Cast:
Maya Bulgakova (Nadezhda Petrukhina), Zhanna Bolotova (Tanya), Panteleimon Krymov (Pavel Gavrilovich), Leonid Dyachkov (Mitya Grachov), Vladimir Gorelov (Igor), Yury Medvedev (Boris Grigoryevich), Nikolay Grabbe (Kostya Shuvalov), Zhanna Aleksandrova (Zinka), Sergei Nikonenko (Sergei Bystryakov), and Rimma Markova (Shura) Directed by Larisa Shepitko.
Review:
"My father fought all through the war. To me, the war was one of the most powerful early impressions. I remember the feeling of life upset, the family separated. I remember hunger and how our mother and us, the three children, were evacuated. The impression of a global calamity certainly left an indelible mark in my child's mind."
If you think about it, there has never been a more interesting time to consider branching out when looking into world cinema, no matter how long or short a film career ended up. Larisa Shepitko directed five films from 1963 to 1977, but she managed to cultivate a name for herself among Soviet filmmakers of her time. She was born in a town in Eastern Ukraine in 1938 to parents that soon divorced, leaving her to be raised by her schoolteacher mother; her childhood experiences would leave a key mark within her mind. After graduating high school, she attended the All-Union State Institute of Cinematography (now referred to as the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography), where she was a student of Alexander Dovzhenko (also born in Ukraine, albeit in a region that was under the Russian Empire at the time), who was a famed Soviet director within social realism that inspired Shepitko; it was there where she met Elem Klimov, who also became a noted filmmaker (alongside her husband). Her first film project was her graduate film in Heat [Znoy] (1963), which she filmed in intense heat that had her direct from a stretcher at one point while depicting agriculture within locations in Kazakh. Wings was her first theatrical film, and it was written by Valentin Yezhov and Natalya Ryazantseva. Wings would not receive much attention upon release because of the censor standards of the government, which allowed only a limited screening, since it only seemed that films would have approval if it found the approval of the right government official (of course, there's a difference between Soviet films made before and after the death of Stalin, so there's that). Her segment "The Homeland of Electricity" for Beginning of an Unknown Era (1967) ended up being shelved years and the film You and Me (1971) did not fare better. It was only her last film in The Ascent [Voskhozhdenie] (1977) that proved fruitful, since it attracted attention in both Russia and abroad. Shepitko died in 1979 at the age of 41 in a car crash while doing location shooting for what was to be her next film - an adaptation of the novel Farewell to Matyora; Klimov would both direct a short film dedicated to his wife along with a film based on the novel in 1983 (known as Farewell).
I'm sure you are quite familiar with movies involving unfulfilled people, ones trapped between the memories of the past and the ordinary realities that come with being a middle-aged symbol of one's country. Well, maybe middle age isn't quite the right term, there is a considerable difference to being a principal after being a pilot (incidentally, there was a group of all-female aviators in the War, known as the 588th Night Bomber Regiment); it won't be a comfortable ride for all, particularly if one has to deal with loneliness or isolation. Self-sacrifice and duty may be valuable aspects to serving a state when it comes to "Great Patriotic Wars", but it can be a double-edged sword when one sees the result played against people with a different perspective on just what that all means; each generation will have at least one defining moment that will infringe on their memory that will make them seem both a part of something special and apart from others. It is the sense of longing, the sense of wanting to have wings of freedom fly in the air without being held back, where hearing the words "let someone else do it" seems very, vert wrong. In short, it is a film about one's struggle to deal with the crisis of middle age as opposed to a straight-line hero in ideology. Bulgakova had a fairly steady number of roles over her multi-decade career, but this film is likely the best one she is known for, since she is tasked to carry the film mostly by herself, and she makes the best of it, as she captures the silent despair that comes with essentially being trapped in the amber of memories and insecurity. I think one of the most interesting scenes comes when Bulgakova's character is visiting a war museum that has a display of war heroes for a group of schoolchildren to see on a trip. We see one boy make a bet that he can hide from others (but not our lead focus) but also a girl who asks if all the people in the photos are dead - which include a photo of Bulgakova. Of course, the scene where she is trying to understand just how her on-screen daughter is getting married is a close second, because it shows the plight that comes with seeing people being free to make their choices without their doting parent looking on their shoulder (essentially the kid must spread their wings from the nest). The other members of the cast work well within interactions spent looking upon where the culture of the time seems to be going (with or without people left behind). The movie ends on its own terms, moving from spending most of its time in cramped spaces to a moment of free flight to the unknown, and that makes the experience generally worth it. While Shepitko may not have received the attention that other Soviet filmmakers would get for their features, there is surely something to be said about the way she moves through 81 minutes with a movie about isolation that seems quite relevant now more than ever.
Overall, I give it 9 out of 10 stars.
Next Time: Wanda (1970).
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