#20 - JRL 7070
New York Times
February 19, 2003
MOVIE REVIEW | 'THE BALLAD OF BERING STRAIT'
Fame Is Slow for a Russian Band
By ELVIS MITCHELL

The documentary "The Ballad of Bering Strait" shows that the process of finding fame is like the wheels of justice: both grind exceedingly slow and exceedingly fine. And "Bering Strait" is exceedingly similar to other making (and unmaking) of the band stories that have come to overpopulate MTV, network television and, last but finally least, movie theaters.

This competently made picture seems a rehash, and not a terribly interesting one. What's remarkable about it is how unremarkable it is. After the frame is built for the movie — classically trained Russian teenagers come to the United States to find success as a country music band — the details are reminiscent of other behind-the-music films and are numbingly familiar.

You shouldn't take the phrase "behind the music" too seriously. This isn't a feature-film version of one of those specials featuring musicians tripping over their syringes and succumbing to sex addiction on the way to tragedy that VH1 programs around its dwindling showcase of music videos. There are more drugs and innuendos in an episode of "The Osbournes" or in a Pepsi commercial than in "Bering Strait," which opens today in New York City.

The director, Nina Gilden Seavey, began work on the documentary in 1999, when these teenagers first came to the States. Early in the film we see them in classes at a conservatory, the culture clash they had to overcome is evident when one of them has to explain what the fog in the song title "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" means to his instructors. (We learn later that the banjo is bewilderingly new to Russia.) They arrive and move in with their manager, a surrogate dad who is confident that gold records are just around the foggy corner for the band.

But arrival in Tennessee for Bering Strait — the band's cute name — doesn't complete its journey. Fame clearly views this group as a work in progress and withholds its favor. The movie primarily seems to depict how good-humored the group members are over the two-and-a-half-year endurance test they submit themselves to before achieving some recognition.

They switch record labels repeatedly, and there are brief references to the hard times that country music has suffered. But it would be fun to see exactly how this smoothie Cheshire cat of a group constantly landed on its feet.

Ms. Gilden Seavey's proximity promises something more tantalizing than we get. Bering Strait and its manager come close to financial ruin. (Worse, the band members can't even get jobs at a fast-food restaurant because their visas state they are allowed to work only as musicians. It almost looks as if the immigration service had too much faith in their futures.)

There are bouts of homesickness, but we do see a few triumphs, like the band's playing the Grand Ole Opry, which, to be sure, hasn't changed its music over the years. Yet there aren't really any tensions.

The closest thing we get to an eruption is when Natasha, one of the two women in the group, cuts off all her hair and her manager pouts, but he quickly gets her to wear a wig. She looks good shorn of locks, but it's a phase many teenagers go through.

The Russians-going-country angle of "Bering Strait" is such an obvious television story that the documentary uses clips from newscasts reporting on the band several times. (One of these occasions is when the apartment building that some of the band members have just moved into catches fire.)

Bruce S. Feiler's 1998 book "Dreaming Out Loud" details the ins and outs of Nashville in a more penetrating and insightful manner than this documentary.

Ms. Gilden Seavey's ambition seems to be to make a picture that doesn't hurt anyone's feelings about these accomplished musicians chasing a dream; you could probably hear a similar story sitting next to someone on a flight from Nashville.

The most fascinating thing about "The Ballad of Bering Strait" is that a majority of Nashville bar customers, being canvassed for opinions after hearing the band's likable but faceless country pop, know where Bering Strait is.

THE BALLAD OF BERING STRAIT

Produced and directed by Nina Gilden Seavey; director of photography, Erich Roland; edited by Jeff Consiglio; music by Bering Strait; released by Emerging Pictures. Running time: 98 minutes. This film is not rated.

WITH: Natasha Borzilova, Ilya Toshinsky, Lydia Salnikova, Alexander Arzamastev, Alexander Ostrovsky, Sergei Passov, Sergei Olkhovsky, Andrei Misikhin (all members of Bering Strait) and Tim DuBois, Mike Kinnamon, Brent Maher, Ray Johnson, Valery Salnikov, Phil O'Donnell and Lee Bach.