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.

Mirror

Ok, this movie was a little ridiculous. First of all, I'm pretty sure one actress played two different people. I think the blond lady, I didn't catch her name but her son was Mitya, played the mother of the son we never saw and was in love with that guy too. I'm not sure what the director would try to pull with this, but it was kind of freaky. It was like the director was going after the whole myth that a guy marries someone a lot like his mother. The reason I thought she played two roles was because of one quote. It was during a black and white portion when she was talking to the guy off screen and he said something about she reminded him of his mother; that she looked just like she used too.
It present day context and social issues, that's just weird. Speaking of weird, I did not understand the scene at the newspaper presses. I kept thinking there was going to be some point to that. That maybe the article held some key issue about someone. But then I remembered that she was waiting for someone to come home; as in someone who was on the front lines of battle, per the second scene in the movie with the lady on the fence. Maybe she wanted a preview of the obituaries, or she wanted them pulled because she did not believe she was dead. The actress was freaking out like someone died, running and crying like that. But of course, it was all over some silly word. What possible word could make someone go on that emotional roller coaster? They laughed at the end of the scene. In my eyes their laughter tossed the entire scene at the newspaper shop right down the drain.
Another part of the movie that did not make much sense was the switching between black and white, and color. My first hypothesis was that the change meant a switch in time, as in black and white was future or present time (I couldn't decide which) and color was for the past tense time. As the movie went on I felt that I guessed wrong on the switch in color schemes and its significance. The more the movie went on the more I thought that the director was just being artistic with it, and by artistic I mean just doing it because he could. Now that I look back on the entire movie I feel like the color scheme was switched around in order to distance the audience from the story.
The reason I say that is because I felt nothing for a single character in the entire movie. It was as if the director wanted to put as much emotional distance between the audience and the characters as possible. I felt way more for characters in Chapaev and Ivan the Terrible Part I. As I went through the movie I felt devoid of emotion. I felt like there was nothing that brought me into the story. The acting in the movie was not the issue here either. Bad acting can ruin a movie, but the writing wasn't there.
Mirror was a story that was written using parts of life that have no connection and then throwing them together. Every event that was shot in the movie I can see happening to someone in their lifetime. It's just that a shot of the forest in the middle of the movie is just weird stuff that didn't belong.
I do have one theory, in reference to "Mirror" being the title of the movie, perhaps the movie was shot with someones memory in mind. It's someone looking in the mirror, and what they see in it are all the memories from their life (what the camera saw). I don't have much to back it up, but it's only a thought to try to explain something confusing.
This movie, in my opinion was not very good. To place this movie on the entertainment, propaganda, art triangle; this movie is so much in the art corner that it's off the chart. Most great art is at least understood on some level, so I'll classify this as "art."

Ivan the Terrible Part 1

Throughout my viewing of this movie I sought to look for parts that would seem familiar to me from Eisenstein's earlier soundless movies. I did not find many similarities between this film and Battleship Potemkin; I would not have guessed that both movies were made by the same director.
To me, it makes sense that a sound movie and a silent movie made by the same director seem very different. It is much harder to entice an audience when sound is not available. I don't think that Ivan the Terrible was as artistic as Battleship Potemkin. With Battleship Potemkin montages were used more often and the movie moved at a faster pace. Throughout Ivan the Terrible scenes went by much slower. With sound as a stimulant to the audience, Eisenstein cued in longer on his actors and sets. Eisenstein used the actors faces to fill up the entire screen during Ivan which I don't remember him doing during Battleship Potemkin. For silent movies I think that Eisenstein felt he couldn't focus the camera on key points for any length of time for fear of losing the audience.
What I think was a key point to Ivan the Terrible was music. Music will set the mood for any scene during the movie and I think Eisenstein used this. With access to his personal composer, Sergei Prokofiev, he was able to tailor the movie to convey the exact feelings he wanted the audience to feel. To me, music affects the mood of a money much more than words coming out of an actors mouth.
Ivan the Terrible as a leader seems like the good guy of the film. He wants the best for his Motherland. He wants to end the squabbles between the Boyars and take his country back from foreigners. These are just the sort of goals that would appeal to any patriot. Nothing sounds better than kicking out the invaders of your homeland. Throughout the movie I continually hated the Boyars for what they were doing to Ivan. They murdered his wife, what else were we supposed to think? Ivan seemed like just the leader that Russia needed. He figured out exactly what Russia was by the end of Part 1. Ivan figured out that Russia is the common man, or the mob. Ivan knew that if he controlled the people, the Boyars would never be a problem. The Boyars knew this too. They even turned the people against Ivan when the Baltic campaign failed.
This is when Ivan's greatest strength was revealed, he was only one man who wanted power. The Boyars were several men who all wanted power to stay divided. The Boyars were not willing to make concessions for any one of them to gain power over himself. They came off as greedy men, uncaring of the people that made them wealthy. It is one of the reasons the people came to Ivan and begged him to come back.
There are some similarities between Ivan and Stalin. I think both men took advantage of the situation before them. Before both men came to power, Russia was in great need of a leader to give the people vision. This may be more true for Ivan than Stalin, but both men cared greatly about the "greatness of Russia." Both men were indifferent about religion. Ivan and Stalin were leaders of the common man. Nobility had no meaning to them.
This was a very interesting buildup of Ivan. You can just sense that Ivan is about to become a fierce and fearless dictator. The formation of the "Iron Ring" of men says it all. He trusts no one, which I sense will be his undoing. Though I can't say that I blame, everyone close to him either died or betrayed him.

