Skazka o tsare Saltane

Thanks to its restoration, this film - which was viewed on Amazon Prime Video - looks and sounds absolutely splendid, with colors that truly pop and sparkle, and colors there are, thanks to non-stop glorious costumes. A fairy tale that relates the story of two jealous sisters and their machinations to usurp their youngest sister's life when the Tsar chooses her and not them to be his bride, it's essentially a children's film but there's much to capture the attention of adults, too. I wish I knew Russian so I could fully catch the nuances of the dialogue - keeping with its fairy-tale beginnings, it's all told in verse - but thankfully the captioning is quite good at keeping everything flowing (though, of course, the only time there are NO subtitles to be found is occasionally during the opening credits, when so many names and titles are presented in their Cryllic spelling that it's understandable no system could keep up with it all!), and the tale itself is at once both charming and charmingly bizarre but it is always, always utterly enjoyable to watch. The performances add to the high quality, as they are spot-on, at once cartoonish enough but also eliciting genuine pathos at times, as does any good fairy tale. The sad thing to realize is that, at least for American children, it's hard to picture them having the patience for a film like this as it doesn't have any animated characters, animals that sing, hacky movie stars doing voice work, non-stop CGI, a media onslaught, and tie-in toy lines, but for any child or teenager who appreciates this kind of old-fashioned filmmaking, it's a real treat.