Most people reviewing this excellent film by Regis Wargnier (Indochine) clearly understand the backdrop of a Soviet Union in the grip of a national paranoia that flowed from Stalin himself and infected everything from the highest positions of Party power to the most banal and mundane aspects of daily life. The film explores the destructive force that a monstrous ideology can have on ordinary people, artists, athletes, and even on love itself. Stalin's Soviet Union in 1946 was everything this movie portrays it as and worse. This is not some "anti-Soviet" propaganda film by any stretch, and people who think it is need to attend to some history of the time and place. Literally millions of returning Soviet émigrés and soldiers were either executed outright or sent to the gulags on various trumped-up charges like 'actions detrimental to the State' and espionage. There was no one as paranoid as Stalin, and he either believed his own fears, or he wanted everyone else to believe them. Probably both are true. That is why I welcomed this film which tells the story of a Russian émigré physician and his French wife and child who accept the deadly invitation of repatriation to the Motherland. Against this background of terror, repression, and despair we are made to watch what the pressures of the system can do to one family.
Alexei, Marie, and Serioia go from what must have been a comfortable, bourgeois life in France to a nightmare when they end up, thanks to Alexei's being a physician, in Kiev. The story goes into detail about how Alexei has to behave against his wife's expectations unrealistic, it turns out, and very dangerous to boot in order to fashion the possibility of escape. The film has a very real feel to it, and one can believe that what we are seeing is what really happened. I am a bit astonished that people today either know nothing of this period, or they actually think that the film is unfair to the Soviets. The preposterousness of this idea can only be cured with information, but the willfully blind will remain so regardless of hundreds of thousands of archival pages to the contrary. This film is true to its subject, and if you can sit through the nail-biting drama - where an NKVD agent seems to appear on every corner - you will be rewarded. An excellent movie full of the pain, heartbreak, and eventual triumph over evil.
Alexei, Marie, and Serioia go from what must have been a comfortable, bourgeois life in France to a nightmare when they end up, thanks to Alexei's being a physician, in Kiev. The story goes into detail about how Alexei has to behave against his wife's expectations unrealistic, it turns out, and very dangerous to boot in order to fashion the possibility of escape. The film has a very real feel to it, and one can believe that what we are seeing is what really happened. I am a bit astonished that people today either know nothing of this period, or they actually think that the film is unfair to the Soviets. The preposterousness of this idea can only be cured with information, but the willfully blind will remain so regardless of hundreds of thousands of archival pages to the contrary. This film is true to its subject, and if you can sit through the nail-biting drama - where an NKVD agent seems to appear on every corner - you will be rewarded. An excellent movie full of the pain, heartbreak, and eventual triumph over evil.