By Tamar Baumgarten-Noort. The wall is covered with a whole gallery of ancestral portraits, all posters of ice-skating stars in victory poses. Almost lovingly a man pastes something over the stars' faces – a cut-out picture of his own face, which fits itself onto the depicted athletic bodies a bit too strangely, coarsely and crudely. The gallery is situated in a decrepit flat in a half-torn-down house. But inside this room there is no age or destruction, only hopeful expectation and an uncompromising will to create. In this place a man does not only transform himself into a celebrated star – he also builds his own ice rink. He constructs a basin and freezes the water with the help of cooling aggregates. Every now and then he reaches down inside to feel if any ice has formed yet. He seems to have the patience of a saint and is driven by one thing only: pure confidence. And it isn't the confidence that his dream will one day become reality but a firm belief that he is already living within this reality. The preparations he arranges so that the workers won't tear down his building; the work on his ice rink – all those actions are a matter of course for the unnamed protagonist in Andrey Gryazev's ICE AGE. He's not chasing after some dream, he is already living it – even though when seen from outside all his endeavours seem destined to fail.

As melancholy as its tone is – this is the poetic core of the film. A dream that can be fulfilled with fantasy and creative force already has an effect as soon as the idea is let loose on the world. That's the message that the eccentric protagonist in ICE AGE seems to give to the audience to ponder. The dream's idea alone suffices to live within it – if only you believe in it strong enough. Most of the time this kind of narration is connected to tons of kitschy moments, but Gryazev's elegant mixture of matter-of-fact and at the same time loving direction can avoid this fate. You can feel how much the director loves ice-skating – Gryazev used to be a world-class ice-skater himself. This way his portrayal of the protagonist never gets cranky, and he never pokes fun at him. He takes his character's dream seriously and gives him room to live this dream.

Links

• ICE AGE (RUS 2009. Andrey Gryazev)
• No White Without Black – An interview with Andrey Gryazev
• Tradition's Obligation – Daniel Bickermann about the Russian film market