The Cranes Are Flying

It feels like such a cliche, doesn't it? Boy and girl are in love, boy gets sent off to war, love between them only grows stronger. It gets hokier with each passing film.

That said, however, Mikhail Kalatozv's The Cranes Are Flying handles the now-exhausted storyline beautifully. Set in the Soviet Union not long after Germany's invasion in 1941, the film highlights the hope not just in the two lovers but also the other citizens of the Soviet Union. (War is such a horrid thing, isn't it?)

The film stars Tatiana Samoilova, who from some angles resembles Audrey Hepburn. And like Hepburn, Samoilova has talent as well as beauty. She simply shows Veronica's sadness just with her face. It's a small ability like that which makes me appreciate an actor more.

As well as Samoilova's acting, another highlight of The Cranes Are Flying is Sergei Urusevsky's cinematography. Saturated in the shadows, the film gives off an ethereal nature. Having also seen his work for Letter Never Sent (also directed by Kalatozv), I know that Urusevsky has some of the best visions in cinema.

The Cranes Are Flying is both a beautiful film and a heartbreaking one. Who would have thought back then that there could something poetic about war? (This is years before Terrence Malick did such a thing with The Thin Red Line.) I'm also fairly certain that this is now ranked among my favorites.

My Rating: *****

Letter Never Sent

French films can be either elegant or raw. Italian films drip with class or poverty. Japanese films are brutal or sensual. These are a few musings I've made whilst watching foreign films.

It doesn't restrict to those few countries. Swedish films often go down the philosophical route. German films aren't afraid to show human nature's vicious side. And...well, those are the countries I'm most versed in.

But I did get my first taste of Russian cinema in the form of Mikhail Kaltozov's Letter Never Sent. Shot in the Siberian wilderness, the film provides a grim (and boy, do I mean grim) portrait of survival and desolation. (I've a feeling that's a common theme among Russian films.)

Thanks to the cinematography of Sergey Urusevsky, the barren locales throughout Letter Never Sent resonate on screen. The fallen forests, the murky swamps, the jagged landscapes...these are featured prominently throughout the film. And it looks beautiful.

Letter Never Sent is probably the bleakest film I've ever seen. (Then again, the title itself should have been a giveaway.) It also got me curious about Kalatozov's other films. And this may sound really odd, but this would make for an interesting double feature with The Grey.

My Rating: *****