Even Putin Plays Sims - Dreams about Putin

Ioana Satmari • 10/6/2024

It’s touching how, when something happens in the world, it first becomes hot news, then makes its way into documentaries, becomes “inspired by true events,” and eventually, reality blends with everything we live through, swallowed by Existence itself. From what once inspired us, only crumbs remain, barely noticed, but still forming the foundation of ideas whose origins we can’t quite trace.

Even though we live at different paces, we end up watching documentaries on the same topic more or less at the same time. And suddenly, that event from a while ago is being examined from every angle, all over again. From above, by those who didn’t want to get involved. From behind, by those who anticipated it or simply waited, ready for something to happen to us. From under the skin, for the incisive ones. And even from the mind, when you admit that, no matter how clean and objective you want to be in conveying something to those around you, it just won’t come out that way. Not because it’s your fault. But because we’re built to want to understand things. And understood things are no longer objective.

What Vlad Fishez and Nastia Korkia grasped in Dreams about Putin is, in itself, incomprehensible, in a good way. Not entirely, but as long as you’ve looked at something with a different eye, you also want others to look with their own eyes at what you saw. The documentary is composed of dreams about Putin told by the dreamers themselves, illustrated as in a video game. These are dreams that take you through people’s fears.

The effects used to depict the dreams are rough, clunky, and untextured. But that’s not the point. It’s like a sketch that leaves you enough space to dream on your own. I think the ideal way to watch this film is first with your eyes closed, just listening, and then looking at what others have seen.

It’s haunting how Putin appears in people’s dreams. For many, the dream becomes a path of escape to something else. But the fact that he shows up there too is a sign that even the subconscious coexists with him. I don’t know if it’s adaptation or a cry for help. The subconscious has no free will. Every pattern has a place in our minds.

Dreams about Putin is viewed from above and within the mind. It’s the result and summary of the pattern in the minds of people who are either adapting or crying out for help.