Le soleil blanc du désert

I have seen the impact that the American Western had on the Italians ("The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly") and now I have seen its influence of the Russians. This "Ostern" tackles the subject matter of civil war, bigamy, and death with a wonderful lack of pretense that is expected from a John Wayne movie; all that has changed are the ideologies. With a little more in common with "Lawrence of Arabia" than just sand the movie focuses on an unextraordinary man forced to rise to the occasion of being a hero. The lead is extremely engaging as a man who never looses his laid-back attitude even as soldiers pour oil around him and the many wives. His fidelity to his farm wife provides for the movie's highlight. He imagines his wife surrounded by the entire harem performing chores around the field. The clashing of East and... well, further East provides for many comical situations. The way the harem acts around the men in the museum is countered by the men lusting after them.

Needless to say, this film carries an enormous cultural significance for the Russians. Today, Russian press even hails it as the first Russian/Soviet action film, although "Piraty XX Veka" is much better suited for that title. Besides, this movie is not the kind of action that people are used to nowadays. There is no point in going over the film's story line because it is very simple and focuses on good vs. bad guys (Soviet style, that is) during the Russian civil war. I imagine that any person who hasn't lived in the former USSR will not find much to worship here. And yet, it is truly a masterpiece that sort of happened to be made without any grand intentions, but was able to strike a chord with the entire nation. It's all very simple and naive, but the film's characters, the things they say, the theme song, it all clicks together perfectly. And the best thing about it is that neither time nor political fluctuations (like the demise of the Soviet empire) doesn't detract its magic. It just became more sarcastic, or nostalgic, depending on your perception. "White Sun of The Desert" is undoubtedly a classic of the Soviet cinema.

This so called "eastern" (or "ostern" – western Russian style), the movie about the fight of the Red Army soldier with the bandits ("basmachi") in the Central Asia during the Civil War that followed the Revolution of 1917, became not only a cult, but also one of the most beloved pictures for several generations of the viewers in all countries of the former Soviet Union. It has become a tradition for all Russian cosmonauts to watch it the night before their flight. Its success had formed the genre of domestic "eastern".

The demobilized after many years of military service soldier Fedor Sukhov walks through the desert to his native hamlet where his beloved Caterina Matveevna has been waiting for him. The movie is made as the letters that Fedor writes to Caterina (but never sends them) and tells her (with great humor) about his (often deadly dangerous) adventures. The band of cruel Abdulla rages in the area. Sukhov is charged with the task to accompany the harem of the leader to the safe area because Abdulla intended to murder his women rather than set them free. Accompanied by a young naive Petrukha, Sukhov leads "the group of the comrades" through the desert, knowing well that the face off with Abdulla is inevitable. Smart, fast, and brave Sukhov is the Army of One but at the most dramatic moment, he would need help from the former custom officer Verechagin and not very talkative but reliable Said who never forgot that Suknov had saved him from the horrible death in desert.

I've seen this movie ten or maybe twenty times - first, when it was released many years ago and I was a middle school student in Moscow and recently - after all these years. I know I have changed but the movie has not - it is funny, dynamic, and absolutely captivating. This perfect blend of comedy, action, and touching drama is deservingly one of the best Soviet films. The theme song "Vashe blagorodiye, gospozha Udacha" ("You Honor, Lady Luck") written by one of the best Soviet composers Isaak Schwarz with the lyrics of the legendary bard Bulat Okudzhava had became an instant hit and its fame has only grown as time passed. White sun of desert still shines bright.

It is an unbreakable tradition that Russian cosmonauts and foreign guests watch this movie the day before they blast off aboard a Soyuz rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome. Apart from the cultural significance this indicates, it shows where the heart and the spirit of the movie lie, where and how White Sun of the Desert transcends whatever genre it might be filed under and comes on its own.

A soldier returning home to his wife through the desert is entrusted by a regiment of the Red Army with escorting the harem of a local bandit, Black Abdullah, while the regiment looks for him. Things get complicated when he takes them to a nearby village by the Caspian sea where Abdullah arrives shortly after.

An attempt at a genre classification of White Sun of the Desert gives the term Ostern or eastern, the Soviet equivalent of the western. In some ways there is a resemblance, the landscape, horses, guns and bandits but the absurdity of the plot itself would feel more at ease in a crazed spaghetti western like Blindman than a John Ford western, and the feeling and mood belongs to a whole different worldview, with different sensibilities from either American or Italian westerns. To borrow a Japanese term, the mood of the movie carries some Russian form of "shushigaku", the sadness of things, as if all things and men carry within them an inherent sadness and all joy is not without the shadow of death. Being Balcan myself, I can see Emir Kusturicha in all this.

In that sense White of the Desert is like a desert carnival, an absurd adventure with comedic undertones through which blows a breeze of sadness, regret, loss and yearning. An old customs officer that realizes his life lost meaning the day he stopped caring and that he has to make a final stand and redeem himself, his wife that wanders the beach like a lost animal, her life meaningless without her husband, Sayid, a random encounter the hero Sukhov digs out of the desert, who is looking for the man who killed his father, nothing else having any importance or worth in his life, Sukhov himself a soldier returning home to his wife through the desert after years of war, Abdullah's harem who feel stranded and alone without their man even though he is a bandit and murderer of men and they can't comprehend how Sukhov can only have one wife.

And then you have the desert and the Caspian landscape. It surrounds everything with a mystical quality all its own, like everything happens in some corner of the world no one will ever know about and one day the sand will cover everything or the last man will just go out wandering in the desert and leave the small village behind forever, like Shukov does in the end of the movie. I have a weird fascination with the desert for this reason exactly, because deserts are places that have exhausted their future and thus have an inherent existential quality. I think this is personified in the three old men with white beards that sit at the bottom of a wall, barely speaking a word the entire movie, like an ancient lifeform that is now one with the land.

What really makes White Sun of the Desert so good is that what I mentioned above may exist only in my mind. It's never self conscious about what it does, never explicit in its symbolism and drama or calling attention to itself as anything more than a purely entertaining adventure romp. The comedic timing is good in that old fashioned way, the locations are beautiful, the acting is neat and the action is OK but nothing to write home about. It's the mood that makes the difference here though and for that alone it deserves a watch or two. Strongly recommended.

Sukhov (Anatoliy Kuznetsov) is a former soldier making the journey home across the desert near the Caspian sea. He ends up tasked with protecting the harem of a notorious bandit leader named Black Abdullah (Kakhi Kavsadze), after the bandit left them for dead while running from the Soviet army. What should be a short and simple escort mission turns into a perilous battle when Abdullah returns for his wives, leaving only Sukhov and a handful of allies to defeat the bandit army.

Most of the Soviet films that I've seen have been the propaganda works of the late silent era and the coldly remote intellectualism of Andrei Tarkovsky. However, much like The Amphibian Man, White Sun of the Desert is an entirely different kind of Russian film, much more fun, vibrant, exotic, and entertaining. Sukhov makes for a great change-of-pace hero: positive, confident, and romantic, as depicted by his frequent narrated composition of love letters to his beloved back home, which often amusingly contrast with what's being shown on screen. The action scenes are capably done, and there are many funny lines of dialogue ("He had the wrong grenades.") that work across the cultural barrier. There are some surprisingly dark plot turns, but instead of derailing the adventurous mood of the film, it just makes it feel more Russian, somehow. Recommended.