Piter FM

Classic love story. As a foreigner who's never been to Russia, I feel like I got a great look around the city without actually going there. Masha and Maksim seemed like they travelled from one side of the city to the other. St. Petersburg has the feeling of a lot of years that our cities here in America really don't have.
Every time that Masha and Maksim passed each other you always wanted to hit them upside the head for passing each other. I mean come on, when they passed each other on the bridge they held each others stare for a good hundred feet. How does Maksim not do a 180 and go talk to her? The characters did seem to be a good fit for each other. They were both slobs in a way. Maksims apartment was filled with his drawings and Masha had a turtle in her office.
I didn't feel like there was a whole lot of depth to the movie. I did become slightly concerned when the phone was dropped into the river. The way that they did end up finding each other was picture perfect though. It's one of those stories that they'll always remember. I was really impressed with Maksims perseverance to get the phone back to her. I don't know that most people would care that much or be that honest.

Night Watch

One of the most striking aspects of the film was the used of blood. Thus far, we have not seen a movie that shows that much gruesome violence. The part that stands out in my mind is when the main character is stabbed through the hand with a scissors. I enjoy it when films do not shy away from what really happens. The recovery of his wounds was a little quicker than I would have thought though.
I was slightly confused on what a "Other" is. I may be alone here, but the movie was like the Russian equivalent of Blade. There were clear lines in the sand. The bad people were vampires and the good people were part vampires. It was not clear what really affected killed either side. Light clearly affected the dark Others but the light Others could take a beating.
The storyline that followed the "cursed" woman was hard to follow. I wasn't aware that you could curse yourself. Also, the computer program they were using to find the person who cursed her? That didn't fit with the story. This battle was supposed to date back to antiquity and all of a sudden there is a computer program that logs everyones relationships with each other?
Obviously there are going to be more questions in this film due to the fact that it's a trilogy. It was apparent that this was a larger budget film and it was nice to see a recent Russian film. The movie sets itself up well for future movies.

The Return

I thought this movie had a very good bookend. We start off with visuals of a sunken boat with a motor, and in the end we find out why. Ivan is scared of heights in the beginning, and that remains at the end when his father tries to climb up after him. There was not a lot of ambiguity in the film except for the fathers history and his motives. The story laid itself out very nicely.
The return of the boy's father was certainly not expected by the family. I'm not too sure that the mother was thrilled to see him. When they went to bed that night, she seemed terrified and sad when she rolled over in bed. The whole dinner situation made it seem like the breakup hadn't exactly been clean. I got the sense that the father just up and left.
The father did not seem like an easy person to get along with. He's very mysterious for starters. Second, he demads respect from the family like he's been there the whole time. Ivan definately feels betrayed by the father. For being the "coward" for not jumping early in the film, he definately does not shy away from his father. What's a young boy supposed to think when someone that he does not recognice comes to claim him as a son?
Because Andrey is older than Ivan, I think that Andrey developed more of a relationship than Ivan. I would have thought it the other way around, but that's how the story unfolded. What's interesting is that the father seems to strengthen the boys relationship with each other. At the begining of the film Ivan was picked on and called squirt. By the end of the movie Andrey still called Ivan squirt but he did so with more feeling.
I get the sense that some people would blame Ivan for the events of the movie, but I don't. What kind of dad shows up after 12 years and acts like nothing happened. Not to mention, he took the boys to the middle of nowhere in a patched up boat with nowhere for them to go. For a while I thought that the father was going to kill the kids. I can't say I'm surprised that the father did actually die. I felt bad when he died though because when he finally got the top of the tower the expression on his face asked forgiveness. Who's to say who deserved what? I think the ending was fine except that we never learned of the father's true intentions for anything.

Brother

First of all, I think that Sergei Bodrov, Jr. played his part perfectly. I think he captured the character of Danila perfectly. He was able to show the audience a lot of emotion while remaining a seamlessly heartless killer. Danila did not seem to care about the aftershocks of violence as long as the act was carried out with good meaning. He was very smart about his violence as well, for the most part he only left one witness that could spill the beans on him. The one guy being the director from the apartment. The only other guy that witnessed Danila murder was a criminal himself.
Danila had interesting tendencies when he turned to violence. He had a lot of knowledge when it came to firearms and munitions. Not everyone can refill shotgun slugs with nail heads because of the weight proportions that need to be kept. There was not one weapon that he encountered throughout the movie where he had issues. This knowledge could have come from the army, but I don't know that they would have taught the soldiers how to make silencers from a soda bottle.
Some of the acts of violence he commits early in the film could be considered well deserved. Particularly the thug who picks on the German. Later Danila learns how to kill, and he finds himself quite good at it. It solves all of his problems.
Danila does find some peace in his life through music. His favorite genre of music seems to be more rock with nothing to fast. Whenever he listened to music in the film that was all the audience heard. Through music Danila was able to tune out the world and focus. It was an interesting character feature.
The best part of Danila was his honor. He did not kill his brother, and he never hurt anyone he promised not too. He certainly wasn't fond of foreigners except for his German friend. When talking to the Frenchman he went out of his way to say the things he said about America.
If this film doesn't have a sequel, it certainly should. It was set up perfectly for one, provided Bodrov Jr. plays Danila again. The director did a fantastic job piecing the film together in St. Petersburg. I felt like the sets fit with the storyline very well.

