aleo81190 "A Trainer and A Trainee alone in the polar station checking the readouts and things get complicated dramatically" Started like a good movie and ended horribly. Only best part in the movie is when they show how to cut the fish And also that white bear.Very slow movie.I hate this movie only because they complicated the situation deliberately without any necessity. Really horrible although the end is little good.Better stay away.

a-wallace511 Russian director Alexei Popogrebsky's "How I Ended This Summer" is a tense, stunning and often frustrating marathon of film. This is an award winning film having claimed the Golden Bear at The Berlin International Film Festival and best film at the London Film Festival Awards, and certainly provides a unique cinematic experience with its stunning landscapes and minimal use of dialogue and soundtrack. The film follows the stark lives of two Russian meteorologists, working on an inhospitable and isolated wasteland on the Siberian coast. College student Pavel is on a work placement, attempting to work alongside experienced and intimidating Sergei. The environment itself is the source of much of the cinematic beauty but also deadly hazards: polar bears, radioactivity, sheer cliffs, and wild weather. These hazards, and the abhorrent isolation takes its toll on immature Pavel who becomes unable to communicate with Sergei. The tension reaches breaking point when Pavel loses Sergei's trust and is unable to bring himself to tell him the news that his family has died in a car accident. Where this film excels is in scene depiction, with every view a stunning image symbolic of Pavel's temperament. Almost every image in this film could be a photograph worthy of framing. The landscape is stark, the soundtrack is almost nonexistent, as is the dialogue, and it forces the viewer to experience Pavel's toxic isolation. But to be perfectly honest, I have never been more frustrated watching a film than when I endured the two hours of silence that is "How I Ended This Summer". Several times throughout the film you are forced to spend over a minute watching a character walk off into the distance, and all this with no music, no dialogue, not even anything to think about. For a while I even played music in the background just to maintain sanity. To add to this frustration, our main character Pavel is an irritating young man who constantly makes mistakes, is completely devoid of any courage, seems to have no interests and makes every wrong decision he possibly can.Perhaps it is this very frustration that makes this film award winningly unique. Popogrebski outstandingly succeeds in communicating the feelings of young Pavel, even if it at times this process is excruciatingly painful. "How I Ended This Summer" is a film for film buffs. To anyone else wanting to endure this marathon I would suggest multitasking with some knitting or doing some pushups, otherwise you could expect to be footing the bill for the screen you just threw your drink at.

James Ovum I would have said this was an excellent movie except for one minor thing: the human behavior that was at the core of the movie's plot simply wasn't believable. For *some* unknown reason, the young padawan chooses not to deliver the message to the Jedi Master that his wife and son are dead.Honestly, I don't care how much of a coward you are--if someone's family dies, and you need to deliver the message, you just do it. Anyone would have done it--period.As much as I wanted to like this movie, nothing in my mind could come to terms with the premise that the young kid in this movie wouldn't have delivered the message. I can't picture anyone behaving in that manner for any reason.My biggest pet peeve in films in when writers do not create believable human behavior that is consistent within a character. It doesn't matter if the genre is horror, sci-fi, drama, comedy, etc, human behavior is an absolute. People may do crazy things, weird things, psychotic things, but there is always reason and motive. In this movie, there was simply no real motive for the absurd behavior.This movie frustrated me in the way sitcoms often do, where one character has something compelling to tell another, but trite unbelievable dialogue is conjured to prolong the tension.In any case, I'm glad most everyone else was able to enjoy this film. I wish I could have.

sensorshot Having watched this movie on a flight I am going to steer clear of commenting on what appeared to be some amazing cinematography.With a sparse cast and a sparse setting this films works hard on the subtleties and isolation of the main characters. The monotony, the boredom, the sense of duty and the age old story of the older experienced man and the younger upstart who doesn't appreciate the ways of old.Grigoriy Dobrygin as Pasha is incredible in delivering the essence and fundamentals of the story. What makes this movie thrilling and scary at the same time is that, in such isolation, everything that could possibly scare you in such a situation is explored or alluded to so you never know what could happen because anything could happen. Within this context an important message is received Without spoiling the movie, one could say that we cannot control how people react to things anymore than we can control nature itself. And sometimes to try and prevent bad things happening can be the worst choice but it is always the human choice.The script is extremely tight and though the dialogue is somewhat monosyllabic and sparse it all adds to the tension, (and makes it easier if you are not watching it in Russian and dislike subtitles) I cannot imagine how a movie as good as this could ever be made in Hollywood. Where, for example, someones expressions alone could take up 5 minutes of film and still have you on the edge of your seat. Even Hitchcock would have learned a lot from the art of suspense after watching this movie.