Burnt by the Sun

The title of the film "Burnt by the Sun" has a socialist party reference to it. The sun is the socialist party and its ideals. The people of the Soviet Union were "burned" by their own people. In the case of the movie, it was the Colonel, a decorated war hero, that was cut down by the very people he fought for. The fact that Mitya was the one orchestrating the capture and execution of the colonel was unfortunate. Mitya and Kotov both supported Stalin, they upheld the laws of their nation, but they did not trust one another. They accused each other of being traitors.
Another "sun" in this movie was Marusia. She was the light of Mitya's and Kotov's lives. The men were so in love with her. Mitya was obviously deeply envious of Kotov and the life he had built. Kotov had a beautiful family. He had a little girl that very intelligent and had an obvious love for her father and mother. The family was picture perfect before Mitya came around.
When we found out that Marusia tried to kill herself when Mitya left her, I didn't know who to feel pity for. Marusia clearly had the right to be heartbroken, she was not given an explanation when she was left behind. We did find out later that Mitya was given a choice, go to prison or serve the Motherland. When Mitya's side of the story comes out, I felt like Kotov did it on purpose in order to get Marusia. I was never really sure what Mitya did to be given that type of choice. The way accusations were flying around in the woods during the soccer ball search, I began to think that both men were quite innocent. I think they were victims only of the propaganda poured into their heads combined with the fear of the NKVD. The last scene of the movie supports the men's innocence when Mitya is the bath tub full of water and blood. The fact that he killed himself in the way that Marusia tried to kill herself tugs at the heartstrings of the audience.
At the end of the movie I felt that everyone involved was a victim. Even Nadya ended up being taken, the symbol of peace and innocence of the movie. She was the sunshine to everyone, she was the healing sun. Kotov tells his daughter that she is the peace in his life. Nadya's role in the film makes what the NKVD so much more evil. They stole everything from her, and she is the future of the country. She wanted to follow in her father's footsteps in service to her country.
This film was made for a Russian audience and an international one. The reasons I think this was made for Russians was because this was a film that showed the 1930's without censorship. This movie was a lesson for the generation did not live during this time. It lets the Russians come to terms with their history. Kotov's and Mitya's characters show the conflict that existed everywhere in Russia.
It was also for an international audience because this is a story that would have never escaped Russia under the Soviet Union. It shows that the USSR turned men into something else. I got the feeling that neither Kotov nor Mitya liked what they had become. This story was one that would have undermined the authority of Stalin. Countries around the world might have treated Russia different had this story come out in 1930. "Burnt by the Sun" was a great story that needed to be told to the world.

Circus

Circus is the second socialist film that I have seen, the first being Chapaev. Circus was much more in your face about the views of the director. Particularly at the ending. For one there was the song sung to the baby in many different languages by people dressed in their native attire. Second the parade at the end with large banners of Stalin and Lenin beaming proudly on the people in the Red Square. As a non-Russian, that was nearly the funniest part of the movie for me. I found it interesting that throughout the whole movie, only the Germans were ever made fun of. This movie was made around the time when a lot of changes were being made in Germany; perhaps the film represented the correct political situation at the time. For all of America's problems with race, I don't recall film as being one of the ways the government tried to quell the issue. Of course our government has considerably less control over the film industry than the Russians did in the early 1900's.
This is not to say that the government limited the creative abilities of the film industry. I would argue that the limitations imposed on the directors and producers would drive them to be more creative. It is as if the work must be done under the pressures of society. Directors today even, American or not, can't make what they want always. Movie making is still a business, if someone doesn't buy into it, then the common man has just as much say in the production of movies as any government. Circus was an entertaining movie under the socialist pressures, though not very comedic. On the movie triangle discussed in class, I would place Circus in the corner with propaganda first, and entertainment second. This was not much of art film.

