Burnt By The Sun on DVD (1994)

Tough! Beautiful! Horrendous!

A customer from Cambridge , 13/08/2005

This is a truly excellent film! But really quite tough to take. I saw it on a Friday night before I was supposed to go out. I went home instead, feeling like I had been turned inside out emotionally.

Set in the beautiful countryside it sets out the idyllic picture of a happy family. The father is retired from a long and faithful career in the military. Their happiness is disturbed by Stalin's crazy persecutions and family betrayal. In this Kafka'esk world everything will be used against you and guilt has no relevance.

It was the mixture of such joy/happiness/colours and the very grim 'reality' that got to me. One of the strongest films I have ever seen, I would strongly recommend it. Just don't plan for festivities straight afterwards.

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Beautiful, subtle, Damning

IrinaLale from London , 20/12/2005

Watch this movie and realise what we were missing all those decades when Russian movies were not available in the west. Nikita Mikhalkov dominates this movie. He writes, directs and acts superbly. The other characters, even the minor ones, are full, breathing people. The evocation of the time is genuine, with the tragi-comic military manouvres, the totally over-the-top Stalin worship and the holiday camp civil defence exercises and the dull psychopaths of the NKVD. The scenery is gorgeous and entrancing. But its the family dynamics and the interplay between Mitya (Oleg Menshikov) and Kotov (Mikhalkov) that draws you along to the climactic denouement. Marusia, Kotovs wife and Nadya, Kotovs daughter are also winningly played.

This is a shocking, unnerving and absolutely effective film that deserves viewing by a wide audience. I will be buying the DVD.

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Much Chekhovian intensity

A customer from London , 08/08/2007

Maybe I should have given this longer than half an hour but by that time I was bewildered by the lack of plot development, excess of Eisensteinian choreography with excitable Russians running all over the place for no obvious reason, Bolshy (with a capital B) squaddies bawling each other out and general warmongering. They're never a barrel of laughs these Russkies are they? (Maybe too much desperation to laugh)

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Very slow to watch

McClennan from St Helens , 29/03/2006

Horrendously slow developing Russian film set in 1936, under Stalin, about a Russian Colonel of the revolution and his family who are visited by a friend of his wife from about ten years previously. Playing out like a European bourgeoisie film mixed with a touch of Funny Games it does take a long time to get going and for the first hour and a half I wasn't sure whether I liked the film. The performances are good with the drama building patiently, as the film slowly moves itself towards a climax that you can sense but never quite visualise and it isn't until the final half hour that you get the full tilt of the film. If you have the patience and/or an interest in Stalin's Russia this is definitely worth a look at, particularly as it's based on true events.

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Very slow to watch

McClennan from St Helens , 29/03/2006

Horrendously slow developing Russian film set in 1936, under Stalin, about a Russian Colonel of the revolution and his family who are visited by a friend of his wife from about ten years previously. Playing out like a European bourgeoisie film mixed with a touch of Funny Games it does take a long time to get going and for the first hour and a half I wasn't sure whether I liked the film. The performances are good with the drama building patiently, as the film slowly moves itself towards a climax that you can sense but never quite visualise and it isn't until the final half hour that you get the full tilt of the film. If you have the patience and/or an interest in Stalin's Russia this is definitely worth a look at, particularly as it's based on true events.

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Beautifully made menacing film

A customer from Marlow uk , 16/11/2006

I really enjoyed this, joy and despair brilliantly revealed, and fascinating to be taken there not through Hollywood.

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