Kosmos kak predchuvstvie

"Dreaming of Space" is the nostalgic drama of Aleksey Uchitel. The Soviet Union rose from the ruins of the war, launched a satellite into space, and Gagarin's first flight was just around the corner. All these successes of the country are diametrically opposed to the main characters of the film. The duel of characters was remarkably played by two Eugeniy - Mironov and Tsyganov.

What is this movie really about? How bad it was to live in USSR? Or how American music was supposedly better than Russian? And what does all of that have to do with space travel? My take on this: even though made in Russia, this movie was made for the West. Why? Well, first, the story line is primitive and characters are not developed (anticipating viewers ADD and taste). A Western viewer, if he ever goes to see a foreign, or, even worse, Russian movie, expects simple things: grotesque scenes from Russian life, plump Russian girls, drunk Russian guys, "superior" American music and lifestyle, and, of course, something peculiar to Russia - in this case, Yuri Gagarin. It's too bad Mironov has degraded to movies such as this one or "Pobeg". Evgenii Tsyganov's role is too simple: there's almost no acting and he is far from his best (as in "Deti Arbata"). It would be really nice if Russian DVDs had labels such as: "this movie was made for Westerners" or "for Moscovites only" :), so I would know what to avoid...

I saw this in the Toronto International Film Festival (2005) with the director present.

This is one of the few Russian movies I've ever seen and a strong contender for on of the best. I enjoyed it not only for the 'Russian perspective', but for the strong dramatic action in a well-told story.

The story revolves around a cook/boxer who lives near the Russian-Finnish border in 1957. A new and rather mysterious boxer in town brings some fresh techniques and perspective into the former's life starting a tale of intrigue (who is this guy), against the backdrop of the Soviet desire to launch satellites into space.

It's an overall upbeat tale in perhaps a less upbeat period of time, with some great boxing sequences (though it's not a boxing movie). The director mentioned it took 3 months to start the actors boxing training who had the coach from the Olympic team do the training. The comment was that had they taken up training earlier on, they would definitely be on the olympic team. That tells you how real the boxing scenes were, but also show the care that went into the overall production.

The movie has an engaging 'secret-service' suspensefulness, and its main characters come across as fun, real, and compelling. In addition, perhaps because of the 'Russian-ness' to this movie, the characters and the actors' portrayals as well as the style of the movie were rather unique (in a very positive way) -- further pulling me in to the screening.

Overall, this rates above average on my list of movies I've seen at the Toronto Film Festival.