Ovsyanki

Silent Souls. A fitting adapted English title to this film. In short, Aist and Miron serve as the guides to a desolate portrait into the life of the Merya people of Russia. The journey is centered on the grieving of a husband for his wife, and on the the associated death rites. As such, the film gives viewers a passenger's perspective into the customs and thoughts of a people whose rituals have been disappearing. All in all, Silent Souls is informative and simple, dragging viewers slowly into a surprising and symbolic conclusion. It is a film best observed through the gaze of an anthropologist or ethnographer, and taken in with the intention to learn and absorb a culture that to most will be new and foreign. In sum, one ought not to expect Hollywoodian diversions.

This was a fairly interesting movie.

Just to correct errors in two of the previous reviews above: this is not a Scandinavian movie, but Russian. It is not located in remote Northern Scandinavia, either, but in central Russia, and thus actually quite far from Scandinavia. Although the movie tells about traditions of a people ethnically related to Finns, there is really nothing in the movie that would resemble anything in Scandinavia. These Meryan people merged with Slavs about a thousand years ago, and their own language disappeared in the 16th century. Apparently some of their ancient customs still live, if this movie is to be believed.

Having set myself the goal of watching all the fairly good films released in Russia in 2011, I started with this movie.

The film turned out to be very languid, calm. Although the film is modern, and the plot takes place in our time, it is devoid of all the fuss, that overabundance of electronics that now reign in megacities. A provincial town, calm people, who never seemed to show bright emotions, who still retained some part of their culture ... This causes respect.

Some may feel that the scenes are drawn out. Yes, indeed, a change of plans takes a very long time. But it seemed to me a great merit of the film - so you could see every centimeter of the space being filmed. Immerse yourself completely in the plot of the film.

I immediately understood how the film would end, because the plot is quite simple and a little banal, they say, they are going to bury the godwit, which means they will bury it at the end of the film. But even after that, the interest of the film did not fade away. The film was watched in one breath, as if it lasted only a few minutes ..

Simple, unobtrusive, nothing special. Just a good movie.

10 out of 10.

Started as typical Iranian movie, then forget to gain the momentum and after express straying finished as typical Scandinavian movie. It seems like an attempt to create the film about instinct tribe in the instinct or spoofed film-making tradition. But I think I can explain it's festival popularity. Since those talks about sex are still considered as ambiguous and vulgar, "Sex in the city" have no perspective as festival movie, but when you have filmed the tribe that have such age-old tradition, and this tradition is also packed into sacramental funeral ritual, you get an highest level indulgence and also you can redistribute this indulgence between all those highbrowed festival critics. I want that the story would be continued and the Russian "central region" get such get deep developed mythology. More better then hobbit village in the NZ.

Every now and then a director has a script and a set of performers who work with a single ambition. To do the very best possible. This film is perfection. There are times when the symbolism is a inch a way from breaking into reality but it never does, The sense of place and the the feelings evoked by a man who must take his dearly beloved wife, who has just died, to the place where they spent their honeymoon to place her on a funeral pile is relentlessly aching. There is a genuine purity about the feelings, some of which are extremely sexually explicit. In one flashback, we see the husband massaging his wife's leg while she plays with herself. The husband has a friend who shares the miles to the spot where the wife will burn, next to a vast river. Has he also loved this woman? Tanya. Did others? Flashbacks are seen in real time with no attempt to break the mood with tenses. It is one of the most poetic films ever made and ten stars are not enough.