Solnechnyy udar

I won't give away the "key" -- that's for the viewer to discover -- but until I figured it out for myself, about 2/3 of the way through, I was so exasperated by this movie that I was tempted to just give up on it and quit. I thought it was incoherent and disjointed, and actually got peeved since I thought it was screwing with me.

But THEN... I figured out who/what the young officer in white, and the various appearances of the attractive woman, represented... and my whole experience changed. By the end of the movie, I was devastated. The lingering final image and text -- and the song sung over it -- left me trembling and weeping. The whole thing haunted me for days, then weeks, afterward.

I intend to watch it again from the beginning, now that I know what it's about. But I am waiting a bit, since I still haven't recovered from that first experience.

This is a very different kind of movie. It's NOT a straight story/narrative, and expecting such will just leave you frustrated. Mikhalkov is a sort of poet, who has used seemingly unconnected images to evoke feelings and impressions. He uses visual/emotional images to conceal deep realities of history. And, for this viewer at least, realities of humanity in general. For though the movie is concerned with 20th-century Russia/USSR, it speaks to me, as an American in 2022, of a more general truth, one we should all take to heart as our own glittering Western consumer culture heads for collapse: Concealed beneath superficially beautiful things (and hoo-boy, are the "in-color" parts of this movie a sensual feast for the eyes!) can lie the ugliest horrors of which humans are capable.

While the movie was indeed visually beautiful, almost stunning even, I was left disappointed and annoyed, feeling like I watched 2 movies squeezed into one. I won't give away any plot points: Through the movie we watch the main character's past and present events unfold. However, the past could've been a standalone film, the present as well. The two segments weren't connected by a single detail almost to the very end of the movie, and even then that detail is so minuscule and irrelevant we could've easily gone without it.

When it comes out on DVD, I'd watch it again, selectively watching just scenes from the past, then just scenes from the future, treating myself to 2 movies, instead of a forced ONE movie.

Drags on and on and onnnnn. No reason for this to have been a three hour movie. The storyline of the tragic fate of Menshevik/White Army prisoners during the 1920 Red Terror is diminished by the lead character's recurring, saccharine reminiscences of a one night stand in 1907. That plot line could have been reduced to three short memory flashbacks and been just as effective. The war plot line suffered, as it was not given enough depth; unless you really know your Russian history, the nuances of who the prisoners are, what this mixed group of officers, soldiers and Cossacks represents is otherwise lost on the viewer. A single poignant gesture by one of the Bolshevik characters has no meaning, based on how this story has been told, alone. Three hours. Three hours of predictability. And Sunstroke? Yes, we get it - you did Burnt by the Sun. Bravo. Too bad about this latest effort, Nikita.

This movie is actually two different stories. One is Bunin's short story Sunstroke which is shown in a beautiful and poetic way in the movie. It represents the past, old Russia, the time Bunin never dropped in his mind. The other is taken from his famous anti Bolshevism book Cursed Days. This part is shown in the movie, in a wet and muddy way, about a group of old officers waiting for their destiny after signed their declarations of surrender.

It is understandable that the director tried to divide these two stories. Old is good, elegant, beautiful, lovely, honestly. New is chaotic, dirty, brutal, empty. Although one may not fully agree with it, but this is what Ivan Bunin's understanding of Bolshevism Revolution and the opinion is widely accepted after the collapse of Soviet Russia. Nikita Mikhalkov's most famous movies are almost about the same attitude.

But the director also used his movie to pay tribute to old Soviet movie traditions. There's an astonishing shot of a baby carriage rolling downsteps, which is obviously something reminding Eisenstein. There's also certain images reminding Bondalchuk.

So far there's no problem with the two stories go in parallel. But at the very end the stories tried to reach a point of combination. This became so hard to believe that the climax felt a little bit strange.

Still it's a great movie. Despite its length, the storytelling speed is extremely well that one hardly felt the time's gone. It might also be one element the director had in mind. Time went without raising attention, old time went like river never comes back.

Sublime fusion of two of Bunin's works, with beautifully achieved juxtaposed cinematography. The viewer is put in the shoes of the protagonist's plight while bitterly recollecting the most hopeful moment in his past.