A good movie

To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but since it was the last movie directed by that Sergei Eisenstein I haven’t seen so far, I was quite eager to check it out. Well, it is probably his most obscure movie, it was also his last propaganda film as he would then focus after on historical epics for the rest of his career. Eventually, what was mostly interesting in this movie was that he focused this time only on the peasants living in the Soviet Union. Anyway, after watching all his movies, I came to the conclusion that they are so vastly different from your usual narrative features and it makes them therefore rather tricky to judge because you can’t really compare them to anything else that you have seen before and this movie was not an exception. Even if you might have some issues with the fact that it completely distorted what happened in Russia, I still think it is fascinating how Eisenstein pushed the propaganda genre to such heights that it became some kind of weird Art form. Indeed, there is no denying that some shots were quite beautiful, even though I’m not a huge fan of his excessive use of close-ups but even these shots were quite evocative. Eventually, they made some attempts to build up some kind of narrative (above all, you keep seeing this woman called Marfa) but, to be honest, the end-result did feel seriously disjointed. I mean, except for Marfa, it was rather difficult to keep track on who was who exactly and what was actually exactly going on. Finally, even though I’m well aware of all the atrocities that took place during the Soviet rule in Russia, I still think it was a beautiful theory and I actually think that this movie, as an utopian concept, was inspiring. Anyway, to conclude, even though it is definitely an acquired taste, I think it was actually pretty good and it is actually worth a look, especially if you are interested in Eisenstein’s work.