last night I had a hankering for a quiet, beautiful film. after a bit of reading I found out about this gem, the postman’s white nights, which sounds clunky in english but is really quite lovely in russian. it is set in northern russia in an isolated community. the cast are actual villagers. it apparently took the film makers a year to find the right man to be their protagonist
it is a truly unassuming film. it just follows the postman, lyokha, living life in an absurdly beautiful yet remote part of the world. the performances were so compelling at times that I’m left wondering how much was scripted and how much was just pure documentation. particularly the moments with his neighbour’s son timur, and kolobok (which means ‘bun’), a chronic drunk. something that really strikes me in russian cinema is how proud they often are of their hard-living rural culture and history. there really are an abundance of films about these people’s stories- never romanticised, always necessarily bleak. but still proud. the postman’s white nights is the closest to a rosey picture of country life I’ve seen from russian cinema, and I suspect that to most people it would still seem harsh. I thought it was so wonderful, so humane. and with landscapes so intensely luscious that you can’t possibly fill your eyes up enough with them
cities are really only a modern phenomenon in most of russia. the rest is basically made up of these small villages. they are forgotten places that the state’s wealth has never quite reached. I read one review that described their lifestyle in the film as “neolithic”- I thought that was a bit harsh. regardless, there is increasing desperation as the cities draw away their young, leaving the old to fall into decrepitude along with their beautiful wood cabins and vegetable gardens. I really enjoyed this movie, with its elements of sweetness and contentment, for the alternative picture it painted of what is typically portrayed as a brutal existence
No comments:
Post a Comment