Burnt by the Sun
by Nikita Mikhalkov
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Actor: André Oumansky, Ingeborga Dapkunaite, Nadezhda Mikhalkova, Nikita Mikhalkov, Oleg MenshikovDirector: Nikita Mikhalkov
Producer: Nikita Mikhalkov
Writer: Nikita Mikhalkov
Producer: Jean-Louis Piel
Producer: Leonid Vereshchagin
Producer: Michel Seydoux
Producer: Nicole Canne
Writer: Rustam Ibragimbekov
DVD: Region Code 99
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); Russian (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround
Format: Color, DVD, Letterboxed, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: Widescreen, 1.66:1
Running Time: 135 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-07-15
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
DVD Reviews of Burnt by the Sun
DVD Review: Two movies for the price of one
Summary: 5 Stars
Viewers (this includes most of the professional reviewers) who saw this movie as the last day of freedom for Kotov, an up-from-the ranks Soviet hero, beloved by his men and honored by a grateful nation, saw only half the movie. The charming family enjoying a lazy summer day in the country, the devotion between Kotov and his daughter while doubting his wife's fidelity and his growing realization that his friend, Stalin, has ordered his arrest is movie enough! But there is more....
At second look, the family life is far from idyllic. The family (the dacha is theirs, not Kotov's) are the wife, daughter, relatives, friends of Boris the famous Bolshoi Theater conductor. They are retired artists and intellectuals who had mingled with the royal family before the revolution. They regard the Soviet regime as a kind of occupation and must be careful about what they say in Kotov's presence. Clearly he would like to assume Boris' place as head of the family, but they regard him as declasse', a braggart, and a bully. In the famous boat scene, the hero father has only platitudes to offer his daughter. His view of national progress lies in technological advances. He plays baby games with this exceptional little girl who longs for the kind of challenge that Mitya will offer her.
The second hero is Mitya, beloved of Boris and his family, who greet him as the prodigal son, coming alive to his laughter and music. They see him as Boris' rightful heir, a kind of Hamlet-- home to clean house. Unlike his adopted family, he has been unable to escape direct conflict with the Soviet regime. As an White Army exile, he had made a deal with the devil, the infamous NKVD, in order to return home. But Kotov has sent him away again, for a total of almost 20 years abroad. At the beginning of the film he gambles his life against taking his misery home. When he finally agrees to go, his aim is to clean up his act (the washing of the steps in Red Square). He is not an assassin-IT IS STALIN WHO ORDERED THE ARREST--but he will take revenge on the man who robbed him of his life.
Although the men engage in competitions (including a dance competition!) throughout the day, Nadya (literally) leads them out of the woods of such futility. Both men will lose. Only Stalin is the winner! Neither man is a villain; both deserve compassion. Poor Kotov finally broke--I believe it was because of his acknowledgment of his own complicity in the truckdriver's murder--groaning his way to Moscow. But the dirge in the cellos was for Mitya, signalling the death of his soul. Supported by his family's love, he had almost achieved redemption, but the incident with the truck driver demanded the concentration of the NKVD man. His series of errors in the car led inevitably to the truck driver's death. I hated him so much as he gathered his white coat about him and entered the car on the opposite side, that his suicide had little effect on me. So why did I mourn him for weeks and weeks?
Description of Burnt by the Sun
Russian filmmaker Nikita Mikhalkov is also the star of this tragic 1994 drama about the last happy season in the life of a Bolshevik hero's family. The year is 1936, and Stalin's purges are in full swing. Despite his reputation and revolutionary record, Sergei Kotov (Mikhalkov) seems to be on the dictator's hit list, as indicated by the insulting arrival of his wife's former lover, an agent of government police. Mikhalkov treats all this as a matter of personal and political intrigue dropping like rotting fruit in the middle of a sunny and loving period for the Kotov clan. The director ingeniously understates the mounting threat until one begins to realize that the Kotovs are only geographically distant from the long, bloody reach of Stalin. By the time we do realize it, the shock of change is almost unbearable. A very fine movie all around, though Mikhalkov's touches of magic realism (particularly the presence of a golden orb that keeps popping into the action) are distracting and a subject of controversy among viewers. --Tom KeoghBestsellers in DVD
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