Kateryna Gornostai‘s “Timestamp” begins eerily. Her camera slowly moves through empty classrooms and school passageways as a muffled thudding sound overwhelms the soundtrack. You expect a window to be blown in by a bomb at any moment. Only, it turns out, it is the sound of kids practicing basketball. Herein, Gornostai reveals the gambit of her film. “Timestamp” is a wartime documentary, not a war documentary. Away from images of death and destruction on the frontlines, Ukrainian kids still get up in the morning, put on their backpacks and head to their schools—as best as they can. During an invasion, as a nation musters up its defense, lives end. But lives also bloom—as a million Ukranian kids imagine and dream about a future without war. Gornostai poignantly captures their hopes and resilience in a stunning panoramic mosaic—a monument to the spirit of a besieged nation.
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“Timestamp” couldn’t be more topical if it tried. As the United States and Russia begin negotiations to end the war, Ukraine’s fate hangs in the balance—and it does not even have a seat at the table. Gornostai captures a staggering, unfathomable aspect of life during wartime in Ukraine that most people haven’t even imagined. The children in Ukraine, mere kids, live in a reality where they have bomb shelters and bunkers below every school, an air raid alarm can go off at any moment, and staff and kids need to dash to safety at a moment’s notice. Toddlers are taught how to tell an attractive toy apart from a decoy unexploded bomb. Teenagers are taught how to assemble, aim and shoot rifles. And apply a tourniquet to save someone’s shattered limb or life.
These are images we see, from a safe distance, as occurrences in historical films, like last year’s “Blitz” about the WWII London bombings. In films like “Schindler’s List” and “Gone With The Wind,” we see the entire populace conscripted to support a wartime economy and produce essential goods and services. To see such a reality through the clarity of DP Oleksandr Roshchyn‘s HD camera in the present tense brings into sharper relief the magnitude at which lives have been upended. The umpteenth news footage of a shelled building cannot effectively convey that life must yet persist, and that the Ukrainian people find ways to live even under extraordinary, life-changing, ‘the sky has fallen’ circumstances.
Gornostai and editor Nikon Romanchenko use a simple but effective organizing principle for the considerable footage they have gathered for “Timestamp.” Title cards indicate the city we are in – Cherkasy, Kamianske, etc – and often the distance from the battle frontline. Gornostai has pointedly pointed out that the distance to the frontline in the film’s title cards might be more or less accurate depending on the day, as this is very much an active war. “Timestamp” is in the mode of a documentary by Fredrick Wiseman or Wang Bing, exalted comparisons that Gornostai merits. There are no interviews, talking heads, direct-to-camera addresses, or a voiceover narrating or explaining things. All Gornostai has done is capture the lives of these kids and teachers, unfiltered, unvarnished. The toddlers sometimes wave at the camera and pose and smirk before it, helping break through the distancing artifice of cinema—these are real kids, actually growing up under the cloud of war.
The sweep and ambition of “Timestamp” is impressive. It captures everything from art classes to remote Zoom lectures, to Boy and Girl Scouts at camp, military training and games, prom-like preparations and graduations, picnics and even school protests. “Timestamp” would have been illuminating and edifying had it just been about the Ukrainian school system alone. That it captures Ukrainian schools during wartime is its distinction. Gornostai and editor Romanchenko fill “Timestamp” with a multitude of arresting locations, faces and characters, spending enough time to make an impression but always moving on to a new city, to a new group of people—ever expanding the scope of their vision. At 2 hours and 5 minutes, “Timestamp” feels extensive and sprawling and is judiciously paced throughout.
Of the various episodes and narratives included, some stand out as especially memorable. A class of young men being trained to program and maneuver drones speaks to the realities of modern technology and military engagement. An extended sequence showing young boys and girls in their late teens practicing their graduation dances and performing them on their big day is exceptionally charming. They giggle and laugh shyly as they touch and lift each other and pirouette. In the moment, they appear carefree and angelic, ennobled by the camera – only for your heart to sink imagining them at the frontline one day. Some other moments might catch you in the throat – a young girl weeping before her dead father’s picture, young children distressingly and passionately singing about how terrible war is, and an ending dedication by director Gornostai to her brother, lost to the war.
There has been much ink devoted to how the global pandemic has stripped an entire generation of kids of their childhoods – holed up as they were for an extended period of time. Or, in general, how kids have become wired differently due to early and persistent exposure to screens, devices, and social media. Pay a thought to kids growing up during wartime. Gornostai captures a snapshot of their everyday heroism on film, embalming it for future generations. Those negotiating the war’s end might serve themselves well if they got acquainted with “Timestamp”—to realize what’s at stake. [A]
