Holodomor, la grande famine ukrainienne

I have heard Holocaust, but not Holodomor. Thanks to this film. This is a piece of history. A bitter history, that people of the world should know what communism does. It commenced during the end of Tsar era and when Stalin's reign began. The film focused on a young man grew up in a small town, dreaming to be an artist. But suddenly everything has changed once Ukraine struggled to gain its independence from the Soviet Union. From his perspective, his journey through the Unkraine's toughest time had been explained. It had some romance, but overwhelmed by an unending conflict. They had to wait for 60 years, finally to get what they were fighting for.

The music was good. The background score accompanied awesomely throughout the narration. Decent actors and direction. Overall a good film, but I don't know what went wrong for it fail to reach out the people. Maybe the unfamiliar cast. But anyway, this film still did better in Ukraine as expected. From the 30s, slowly faded away from the world's interest in this matter. Mainly the reason could have been the WWII. Otherwise, there's no difference between what had happened here comparing to what nazis did a decade later. Why not, you will surely learn something out of it. So definitely yes, I would recommend it.

7/10

We looked forward to viewing this movie at the Ukrainian festival at our local theatre.

One big mistake though, didn't properly check the movie background - it is pretty much an English movie, not Ukrainian.

The main publicity focus in advance was on the Russian government induced famine in the Ukraine against the background of a love story.

In reality the movie tries to cover too many of the parallel social and political changes in the Soviet state of the 1920's and 30's, such that almost none would be clear to the average viewer. Including the internal power struggles within the communist regime.

This broad spectrum tips over in to the relationship between the two young lovers who appear almost wooden at times as they flit in and out of the narrative.

A serious and little known subject doesn't get its dues here regrettably. The film tries hard but lacks the focus and cultural nuances that may come from a locally made film.

1930's Ukraine. Genocide through starvation. It was never going to be a pleasant story. It's tough to make a film out of something so one sided and something so horrific. And at times its difficult to sit through. Yes it's violent but we don't see a lot of it up close. It's not gratuitous. It's already dire enough. Yet there's plenty to be depressed about.

The story itself is quite good. Following the journey of one character so we get an overview of what happened in varying parts of Ukraine during this time. And yet it's a stretch. Certain scenarios are just asking us to suspend belief a little too far. Our central figures should have been killed several times over. Knowing this is set within real events (though not of these characters) keeps us involved. But only just.

The problem is with the director. The early scenes are so over-lit it makes you feel like you're watching a Disney TV play. The clichés come thick and fast through the staging and unfortunately some of the dialog too. The direction is heavy handed, falling back on triteness such as blood dripping from a sword stuck in the ground and other lame symbolism.

It's all a bit overblown. The cinematography, the music. They wanted to make a real epic here but even at 100 minutes, it feels overlong and over-baked.

It's horrific to be certain and I wanted to care more but the central story just doesn't grab us the way it should. Terence Stamp adds an element of acting class. Shame that it can't be said for the rest of the cast. For example, Stalin is a caricature. Hours after seeing it, I'm already beginning to forget it. And that's not a bad thing.

An event this huge deserves so much more.

A common myth involving famine is that that it's entirely down to there not being enough food to go around an increasing human population . In other words there's too many people to survive on an essential resource , or "Malthusian catastrophe" to give it its technical term. What is being said is that there's too many people but there's often the innuendo that there's "too many (Insert black , brown or yellow here) people" here. The reality is that there's more than enough food in the world and the problems of food supply lie elsewhere, Don't believe me ? Ask yourself this:if there's more than 7 billion people in the world , more than it has ever been why is it that in the last few years only the Horn of Africa and North Korea have suffered famines ? You see my point ? It's nothing to do with resources and has everything to do with war in North East Africa and state policy in North Korea

