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“Dovlatov was a sex symbol, an Elvis Presley, a legend (in Russia)” – director Aleksei German, Jr., on the writer Dovlatov,   in an interview published in Sight and Sound “I saw Brezhnev in my dream. We drank pina coladas and discussed socialism. He promised to help (me get published).” Dovlatov to his mother, waking up in the morning on the first of the “6 days of 1971” shown in the film D ovlatov is an exceptional film and one of the most mature cinematic works made in 2018. Why is it exceptional?   It encapsulates the world and travails of Russian writer Sergei   Dovlatov (1941-90), friend and contemporary of eventual Nobel Prize winner Joseph Brodsky   and their interactions in Leningrad (now St Petersberg) preceding the decision of Brodsky to emigrate to the United States within a part-realistic, part-fictional representative 6 days of 1971. The year 1971 is typical of a particular Soviet mindset within former USSR (now primarily Russia, having subsequently div...

Frozen lake T he ten-part Dekalog is definitely one of the 10 best works of cinema ever made for this critic. Each segment of the ten-part film Dekalog is linked to the 10 Commandments given by God to Moses as believed by Christians, Jews and Muslims. Now many who are not familiar with subtle changes introduced into various versions of the Bible over time would assume the Ten Commandments are written in stone and will have to be the same in all published versions. This, unfortunately, is not the case. One reason for the differences pertains to sources of the Commandments ( The Septuagint , Philo’s Septuagint , The Samaritan Pentateuch , the Jewish Talmud , and The Holy Koran’s sura Al An’am and al Isra ) and the second, the various interpreters (St Augustine, Martin Luther and John Calvin). (Ref: Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Commandments ) When Krzysztof Kieślowski made Dekalog in collaboration with co-scriptwriter Krzysztof Piesiewicz one can guess each of the Te...

Rams is an unusual tale, remarkably told. Rams are male sheep and the entire film is appropriately about two dour male, hairy, unshaven Icelandic brothers. The two male characters, Gummi and Kiddi, are quite old and not married. They are not gay; they are not womanizers either. They are both passionate sheep farmers, who live on different homesteads, separated by a road and fences. It is indeed a strange tale to surface from a matriarchal country, one of the only two such countries in Europe, the other being Albania. The tale, created by director Grímur Hákonarson, is centred on the two brothers who have not talked to each other for 40 years but communicate with each other by sending written messages carried by a dutiful sheep dog. As you watch the film unspool, you wonder about what could have led to the grim, silent antipathy of one brother towards another. When the movie ends, you are never the wiser. But what one realizes at that point is that this information really does not matt...

T here are very few examples of movies that make you scurry to the libraries to figure out the full implications of the source material after a screening, with the implicit understanding that one needed to know more. That is the power of great cinema. Kieslowski’s ten part movie  Dekalog  is one of them. The late film director Stanley Kubrick had described  Dekalog  as the only masterpiece he could name in his lifetime. And, interestingly, Kubrick is often considered an atheist! And the added attraction for most viewers is that, unless one is a die-hard film enthusiast, each of the ten parts can be seen and appreciated in isolation. Each of the ten parts has different characters, all living in the same condominium in Poland. Each tale is set in the late Eighties. What is common to all the ten parts is that they all have the three common creators: the director Krzysztof Kieslowski, the co-scriptwriters Krzysztof Kieslowski and Krzysztof Piesiewicz, and ...