MovieChat Forums > Zemlya (1930) Discussion > Explanation Of the Final Scene?

Explanation Of the Final Scene?

posted 11 years ago by Greg24710
4 replies | jump to latest

The ending shows Vasyl holding a waking Natalya in his arms as he smiles at her.

Considering that Vasyl is dead, this is a Soviet film, its writer and director is a communist, Vasyl's atheism is pronounced and celebrated after his death, and that the theme of his legacy is already shown by the rain on the crops, why was this scene even in there?

I would assume any allusions to an afterlife would have been snipped out, if not by Dovzhenko (who was also the film's editor) then by the Soviet censors.

From what I can tell, Soviet criticism of the film doesn't mention this scene as a problem, but rather the lyrical portrayal of the lives of the farmers instead.

[–] Gblakelii 9 years ago

Glad you brought the ending up. Wasn't sure that was Vasyl, so you cleared that up. Perhaps the ending was one of those, let the viewers decide for themselves, ending.

[–] Greg24710 9 years ago

But I would think the last thing the Soviets would want is to leave things up to viewer interpretation, especially considering how didactic the rest of the film is.

[–] whalleywhat 8 years ago

The film was generally disliked by the party elite and publicly criticized by those close to Stalin. As for the atheistic statements made by Vasili's father, they are later put in question by a woman who says, "But what if there is a God?" Interestingly enough, the priest rails against the 'sins' of the bolsheviks, while it is clear that the only actual sinner is the kulak Choma, who requests punishment. It's also possible that the scenes in which the tractor and industrialized bread-making process are 'praised' have a sinister tinge to them (although this may depend on the accompanying soundtrack), in contrast to the film's stirring scenes of nature's bounty. This film apparently got Dovzhenko's father kicked out of his own collective farm. Jonathan Rosenbaum has described how Stalin took a much more direct and interfering role in some of Dovzhenko's later films, the way Howard Hughes would, and claims the change in quality and nature is evident.

[–] wearyourlove 9 years ago

I read it as a sly subversion of the socialist realist code, which was intended to show a socialist reality in the present as it would look in the idealized, revolutionary future. Yet Dovzhenko adds a transparently spiritual element that contradicts Stalinist communism, pointing numinously to a realm beyond the socio-material. At the end of a film extolling the beauty, energy, pagan spirituality and self-sustaining, regenerating power of the earth and its inhabitants, it's a final affirmation of forces that transcend this corporeal existence.