Is It Easy to Be Young?

This is a rare document of how live in the Soviet Union seemed to be set in stone even on the onset of Perestroika, and even more so after the core meltdown at Chernobyl and during the climax of the Russia-Afghanistan War. It was called the Cold War and the Iron Curtain for a reason. The film starts with the aftermath when a bunch of incredibly tame-looking youths are charged with wrecking a train car after a concert, and get handed down sentences of over three years. Then there are bona fide punks rummaging through Soviet Riga, being disgruntled, snarling and up to no good, just like in my neck of the woods back then. Auteur Juris Podnieks talks to them all, the rebels, the squares and the thieving ballerinas, all of this accompanied to a very bad soundtrack indeed. It made an enormous impression back then, all the more so as this was somehow, mysteriously the Soviet Union but not Russia. The same train cars of Latvia are doing fine, by the way, the same stock is still operational in 2019. Only the rebels have grown old and grey.