I had had no idea what I was going to see when I was entering the cinema and I still do not know what I saw there that evening. I cannot say it was a shock because shock is brutal and fast, whereas this film is brutal all right, but very slow. The story, if there is any at all, takes place somewhere in the Siberian woods, apparently in our times (there is a helicopter in the beginning and the end). I am not sure only because of the abysmal living conditions in the village which is visited by a young female from the civilization. It is not clear what the purpose of her visit was: was she a social worker, an exiled person, an ethnographer, a natural scientist? The lack of dialogue is not very helpful for analysis of the film on the rational level. Despite of - or perhaps because of - the detached documentary-like style, the emotional impact of the film is great. It appears that many characters, perhaps all the villagers, were played by non-actors. I would really like to know how much of the film was a documentary and how much was scripted and rehearsed. The main message that I took home from the viewing is that not all the savages are noble, that poverty, suffering and "the closeness to nature" does not help one's soul or improve one's character. The drunk and disfigured characters in this film are in a contrast with the people depicted in, e.g., Kurosawa's "Dersu Uzala" or Mikhalkov's "Urga" (aka "Close to Eden"). Rather, they remind me of the highlanders in Boorman's "Deliverance".
