I have seen the film a few days back on a video tape and even though it was hard to swallow it at one take (because of its length and story), I liked it very much. I was impressed first, by the script and then, by the realization of this script. The film takes you on a ride, but that is not an easy, joyful ride; it goes through time and different political regimes and shows the influence of them to ordinary people's lives. What I loved was the inner logic the film followed; logic, which just like logic in life, was rather illogical and confusing at times but in the end, when I thought about it, all the events and twists made sense. It makes no sense though to try to re-tell the story as it spreads in more than 50 years of time. I also liked very much Nikita Mikhalkov's character Aleksei and the way he played it, as some critics would saw, with restless abandon. What I didn't like about it, was that I think he later played characters that remind me of Aleksei in films like "Cruel Romance" (Zhestokij romans, which I actually love) and to some extent in "The Insulted and the Injured" ("Unizhennye i oskorblyonnye"). "Sibiriada" shows, I think, what a great film-maker Andrei Konchalovski was before he went to Hollywood and made forgettable films like "Tango and Cash" and less forgettable like "Runaway train". I would prefer "Kurochka Ryaba" to them...
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Siberiade is a magnificent epic. The story takes place mostly in the Siberian village Yelan, near which large deposits of oil lie. Two generations of villagers get caught up in turbulent times, when there was expansion in the Orthodox Civilization. The 1979 film is all about the characters. Well-known Soviet actors were cast in the leading roles, including Oscar winner Nikita Mikhalkov, Natalya Andrejchenko and Vitaly Solomin. Their losses are truly emotional yet they also go through periods of exaltation. The revolution brought hope but difficult struggles followed too. The cinematography by Levan Paatashvili captures the beauty of Siberia's wilderness in a simple but well done manner. Black & white footage of heroic periods in Russia's 20th century history bridge the eras in the characters' lives. Director Andrei Konchalovsky wasn't afraid to show a few uneasy scenes, and there's even a bit of female nudity. Yet his direction is effective and he succeeded in telling an absorbing epic of an interesting time in Russia's history. The film is known for Eduard Artemyev's memorable electronic score. The score was even released internationally, and I heard a piece of it in CNN's Cold War (1998) documentary. Siberiade won the Special Grand Jury Prize at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival, and I highly recommend seeing it.
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The story about a very small god-forgotten village in Siberia reflects the history of Russia from the beginning of the century till early 80s. Three generations try to find the land of happiness and to give it to the people. One builds the road through taiga to the star over horizon, the second 'build communism' and the third searches for oil.
There are many great epics out there. For Americans, many might say "Gone With the Wind" is the definitive epic. I have never cared for it personally, but I understand the appeal. This film may be the best epic to come out of Russia, as it covers so much time and really gets to the heart of humanity.
The film is not only strong as a whole, but in its sections. Even if it were treated as vignettes or short films, there are plenty of powerful images. Early on, viewers will be struck by the boy fighting with a dog for his pants. We might be horrified by this, but what is it saying? -
I was young film student in 1979 when the Union of the Soviet Filmmakers came to Sofia Bulgaria and premiered Konchalovsky's "Siberiade"; Tarkosvky's "Stalker" and Danelia'a "Autumn marathon". I was stunned by the cosmopolitan dimension of the art form. Then and only then, I saw "Siberiade" 4 and 1/2 hours epic and was speechless. Way better then Bertolucci's "1900". By far!
Hope Andron will somehow get to the negative and make "director's restored version full lenght " someday! On DVD of course! Also I fiercely fought in defense of this Cinema against most of my colleagues who were equating Soviet film with bad taste! Time is on my side. -
chaos-rampant10 March 2010Konchalovsky's towering poem to Siberia doesn't steamroll ahead, though it's 4,5 hours long. It holds back for space, takes time in roundabout exploration of childhood memories in a turn-of-the-century backwoods village, yet it picks up steam doing this, builds in emotional resonance as though even the sounds and images which compose it become imbued by sheer association with their subject matter with that quality of fierce tireless quiet dignity that characterizes the Soviet working spirit. Konchalovsky celebrates Soviet collectivity but in an almost revisionist way to paeans like Soy Cuba and Invincible the mood turns somber and reflective.