Little Vera

This film told what I would consider a brutally honest story. I don't think that there was one comforting part in the entire movie. The director of the film did not hold any punches; had this been made in Stalin's time, I don't think it would have been approved. What contrasts most starkly with previous films that we have watched is the realism. There hasn't been a film we have seen so far that can compare with that.
This movie presents a wide array of social problems. The family was completely dysfunctional. An alcoholic father, a mother who has a history of sleeping around, and a daughter who is rebelling against them. I think the family was used as an example of a bad family. Yes, they were obviously up against hard economic times, but they looked in all the wrong places for answers. Vera's brother was the only person that was shown in any decency. He was raising a family and had a successful career. Viktor resented his parents and sister I believe, he never brought his own family to visit. Viktor moved far away to get away from his childhood and I can't say that I blame him.
I think the mother is the cause of all the problems. She pushes Vera and tries to control her with an iron fist which just pushes Vera away. She's never honest with Vera, she never tried to teach Vera from her own mistakes. The mother slept with all the father's brothers, what was Vera supposed to think? The father was a drunk because he couldn't handle the economic pressures combined with the pressure he received from home so he turned to alcohol.
The mother gets everyone to go along with her made up story about how Sergei gets stabbed. The father stabbed him and then everything is supposed to go back to normal. She swept everything under the rug. She seemed to be unaware of her own daughters problems even when Vera tries to overdose. Vera by all rights should have died there.

Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears

This film played on the assumptions many people make about big cities. Big cities equals big opportunity. Lyudmila puts this into perspective best when she describes Moscow as the lottery. Lyudmila was the type of character that is always looking to the future. She deeply believes in the need have wealth and all the amenities known to mankind. A very superficial person in other words. She was constantly lying to men and to herself. I thought she was very self-serving because she wanted to marry for money and not for love.
Antonina was the friend that ended up with the ideal relationship and the ideal family. She was not concerned with worldly possessions and was a good friend to the other two girls. She wasn't really focused on throughout the movie. Her husband Nikolai had more of an impact on the movie than she did. Nikolai brought Gosha back to Katya.
Katya, the most lost out of the three girls. At the beginning of the movie she had no direction. She wanted a man like Antonina had, but she listened to Lyudmila a little too much. Granted she did want to be a chemist at the beginning of the movie but that obviously didn't pan out. She's the only one to blame for having a kid as a single person. Some blame to does fall on Rodion for starting the whole thing, but his ultimate character flaw comes out later. For him not to help support Katya at all is the biggest crime. He didn't even try to be around for the upbringing of the child until he found out what a success Katya was. I also thought that Rodion's mother should have been upset at her son than she was. Yeah, Katya did lie, but you can't make a baby by yourself.
I couldn't believe that Katya was sleeping with another married man though. When that secret came out, any sympathy I had for her vanished. She was lost even with all the success she had in her professional life. Gosha was the best thing that happened to her.
Then in the second half the movie, along comes Gosha. The actor that played him pulled off the character perfectly. I think Gosha was just what Katya and Sasha needed. They both needed him. Katya desperately needed someone to confide in, you can't cry yourself to sleep forever and be healthy. Sasha needed Gosha because she needed a father. The best part about Gosha was how matter of fact he was. He added a lot to the movie and to the family.

Ivan's Childhood

This film takes place on the eastern front during World War II. Before this film I've never considered the fact that small boys would be used to aid the war effort. This is story about a special kind of kid. I have no idea what its like to lose family and be all alone. I can't even imagine what its like. The story that unfolds as the movie progresses made feel grateful that someone took time to mentor this young boy. The thing is, the army must have been absolutely desperate to trust Ivan in the first place. War is a frightful thing for men of all ages, and this boy fought it all alone on the other side of enemy lines. You have to give Ivan a lot of credit for providing accurate enough information to be used again.
I felt like Ivan was good at what he did because the german's killed his family. He did have some pretty disturbing nightmares. Specifically the one where he sees the writing on the wall about how everyone is going to be executed in an hour. Ivan's nerves seemed completely shot when he was in the bunker playing spy in the dark. When he was going around with the knife in the dark he was near tears the whole time. That part really made me wonder how he is able to be effective for his missions.
As far as the director goes, this was definately a Tarkovsky film. Water was apparent throughout the film, from the river to the drops of water. I do like the way he used nature in this film better than Mirror. I loved the way he used the well in Ivan's Childhood. I thought that it was a great scene to illustrate the relationship between Ivan and his mother. Tarkovsky also caught some beautiful shots of the birch forest. That scene to me was one where I thought color would have been out of place. That was my favorite backdrop scene of the movie. It captured the characters, Masha and Galtsev, perfectly for that scene. This movie was fantastic.