The come-on for Meduza, from director Roc Morin, is that it is a documentary about an actor who played a sniper actually becoming a sniper in the war in Ukraine. While that is the bare bones of the story, this is really a more meditative, spiritual, and philosophical look at life from a variety of perspectives.
Pavlo Aldoshyn, the focus of the film, played a sniper in Sniper: The White Raven, that came out around the time Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. Because of the skills he learned making the film, he was trained as a sniper. But Aldoshyn is not what you might think a sniper is like. He says, “A sniper is not the one who kills, but the one who watches. A sniper is someone who loves nature. A sniper is someone who loves people. A sniper is someone who loves animals, who loves the world. A sniper is someone who loves the sounds of nature, breath of wind, touch of water.”
Throughout the film, Aldoshyn does not reflect on what it is like to kill. He rarely even speaks of the war itself. Rather he speaks of what it means to be alive and connected to everything. One of his metaphors is the jellyfish (Meduza in Ukrainian) that is such an alien being, yet is also a very real example of being connected to its environment. To his reflections are added those of his fiancée, Katarina Leonova, who is pregnant with their child.
The film also travels around the world to bring in various (seemingly) unconnected people: a man in Japan who lost his wife in the tsunami and goes diving to be close to her, a builder of mechanical idols in India, an art collector in the US who saves old photo albums from garage sales, songs of extinct birds in Hawaii, folk wisdom from Ecuador. While these stories are diverse and at times feels like digressions, they help to connect Aldoshyn’s reflections to the wider world—both of people and nature.
The film has wonderful visuals as we go to far-flung places and experience the various connections of people and nature. It also shows us some strange connections of people and war, such as a concerto in which a rocket is played with a bow.
One of the concepts that arises from time to time is that of prayer, even in relationship to the jellyfish, for whom, we are told by the director of the Museum of Jellyfish (who knew?) in Kyiv, life and prayer are essentially one. Aldoshyn defines his concept of prayer as “Prayer is a method of synchronization. It’s a harmony between what you are inside and what you are outside.”
This is the kind of film that it’s probably best not to try to put the pieces together like a jigsaw puzzle. It’s more like a wide-ranging mural with various elements. We can look at the separate elements and miss the effect of the whole work. For this film, it’s best to let the whole tell the story of the pieces.
Meduza is available on various digital platforms.
Photos courtesy of Buffalo 8.
