Lettres d'un homme mort

It took me some time to remember the title of this film, and it's certainly a hidden gem. In it's very slow pace, it transfers the mood of what will probably be if we went through a nuclear war. Great cinematography, and the quality of the film just makes it more profound and hipnotizing.

If you find this film, take your time any rainy day, and drift away in a world of dead and dying.

This "Letters from a Dead Man" simply has got to be, hands down, one of the top three most depressing and pessimistic movies I ever encountered in my life. Of all Sci-Fi films dealing with remnants of life after the apocalypse – and believe me they are quite numerous – this Soviet Union produced sleeper upraises the most nightmarishly realistic and harrowing atmosphere ever. Even in your worst imaginable nightmares and premonitions, the post-nuclear existence probably still doesn't look as decayed and melancholic as illustrated here in this film. Survivors are forced to live underground, in the caves and catacombs of destroyed buildings, and have little else to do but watch each other fading away emotionally as well as physically. They can't go the surface without wearing special outfits and gas masks, but even then there's nothing else to do but stroll around between ruins, car wrecks and rotting corpses. With monotonous photography and the exclusive use of a yellow-tinted picture, director Konstantin Lopushansky (an acolyte of the Russian master Andrei Tarkovsky) fabricates the ideally lugubrious ambiance, and he can also rely on the devoted cast and bleakly void screenplay to assist.

The story revolves on Rolan Bykov as a scientist – former Nobel Price winner, even – who entrenched himself underneath the remnants of a library building along with his wife and a handful of co-workers. The titular letters are addressed to his son whom the scientist hasn't seen or heard from since the catastrophe. The letters and above all the hope his son is still alive somewhere is what keeps the poor man going, but how long can you hold on to hope when you see everything and everyone around you dying? "Letters from a Dead Man" is a difficult but ultimately very rewarding cinematic experience to endure. Difficult, of course, because of the emotionally devastating imagery and atmosphere, and because there's actually very little substantial content. We literally stare at a handful of people languishing and eventually dying, with only a small hint at hope near the end. And rewarding because of the depiction of genuine humane sentiments and the thought-provoking messages. It's also highly remarkable how "Letters from a Dead Man" remains continuously vague regarding the cause of the apocalypse and eventually even searches the guilt in the own heart. In a time where movies released on the other side of the Iron Curtain (in Europe and particularly the USA) routinely blamed Russia for the potentially upcoming apocalypse, this tale suggests the root cause of the catastrophe lies in a human error during the launch of a space shuttle. The entire cast gives away tremendous performances. I don't know if these people are veteran actors and actresses in their home countries, but their grimaces and catatonic behavior suggest that they were selected especially for this type of discouraging parable. Fantastic film; though obviously not fit for all occasions and/or audiences.

To fully understand this movie you should understand the mindset and milieu of the Eastern Bloc - preferably the Soviet Union - of the 1980s, in the height of the Cold War. This movie is radically different from Western post-apocalyptic movies like 'The Day After' or 'Threads' which deal with the very materialistic side of a nuclear holocaust, like the effects of bombs and life after the war. This Soviet movie is not a spectacle and its aim is far from simply entertaining or scaring. It ponders on the philosophic and moral side of a nuclear war, a suicide of mankind and whether it's inevitable or not.

There is barely any storyline. The main character is an unnamed scientist who lives in a makeshift shelter under a museum, among saved relics from all eras of history and some of his surviving colleagues. Being all scientists they are trying to grapple the whole point of what happened. There are no names, except for the wife and son of this scientist: Anna and Eric. Eric is presumably dead as he was outside when the bombs exploded. Nevertheless the scientist keeps writing letters to him, in a form of a diary, which is more to save his last thoughts of the world than actually meant to be delivered someday.

The pace of this film is just as slow and time would be in such a situation. Soviet art movies were not bound by economic constraints so it did not matter to their makers whether the tickets will sell well or not. Modern moviegoers would find the entire thing profoundly boring, and even the most dedicated movie hipster would look at the clock time to time. Being this slow is part of the image the movie builds. Just like the characters, the viewer is also immersed in an endless waiting, never to know whether something is going to change or happen. You actually have to watch it to the very end to see. Don't expect rich experiences. In such a dull and dead world it's a rare gift to see anything happen.