Chapaev

The movie that we viewed today seemed to have a very "wild west" feel to it for me. It seemed that this movie was made just before John Wayne. The hero was killed at the end, but he was a fighter and beloved by men around him. It did seem win that the General was killed as he was running away. Even if that was the true ending, I'm not sure I would have killed off the hero in that way. Just to be clear, I do not know whether or not the movie was made to be historically accurate or to entertain. Of course if the goal of the movie was to be completely accurate and Chapaev did in fact die crossing a river running away, then it must be in the film.
The relationship that Chapaev and the Commissar have is very interesting. As a commander, who is well respected both by his men and the men above him, to all of a sudden have a baby sitter would have upset me too. When the commissar disciplines the soldiers who are taking advantage of the peasants, it shows great compassion for the cause of the army. General Chapaev is quite taken aback when the village people come to thank him for something he had no part in. It was at that point that the General realized Commissar Furmanov was on his side; it was the beginning of a friendship. I think the commissar really helped to develop Chapaev as a character. The relationship gave the audience something to identify with and latch onto.
It is that reason why I believe that the movie was a blockbuster. Good movies always allow the audience to relate to what's going on in the film.

Man With the Movie Camera

Where do I begin for this movie? It seems as if the movie was made by someone who has way too much time on their hands. The pictures shown did not display much of any kind of story. I feel like the movie was shot to see humans as they were at the time. The images that were recorded always seemed to display some human influence of some sort. In a way I think the director was trying to show his audience how we all look on a day to day basis. He showed the audience how people really behave when they are in public.
The shots of the random buildings were interesting, particularly the few shots he took from a great distance away. He made humans look so insignificant in comparison to the structures which were built by them. I feel like the director looked for beauty in all its forms. It didn't matter to him that he didn't use the most beautiful people available or that the shots weren't staged. I believe the goal of this movie was to try to capture the essence of humanity through a lens. I can't say that he necessarily succeeded, but it was a fair attempt.
Obviously a movie has not been shown to the general public since then. It definitely shows that life is worth taking a break from to look around, soak in the scenery. Sometimes the hustle and bustle isn't all there is, you never know what might pass you by.

Battleship Potemkin

Despite the fact that the name of the battleship is hard to pronounce with an english tounge, this film must have been fantastic for the common man. The propoganda pulls at the audiences heart strings with the use of young kids and the ill-fed sailors. I can just imagine how the patriotic people in the audience sympathized with the sailors on the battleship. The site of maggots crawling around on the meat would make the hardest person queeze. The quote in the movie when it says "that meat is not fit for a dog," appeared to be very true. I hope that no soldier serving his/her country has ever had to eat food in that condition when it was supplied by their superiors. Talk about breaking morale, I can't think of any other way to break morale faster, than for officers to give their men a bad meal. This part of the movie had to make anyone that quease at the thought of joining the tsarist army.
You know it was a true propoganda piece when they showed the little boy getting shot. The army then mowed down the mother with the child in her arms. The army was certainly portratyed as heartless monsters. They even killed the new born babies mother. From most peoples' point of view, that sort of action can never be tolerated no matter the reason at the time.
The ending to this film was picture perfect. The entire navy squadron uniting under the red flag was only expected after the audience saw all the atrocities pulled by the Russian military. Any true patriot would have definately supported this film.

The 1002nd Ruse

This was one of the first silent films created in Russia. The movie used only two settings for the entire movie. The second setting was used only for a moment. The film did use some different camera angles. The view through the keyhole into the other room was more than likely a breakthrough of the time. It certainly was a nice change of pace for the viewer. With cameras that can't zoom there's not a whole lot of options for the director.
For silent films, I don't think that the actors in the movie bring a whole lot to the table. Since most of communication is body language, the fact that there is no talking should not be that big of a deal. They were directed to act with more drama than was necessary. For some reason the actors did not seem to act as a normal person in the same situation would have been. This could be because I am not familiar with the nuances of the older culture, but it still seems unrealistic.
One last thing I want to say is that the quotes of the characters displayed between the scenes slowed the movie down a lot; and were more or less unnecessary. Good acting and subsequent scenes would not require text to interrupt the film.

Irony of Fate, Or Enjoy Your Bath!

After watching part two of the movie, I can't say I was surprised. The movie plot line has become well used in movies. The love drama that was there between Zhenya and Nadya was generic. Though I suppose it must be said that the movie was made a long time ago. The comedy that was used was timeless. I think many cultures would find it funny when Nadya wants to admit to her friends the true identity of "Ippolit" and Zhenya resists. The reversal of roles for that part was a nice twist. It was only a matter of time before Nadya admitted the love that was bubbling underneath the surface. It was slightly different for the man to admit what was there before the woman. That is not the common thing in American movies today. Overall the movie was entertaining which is perfect because that's all a movie is designed to do.