Burnt by the Sun
from Sony Pictures
Russian filmmaker Nikita Mikhalkov is also the star of this tragic 1994 drama about the last happy season in the life of a Bolshevik hero's family. The year is 1936, and Stalin's purges are in full swing. Despite his reputation and revolutionary record, Sergei Kotov (Mikhalkov) seems to be on the dictator's hit list, as indicated by the insulting arrival of his wife's former lover, an agent of government police. Mikhalkov treats all this as a matter of personal and political intrigue dropping like rotting fruit in the middle of a sunny and loving period for the Kotov clan. The director ingeniously understates the mounting threat until one begins to realize that the Kotovs are only geographically distant from the long, bloody reach of Stalin. By the time we do realize it, the shock of change is almost unbearable. A very fine movie all around, though Mikhalkov's touches of magic realism (particularly the presence of a golden orb that keeps popping into the action) are distracting and a subject of controversy among viewers. --Tom Keogh
Oblomov
by Nikita Mikhalkov
from Kino Video
Writer-director Nikita Mikhalkov (Burnt by the Sun) combines some accomplished and evocative visuals with a tongue-in-cheek morality play about the price of personal freedom in this 1979 adaptation of the 19th-century Russian novel by Goncharov. Oleg Tabakov plays the title character, an amiable and enigmatic man who, after years of anonymous toiling as a landowner, begins to live his life in a virtual slothlike existence. Oblomov is regarded by others around him as something of a harmless joke, but as he passes the days in bed indulging himself with food and aimless pondering, he reminisces about his childhood and the life he's led, and he discovers a fulfilling poetry to his life. Eventually, though, his celebration of laziness threatens to ruin his life and all he holds dear. The film employs a deft and pastoral visual style to augment the joy and freedom this man feels at being able to control his own destiny, even with tragic results. A challenging and thought-provoking effort, Oblomov is a distinct and original piece of cinema. --Robert Lane
Unfinished Piece for the Player Piano
Based on the works of Russian legend Anton Chekov, this stylish treasure examines a village teacher undergoing an emotional crisis who torments himself and his young wife, while a doctor takes out his frustrations on his patients. They all arrive in the country as guests of a general's wife and profess their admiration for the simpler lifestyle, not really believing their own words. Filled with the rapturous music of Liszt, Rachmaninov and Donizetti, this classical chamber drama will capture your mind and emotions.
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