in time by some three decades. 

The young impetuous Karamakate (Torres) with the Amazon behind him

The second aspect of the film is the deliberate choice of the director Ciro Guerra to make Embrace of the Serpent in black and white (cinematographer David Gallego) for most parts. [This deliberate choice needs to be compared with a few other important films on evil/distrust and reconciliation deliberately made in black and white with superb outcomes: Mike Nichol’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man (1995) and Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon (2009)—all cinematic works with reflective depth and common concerns which would have had lesser impact were they made in lush colour.] It is possible that a colour version of the film Embrace of the Serpent would have emphasized the wrong elements of the tale—the formidable river and the overarching rain forests. The pivotal aspect of the film is the traditional world of the natives and their knowledge of traditional medicine orally handed over generations and kept protected from commercial misuse. When colour is used briefly by the filmmakers in Embrace of the Serpent, it is to communicate this wisdom. It is not surprising that several reviewers have noticed the parallels between Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and Embrace of the Serpent. Science/scientific knowledge (here, specifically the commercial production of rare plants and genetic resources) and accumulated human wisdom are weighed against each other in both the cinematic works. Somewhere in the film Karamakate says, “Every tree, every flower brings wisdom.” The endings of both films, their release separated by half a century, will humble a reflective viewer. 

Embrace of the Serpent provides much food for thought. The journeys on the river have parallels with Homer’s tale of Ulysses voyage. In Ciro Guerra’s film, there are three major ports/stops during the river voyage. The first is a native village on the banks of the river. There is a peaceful exchange of knowledge and understanding of each other’s cultures. The natives listen to European classical music from a phonograph of Koch-Grunberg. Koch-Grunberg and Manduca dance to German music of Haydn and Handel and entertain the natives who end up stealing his compass. Koch-Grunberg is upset that his only scientific aid for navigation is lost. Karamakate sagaciously drills reason into the mind of the upset German, ironically reminding the scientist “Knowledge belongs to all. You do not understand that. You are just a white man.” Even the natives need to learn from the developed nations, the shaman appears to assert. Ironically, we learn in the film that shamans such as Karamakate were almost wiped out by the colonizers. One reason for Karamakate to agree taking Schultes on the second voyage on the river is to connect with those remnants of his tribe that had shamans. 

At the religious settlement, the trio treads with care 

The second stop is at a religious settlement run by fanatic Roman Catholic monks who brutally inculcate Christianity in the minds of innocent native kids obliterating any respect they had for traditional wisdom. The monks seem totally oblivious of the virtue of translating Christ’s pacifist teachings in real life. Karamakate, Koch-Grunberg and Manduca try to help free the native kids from the priests' influence. The freed native kids are ironically later found some 30 years later by Karamakate and Schulte as grown-up twisted Christians who have interpreted religion in a bizarre manner, taking to idolatry and cannibalism. The effect of Roman Catholic monks on the natives during the colonization period is dealt in a parallel manner in both Embrace of the Serpent and The Pearl Button. 

The final decision for the old Karamkate comes from his environment
and wisdom that he has acquired over time

The third stop in both voyages is where the yakruna flower grows. Karamakate’s reactions are different each time. It is important to note that yakruna is a plant that can heal, symbolic of the independence of the natives. And it grows on rubber trees! But commercial compulsions of the developed world always lead to loss of independence of the natives. A rubber slave pleads for death as the rubber sap pail he had nailed to a rubber tree has been emptied and he will have to face brutal consequences from his masters. It is therefore not surprising that Karamakate’s constant refrain to both explorers is to unburden themselves of their material possessions.

Embrace of the Serpent constantly pits personal material possessions against collective traditional memories. The old Karamakate says, “To become warriors, the cohiuanos must abandon all and go alone to the jungle, guided only by their dreams. In this journey, he has to find out, in solitude and silence, who he really is. He must become a wanderer and dream. Many are lost, and some never return. But those who return they are ready to face what is to come.“ The film is unusual in many respects. In the film nine languages are spoken including Spanish, Portuguese, German, Catalan, Latin and four aboriginal Amazonian languages. 

Secondly, women are almost peripheral in the film for reasons best known to the filmmkers alone.

Then, the film touches on the resources of the river itself—the fish. Karamakate specifically warns the scientist Koch-Grunberg not to fish during a particular period (possibly its breeding period to preserve its numbers) but the German does not listen and answers, “The river is full of fishes. We cannot possibly end them.” Today, oceans and rivers are rapidly losing the rich fish species and their diversity by mindless over-fishing.

Finally, there is the contrast of the messages in dreams presented in Embrace of the Serpent —the anaconda suggests that Karamakate kill the scientist Theo, the jaguar suggest the opposite. The two dreams distil the quandary of the film for the viewer—science vs human wisdom. The final action of old Karamakate before he disappears seems to reconcile the jaguar’s view and the shaman’s accumulated wisdom. The American explorer Schultes is cured of his insomnia, he can dream, and is now a changed human being. In a parallel Kubrick moment, he is at home with butterflies!

P.S. Embrace of the Serpent won the Golden Peacock at the 2015 Indian International Film Festival in Goa; the Art cinema award at the Cannes film festival; the Golden Apricot at the Yerevan film festival (Armenia); the Golden Astor at the Mar del Plata international film festival; and the Alfred P. Sloan prize at the Sundance film festival. The film is in myriad ways superior to the Hungarian film Son of Saul, which won the Best Foreign Film Oscar while Embrace of the Serpent lost to the Hungarian challenge after both were final nominees for the award. All three films Land and Shade (Colombia), The Pearl Button (Chile), and Embrace of the Serpent (all released in 2015) are on the author’s top 10 films list for that year and have been separately reviewed in detail on this blog. Another film Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) mentioned in the above review is also reviewed in detail earlier on this blog.