Red Army director Gabe Polsky finds beauty and brutality in Russian hockey

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      Tracking down former Russian hockey star Viacheslav “Slava” Fetisov took some perseverance on the part of Red Army director Gabe Polsky. Determined to make a movie examining the Soviet Union’s fabled Red Army team, the 35-year-old initially touched down in Moscow with no clear idea where the film would end up going.

      Polsky spent his first 10 days conducting interviews with former stars like Hall of Fame goalie Vladislav Tretiak, all the while leaving messages for Fetisov that went unreturned. When he finally got a call back, the iconic defenceman agreed to a brief meeting. Polsky impressed him enough that Fetisov sat in front of the camera for nearly half a day, rolling out incredible stories about playing hockey for a country where top politicians managed the Red Army team’s day-to-day affairs.

      “I didn’t really know who was going to be the main character, and how the movie was going to be structured,” Polsky says, on the line from a Red Army promo tour in Toronto. “Basically, I knew Fetisov was going to be pretty important because of his being captain of the team and a leader—kind of the face of Soviet Union hockey. It wasn’t until I finally got the interview that I realized how unique a guy he was. He’s magnetic and difficult and challenging, but all in good ways for a movie.”

      The hulking defenceman is the focal point of Red Army, opening Friday (January 30), which examines the rise of Soviet hockey in the ’70s and ’80s, and the almost barbaric ways people were treated. Polsky’s film makes it abundantly clear that Fetisov was in some ways scarred by his time in the Russian hockey system, where players were locked away for 11 months of the year and forced to practise four times a day, sometimes until they pissed blood. More than a sport, hockey was a political statement at a time when the Cold War was still being waged—a way for Russia to promote its superiority on the world stage.

      Because of his background, Polsky was in a better position than most to understand his subject. For a start, the Chicago-born filmmaker grew up playing hockey, eventually making the team at Yale University.

      “I also felt like I never contributed to the game what I thought I could,” he recalls. “It turned out that this film is my contribution to the game.”

      Polsky agrees that many of the greats who played for the Red Army team—like Vladimir Krutov and Alexei Kasatonov—seem to project a strong sense of world-weariness. “I didn’t have to bring the sadness out of them,” he offers. “I think their lives and their experiences kind of shaped them. I could even say that my parents have a bit of that.”

      Polsky immigrated to the U.S. from the U.S.S.R. in the late ’70s, when the Iron Curtain was still up and the Cold War had yet to end. East-West tensions were running high around the world, with U.S. president Ronald Reagan famously and publicly making jokes about nuking the enemy.

      Polsky says it was hard being the “Russian family” in Chicago. But that gave him a built-in sensitivity to the plight of Russians like Fetisov. At one point in Red Army, the defenceman notes that when he was finally freed to play in the NHL at the age of 36, he was still treated as a Soviet bogeyman rather than as a person.

      Not even that, however, managed to destroy his spirit or sense of humour. Red Army starts with Fetisov taking a phone call as the cameras roll, and then giving the finger to the crew when it’s obvious he’s being an inconvenience. It was at moments like that, Polsky says with a laugh, that an understanding of hockey culture—not to mention Russia—came in handy.

      “Initially, Fetisov gave me 15 minutes, and I just kind of went with it,” he says. “I think he realized that I was going for something far more profound than he was used to, so he slowly opened up. He wasn’t a guy that respects you right away—you gotta talk to him. He did stuff like give me the finger all the time. You know how, when you’re a rookie in the locker room, you get screwed with all the time? It kind of felt like that. Part of it was funny, but part of it was also him being serious.”

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