Interestingly, the makers took great care to emphasize that this is not happening in the Soviet Union. Or more exactly, it could happen, but this particular place is not a Soviet city. There is not a single object in the background with Cyrillic letters on it, but there are a lot of things with English labels, some are even consumer goods rare behind the Iron Curtain at that time. German beer cans float in the water - canned beer was a curiosity that time - and a bottle of Jagermeister is seen on a desk. Canned foods are also foreign, with English labels. Even the soldiers carry weapons that look like a crossbreed of American M-16 and M-1 rifles. It's a small detail, but back then every able-bodied Soviet men were familiar with Soviet military equipment, having spent years as a conscript, and this clue is giving away that the scene takes place in a foreign country. Even the military vehicles were selected to keep this illusion. The helicopter is a Ka-26 which was never used by the military (in the Soviet Union at least), the large truck is a MAZ missile trailer, but there was also a civilian version of it. The then- futuristic hovercraft that appears for no apparent reason was an experimental vehicle at the time, but such vehicles were already operating as ferries on the English Channel, and were praised as a great technical advancement of the time.

I'd generally recommend this movie for those who are desperate enough to take a plunge into a strange, lost civilization's vision of the violent end of the world. Not a date movie, except if your date is a hardcore movie culture fanatic or grew up in the Soviet Union.

I can't confirm there was a direct passing of the torch between Andrei Tarkovsky and Konstantin Lopushansky, or that the two even knew each other, but I can't help but feel like there was a spiritual passing of the torch, in a way, in 1986. That year sadly saw the release of what was to be Tarkovsky's final film, The Sacrifice, as he passed away at just 54 years of age the same year. 1986 also saw the release of Lopushansky's debut, Dead Man's Letters, and it scratches the same itch as some of Tarkovsky's sci-fi works do, but not in a way that feels derivative.

It's more a natural extension of the sort of bleak, introspective, and visually stylized substance of certain Tarkovsky films, and rather than suggesting Lopushansky was ripping off Tarkovsky, I instead hope to compare them in a way that's complementary to Lopushansky. In fact, Dead Man's Letters has moments that got to me more on a gut level than just about anything Tarkovsky directed, and with this film, he really doesn't overstay his welcome with a runtime of 83 minutes (some Tarkovsky films can have somewhat challenging runtimes).

It's the fact both made movies in Russia, both dealt with dark subject matter, and both were willing to use similarly striking color schemes visually that makes me want to compare the two. At the risk of disparaging Tarkovsky, too, it's been many years since I saw the bulk of his filmography, and now I'm older (though not necessarily wiser), I may be able to go back and appreciate certain titles of his some more. As for Lopushansky, the only other film of his I've seen is 1989's A Visitor to a Museum, which is similar to Dead Man's Letters in some way, albeit longer and more ambitious... surprisingly, I think I like Dead Man's Letters a little more, though.

It's worth experiencing for its atmospheric post-apocalyptic qualities alone, as well as for a couple of key sequences that really sneak up on you and prove devastating. It's not a fun watch, but it felt rewarding and worth the time for sure.

One needs to be in a resilient mood to watch Lopushansky's films, particularly this one. It surely is one of the gloomiest, saddest films out there, bare, raw and hyperealistic. It could not be otherwise, since its purpose is to show the aftermath of a massive nuclear attack on a large city somewhere, without heroes, without Hollywoodian last-minute miracles and hopes. The end of civilisation, the end of humankind.

The nuclear catastrophe, we are told, happened by accident. Most of the few remaining survivors are physically or mentally sick, going about zombie-like, and slowly dying off in a few dimly lit underground shelters. The situation above ground is even worse, with high-radiation, wreckage, rubble, strong winds and little light (some kind of "nuclear winter"), rotting corpses everywhere.

The main character is an old scientist who tries to preserve some sense of purpose, inter alia by continuing his work and by writing letters to his missing and most likely dead son, letters that are not sent because there is no address to send them to. The acting by R. Bykov who plays the scientist, is impeccable, and the same goes for the rest of the cast, although it seems out of place to think and comment on these matters in a film dominated by sheer horror.

The limited colour gamma used (mostly dirty ochres, greys and blacks) effectively reinforce the feeling of oppression and hopelessness this film so effectively conveys from beginning to end.

Very hard and painful to watch, but perhaps necessary to get an idea of what our world could look like, were we to use the horrific weapons we have created. Did in fact look like, for some, when these weapons were used at the end of WWII.