Tribeca 2023 – “Scream of My Blood: A Gogol Bordello Story” (Wendy Moscow)

June 15, 2023.  Growing up in Ukraine under the Soviets, says Eugene Hütz, was repressive, dull and literally gray. Making up for that grim childhood (and giving others joy and sustenance along the way) has been Hütz’s mission for the past 20 years. Hütz, the frontman for the Romani Ukrainian punk band Gogol Bordello, is at the center of a rollicking new documentary about the genesis and history of the band, including the musical iterations that preceded it. Luckily, the directors, Nate Pommer and Eric Weinrib, had over two decades-worth of concert and backstage video to work with, and they’ve put it to good use. Framed by contemporary interviews with Hütz, we see his musical evolution, starting with his formative years fronting a Ukrainian standard-issue punk band imitative of the Sex Pistols or the Dead Kennedys (still, of course, transgressive in Soviet Ukraine), to his discovery of his Romani roots and culture while living with relatives in the countryside, to his incorporation of Lower East Side avant-garde theatricality, once he and his family is granted refugee status and is able to migrate to the U.S.

It is the immigrant experience that shapes the ideas behind the music, even migration within his home country. When the Hütz family is living with rural relatives after they are forced to evacuate Kyiv after the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown, Eugene is fascinated to find a vibrant Romani culture that his dad, also a musician, had only hinted at. He “saw the root and the root was activated.” An amazing Romani violinist, Sergey Ryabtsev, is eventually added to the mix when the band is being pulled together. The explosiveness of the punk music and art scene in New York City (where Hütz suddenly finds himself among punk royalty after having listened wistfully from afar) brings cabaret and costumes into the foment. Hütz describes the scene as being “like a Dadaist happening.”

A wonderfully edited montage moves quickly back and forth between Sergey and Eugene as they describe that heady time in the Summer of 2001, though they knew it was the “last call” for that particular brand of edginess and unrestrained creativity in Manhattan’s East Village. Sergey, coming from a rigid, classically trained background, found joy and liberation: “I tasted freedom and it was new to me. We did whatever the fuck we wanted to do!”

As currently constituted, all of the band members have come from somewhere else, bringing their immigrant sensibility — a feeling of belonging everywhere and nowhere — a cosmopolitan outlook, and the instruments and cultures from which they came. Longtime member, percussionist Pedro Erazo, who is from Ecuador, is a delightful, elfin presence in the film.

I’ve never had the pleasure of seeing Gogol Bordello perform live, but watching the concert scenes in the film gave me what I can only think is a close approximation. Shirtless, hair flying, and gripping an open bottle of something alcoholic in his hand, Eugene Hütz flings the liquid into the air in a rhythmic ejaculation that covers the stage while he sings, pushing the lyrics out of his lungs in staccato bursts, while the band plays at a fast tempo with relentless energy. We are in a world of controlled chaos. Unlike some other punk bands, whose musicianship (or lack thereof) is secondary to the disruption, the noise, the drive and the anger, the members of Gogol Bordello are consummate musicians.

Finding himself at the edge of a crash and burn, Hütz has the realization that the “relentlessness” (of the shows, of the touring schedule) could very possibly be his demise. He begins a practice of meditation and qi gong when he’s in Brazil, which helps him find his center. Up until then, he says, he went from, “horizontal to vertical without a lot in between.” It took him two years to slow down. Intimate scenes of Eugene’s meditative movement practice provides a welcome counterpoint to the raucous freneticism of much of the rest of the film. We “slow down” along with Hütz.

Of course, the war in Ukraine plays a role in this documentary — how could it not. There is an intensely poignant scene in which Hütz goes back to Ukraine with the band to perform for Ukrainian soldiers. He is more subdued than usual (his shirt is unbuttoned but not off) as he sings passionately to these freedom fighters in Ukrainian. These soldiers are young – Hütz is old enough to remember what a previous occupation looked and felt like.

The directors chose to create a cosmic montage to undergird and illustrate Hütz’s philosophizing toward the end of the film. “The world is an organism,” he begins… as is “every human…” Galaxies and biological entities flood the screen. A little over the top? Perhaps. But I love this stuff. The point being made is that we’re all connected, on so many levels. And music has the singular ability to connect us all across borders of space, time and ethnicity. As Eugene Hütz says, “Music is magic.”