BITTER HARVEST tells the story of one of the worst man made disasters in human history , that of the 1930s Soviet famine , most especially the Holodomor experience of the Ukrainians. Make no mistake because the famine was entirely man made where Josef Stalin rescinded Lenin's New Economic Policy ( Lenin and Trotsky's name change for capitalism )and executed or imprisoned everyone who knew anything about farming or engineering. A recipe for disaster in other words

The film itself is far from a disaster but constantly fails to make up its mind as to what it's trying to be. From the opening scene where the lead male and female are introduced as children you think that the film might be going one way only for it to go in a direction that it doesn't need to. It's a little bit love story , a little bit historical epic , a little bit action adventure etc but these segments never join up to a bigger picture , so much so it leads to an ultimately unsatisfying movie. It doesn't help that the goodies and baddies are painted in such broad stereotypical strokes

This is especially annoying where the casting is involved. Tamar Hassan is an actor I know from low budget British hooligan sub-genre films but is something of a revelation as Commissar Sergei but ends up being a rudimentary villain because that's what the screenplay demands and it is the fault of the screenplay . On the other end of the spectrum is up and coming Welsh actor Aneurin Bernard who plays Mykola a multi-layered Marxist and complex character but quickly disappears from the narrative. Things like this draw your attention to the fact that this is a well meaning film but should have been a great film as well as a well meaning one

Everyone knows about the Holocaust but few have even heard the word Holodomor. It means 'death by starvation' and it refers to the Ukrainian mass famine deliberately engineered by Joseph Stalin during 1932-33. Scholars label it as genocide and estimate between 7 and 10 million deaths were directly linked to Stalin's policy of de-populating the Ukraine. More accurate numbers are not available because long-standing Russian secrecy has only recently eased enough for the story to be told. The film Bitter Harvest (2017) is the first feature movie to tell this story using a dramatized romance that attempts to humanise a story of inhumanity.

Set in 1930s Ukraine, the story commences with two young childhood sweethearts in the film's only joyful moments. It quickly moves to Joseph Stalin ordering a mass collectivisation program to confiscate the Ukrainian harvests so he could feed his armies. Most chillingly, he commandeers the grain seeds so famine was not only unavoidable but planned. As their village faces an impending catastrophe, the now grown-up young lovers, aspiring artist Yuri (Max Irons) and his betrothed Natalka (Samantha Barks), must separate as he goes off to join the anti-Bolsheviks in Kiev while she remains to care for her ailing mother. Yuri believes in the power of painting and music to tell the world what is happening but his art teachers in Kiev force him to use art for revolutionary propaganda. As Stalin's forces deplete Ukraine's rural food-stock, villagers are accused of hiding grain and seed and failing to support the revolution. Wherever food is not surrendered there are mass executions in front of mass graves, while others starve to death in their homes and on the streets. Yuri is captured and tortured, but escapes to be re-united with Natalka and they eventually flee to Poland.

The detail of this love story pales against the bigger narrative of Stalinist atrocities. While it is a conventional cinematic device to convey a big story through a small lens, the relationship between the two is critical. The two stories of this film are out of balance and unevenly directed. The attempt to create an epic love story diminishes the magnitude of the Holodomor and almost glosses over the scale of its horrors. While the cinematography is excellent throughout, the acting is wooden, melodramatic, and lacks authenticity. The clean-faced good looks of the dual protagonists form a jarring contrast with the caricatures of the Stalinist scar-faced ogres who are depicted as pure evil. Turning archival images of starved bodies on streets and decimated corpses in mass graves into background props to tell a love story feels disrespectful. The film's lack of nuance and simplicity of narrative is a lost opportunity for insight into this dark episode of history.

It is difficult to be critical of a film that deals with such important subject matter. In terms of the need for the bigger story to be told, this film should be rated highly but as cinema it is seriously flawed. On balance, the one and three-quarter hour investment to see this film is worth the time as it is the only available narrative film of life at the time of the Holodomor. As such, it is educational cinema that helps us understand contemporary Russian-Ukraine politics. However, the shelf-life of this film will be determined only by the time it takes for a better film to be produced.