Good but not great

I was looking to find a good Soviet film from the 70's (I've seen exactly two, both by Tarkovsky) and was really hoping this walk through the woods would be inspiring, but I ended up disappointed. It's a good film, but not great.

There are flaws at almost every level, some minor and annoying, some more fundamental. It starts with the key performances which are either a bit overdone, possessing an annoying tinge of Soviet-style melodrama, or are clumsily understated. Anatoli Solonitsyn, who's cast perfectly for this role given his proven mastery at portraying deeply driven but reticent characters, comes up as wooden and unconvincing.

Overall the visual style is cramped, and aggravated by an overabundance of tight to medium shots, and a tiring overuse of close-ups. In many places it has the look of a 70's tv detecive show, not a theatrical war drama set in Belarus. There are some good points…a great job of capturing the real to life bitter cold.

The biggest shortcoming is that it's an unrelenting serious film where the seriousness is a bit too selfconsciously presented, and more importantly, where the deeper human element is mostly lacking. It pushes characters though a series of predictably dire situations without providing any real insights into their deeper lives or higher motivations. There's not a single sliver of levity, not one moment of inner revelation, no hints of hope, or longing, or intimacy, or of any of the things which illuminate an individual's humanity, and the loss of which, in whole or in part, forms the essential tragedy in any war, or any film about war. True, the cruelty on display here is really nasty, but it's nasty in a simplistically direct way and it's directed at people whom I don't really know much about.

Again, it's good, but it aint great. As far as things like this go, Ivan's Childhood, Ballad of a Soldier, and Come and See provide a much more satisfying jounery over this territory. And as far as my search goes…maybe there really are no good Soviet films from the 70's other than Solyaris and Zeraklo…I'll keep lookin.