Review by zoeing

I saw "Harvest Time" at 29th Hong Kong Internatioanl Film Festival last month and consider it is the best film I have seen at the festival. It's a feature film with no doubt, but it's also beautiful and poetic. It is common to tell a story in a film, but it is not so common to write a poetry with images. "Harvest Time" seems to inherit the spirit of Andrey Tarkovsky. The images in this film are stunning. The story is sad and is told in a "casual" way by a kid, which makes the the film's point of view indirect yet somewhat more ironic. It should be watched on widescreen in cinema. The light, the colors and the moving details of the images will strike your heart. Dust floating in the air, a child talking to a mouse, insects running on the floor and a combine roaring on the field in the morning mist, all of them are words and sentences of a poetry. The "theme song" of the film is a ballad sung in Russian. Its simplicity and beauty add to the film's poetic atmosphere. It also makes one think of the fate of the Russians. Since everything has its own reasons, what are the reasons for so many tragedies that happened in Russia?