‘Butterfly Vision’ Review: A Harrowing Ukrainian War Drama Arrives With Troubling Timing

variety.com:

Jessica Kiang It’s possible that the very first casualty of war is not truth, but nuance. Since Maksym Nakonechnyi’s grimly disturbing “Butterfly Vision” was conceived and shot, the protracted Donbas conflict during which it is set has flared into all-out war following Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

It makes the film’s inclusion in this year’s Un Certain Regard lineup an acutely timely statement. With the Cannes Film Festival, like all fests, under intense scrutiny for what its selections suggest about its political stance, this Ukrainian co-production, with its Ukrainian director, cast and crew, is certainly a boost to its anti-Russia bona fides.But the film’s actual story — which problematizes any more obviously pertinent narrative of unblemished Ukrainian heroism — presents a far more complex picture.

Its perceptive pessimism is to its credit as a film. But such a coldly self-critical assessment of the nation’s internal divisions faces an uncertain short-term future, during these hot times when the appetite, both at home and in the international community, is for more straightforward expressions of patriotic Ukrainian solidarity.

It would be unfortunate if this contextual thicket were to obscure the merits of “Butterfly Vision,” which, while certainly not reinventing the war-is-hell wheel, is interesting to analyse in formal terms, especially in its sometimes effective, sometimes glib use of modern tech.