phranger

This is a made-for-HDTV film, and it shows. The cinematography itself is not great either, and the acting and direction are highly uneven (The title role is admirably played by Nina Shubina, but most of the cast is non-professional.) Put that down to the cost of getting the film made at all.

Story background -- The film takes place in the Archangelsk region. After raising her family, Tosia raised her daughter Vera's four children while she and her husband were off working on the trains on two-week shifts. The grandchildren are raised, Tosia has sold her house and given them the proceeds, and lives with Vera and her husband. For a tragic reason, she's sent off to her widowed younger sister's, in a village. The sister breaks a hip and her daughter Lysa, a successful TV journalist, tries to put Granny (Babusya) up with her cousins (Tosia's grandchildren). She essentially fails.

The object of the film, however, is not this story which, as others have noted, in one form or another is an ageless classic. Rather, it is the contrast between what may be called "old Russians", still centered on their village (mostly women and mostly old), and what the film calls "new Russians", the younger generation busy making it in the city, and which in ten or fifteen years has managed to perfectly learn to look out for numero uno. (Or perfectly unlearn humanity, as one "old Russian", Oleg (?), puts it to a new Russian.)

The hardest blows aimed at Granny occur in her absence, addressed to Lysa, who in a sense stands for the audience. Lysa explains to Oleg that "the new Russians are the masters of *that* world". Oleg answers, "Are you sure you're part of *this* world, then?"

The "old Russians'" daily life is carefully depicted. The film will interest those who are attracted by this depiction, and only then by the contrast with the "new Russian" class.

I agree with most of the points made here about Bloody Sunday by people who liked it, but these points are my main reason for not liking it. The film is made for TV and adopts what Janyeap quite rightly a "faux documentary" format. That is, the color is dull and cold, and the contrast high. Cuts are frequent, and so are camera movements. Everything is framed close. You need an Irish ear to get all the dialogue. (No, the shots aren't jerky, except on purpose to underline "high" moments.) All that could be accepted, if it did not also impose the point of view of on-the-spot news shooting. There is no background at all, only the simplest dynamics, linear development and no real center, just disorder, urgency, emotion.

If you come into the film with the belief that one unit of the Royal British Army went on a nice Sunday duck shoot at a peaceful march, and got thirteen Catholics dead, and good reports all around due to the efficient propaganda system in place (and now a fine life in retirement), well, you will learn practically nothing from the film - only perhaps the point, made near the end, that this was the IRA's greatest battle, killing the civil rights movement and bringing hundreds of recruits. Perhaps it was, if you take "battle" to indicate a rate of death per hour.

If you don't agree with the preamble in the last paragraph, then, as several postings here show, the film will not convince you one wit. The best that can be said about it is that it's a nice memorial intended for those who agree with the preamble, quite well made in its way. Still, whether you want to sit through a 107-minute memorial depends on your feelings for TV news shoots.