gavin6942
The film is based on the eponymous book by Valery Osipov. Four geologists are searching for diamonds in the wilderness of Siberia. After a long and tiresome journey they manage to find their luck and put the diamond mine on the map. The map must be delivered back to Moscow. But on the day of their departure a terrible forest fire wreaks havoc, and the geologists get trapped in the woods.Professor Dina Iordanova calls the film "a remarkable depiction of perseverance in the face of extreme challenge, a tale of humankind's resolute dedication to the task of conquering the wild and overpowering the hostile forces of nature." This really is a beautiful film, both about struggle, but also very much quite artful. Russian cinema may not be very well known due to the Cold War, but what is known is probably best summed up in the work of Eisenstein. And that is selling Russia short. Even adding Tarkovsky would be selling it short. Throw this in (alongside "Cranes are Flying" and "I Am Cuba") and you have a well-rounded picture.
hte-trasme
"The Unsent Letter" begins with a simple and powerful concept; we are introduced to a letter being written, and we know from the title that it remains unsent. And this contributes to a sense of doom and danger (and contrasting human hope) that characterizes the film. This film is in large part a combination of large successes in the areas of character drama and cinematography, appropriately as the setting is so vital. It's the wide-open wooded Siberian Taiga in summer with the ticking time-bomb of a Siberian winter looming unspoken. In a context like this, the isolation of place can make it a place for a bottle drama. Here the friction and attraction between the characters is intensified against the mortal danger that is its background. In terms of direction, there is no shying away from the lingering shot, hanging on the difficulty of a passage or on the face of a character -- and this is very effective. The acting is first rate; I had known Vasili Livanov only as Sherlock Holmes, and it is great to seem him do full justice to a very dramatic role. The cinematography, though, is what is really extraordinary. There are some incredible shots moving around burning forest fires and huge icy landscapes that seem like they should have been impossible to achieve. In the end, one feels like one has gone through some of the ordeal of the characters. And one is tempted to imagine that making the film might have been a dangerous mission for the filmmakers on the order of what the characters encountered.
wheeler-benjamin
Saw this at Tribeca Film Festival in Spring 2007, and was absolutely floored. I walked out of the theater afterword amazed at what I'd seen and thrilled that such an amazing film existed and had been maintained by a tiny number of appreciators in such excellent quality for so long.The story is not the strong point of the movie. Rather, as with Terence Malick films, the story is just a starting point for the film, which is another beast entirely. What shines and carries the film from scene to scene is the cinematography. I didn't know if this was happened elsewhere at the time, but I didn't expect to see hand-held camera work in a 1959 Russian film, let alone the kind of early spinning, impossibly-filmed shot that appears early in the film. Later, there is a sequence that makes me long to know how they created the opportunity to film in such conditions.If you've read this far, you must track down this movie. My understanding is that Francis Coppola has a California archive maintain the only copy in the Americas, and that it's usually shown just one a year.
Aw-komon
A quite ridiculous film about diamond hunters in Siberia by the extraordinary director/cinematographer team of "I Am Cuba" and "The Cranes Are Flying." Needless say, the camerawork in the bizarrely surreal and barren Siberian locations is UNBELIEVABLE (the continuous takes are longer than any other film in history except for "I Am Cuba") but the film itself is too directly tied to dramatic 'adventure story' conventions to transcend into pure poetry like "Cranes" and "Cuba." There is a spectacular scene shot with the main actors amidst a raging forest fire and another one shot during an ice-storm. Most definitely worth transferring to DVD (there isn't a true film fan that wouldn't be flabergasted by the cinematography) but not by the same ones (Hen's Tooth) who did such a mediocre job on the transfer of "I Am Cuba."
AD