So eventually the Revolution, the one thought to matter. News of it reach the secluded Siberian village only through the grapevine. Worse with the fruits of its labor, these reach the village only when a world war calls for the young men to enlist.
But although the scope appears huge and daunting, Konchalovksy zeroes in on the individual, the face behind the history; with care and affection to examine the bitter longing and regret of the woman who waited 6 years after the war for a fiancé who never came back, waited long enough to go out and become a barmaid in a ship with velvet couches and which she quit years later to come back to her village to care for an aging uncle who killed the fiancé's father with an axe, the irreverent folly of the fiancé who came back from the war a hero 20 years too late, came back not for the sake of the girl he left behind but to drill oil for the motherland, the despair and resignation of the middle-aged Regional Party Leader who comes back to his small Siberian village with the sole purpose of blotting it out of the map to build a power plant.
The movie segues from decade to decade from the 10's to the 80's with amazing newsreel footage trailing Soviet history from the revolution to war famine and the titanic technological achievements of an empire (terrific visuals here! pure futurism of kinetic violence and skewed angles and flickering cramped shots of crowds and faces) but the actual movie focuses on the individual, on triumphs and follies small and big. By the second half a sense of bittersweet fatalism creeps in; of broken lives that never reached fulfillment choking with regret and yearning. "It can't matter", seems like the world is saying, to which Konchalovksy answers "it must matter" because the protagonists keep on trying for redemption.
Yet behind this saga of 'man against landscape' something seems to hover, shadowy, almost substanceless, like the Eternal Old Man hermit who appears in every segment to guide or repudiate the protagonists, sometimes a mere spectactor, sometimes the enigmatic sage; a little behind and above all the other straightforward and logical incomprehensible ultimatums challenges and affirmations of the human characters, something invisible seems to lurk. Ghosts of the fathers appearing in sepia dreams, repeated shots of a star gleaming in the nightsky, a curious bear, indeed the Eternal Old Man himself; Konchalovksy calls for awe and reverence before a mystical land of some other order.
In its treatment of a small backwoods community struggling against nature progress and time and in the ways it learns to deal with them, often funny bizarre and tragic at the same time, and in how the director never allows cynicism to override his humanism, it reminds me of Shohei Imamura's The Profound Desires of the Gods. When, in a dream scene, Alexei tears through the planks of a door on which is plastered a propaganda poster of Stalin to reach out at his (dead) father as he vanishes in the fog, the movie hints at the betrayal of the Soviet Dream, or better yet, at all the things lost in the revolution, this betrayal made more explicit in the film's fiery denouement.
The amazing visuals, elegiac and somber with a raw naturalist edge, help seal the deal. By the end of it, an oil derric erupts in flames and the movie erupts in a wild explosion of pure cinema. -
jessicacoco200520 July 2013Siberiade, is considered by many to be Konchalovsky's masterpiece. A truly epic, grandiose, and colorful film, which follows 3 generations of two rival families in the remote Siberian logging village of Elan. The Solomins are the wealthy masters of this place, while the Ustyuzhanins are the poor unappreciated workers with no future, nothing to look forward to except hard work and an early death...That is, until the Bolshevik revolution comes and alters the power structure. While the young Nikolai Ustyuzhanin looks towards the future with dreams of a socialist paradise brought about by the glorious revolution going underway, the Solomins feel their own world dying and look towards the past, trying to hold on to what they have. Oil-rich Siberia will take on a new importance for the fledgling Soviet Union. Unchecked hope and progress collides with despair and reactive conservatism. In life, what we hope for is not what we get. Life comes with compromise. Trees fall to the ground stirring sadness in the soul for the woods that will be sacrificed for progress. Bombs explode and kill people stirring despair for we know the West will not allow a workers' socialist paradise to be created, because profits are what's important in a capitalist system. Revolution, war, famine, love and romance all combine here and are interwoven like the fibers of a fine tapestry. It's a spectacular, sweeping epic film not to be missed.
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krz_bak19 August 2001It is a story of Siberian village people from the beginning of 20th century till the 60ties. It is about passion and feelings, about Russian soul, and very romantic. This movie IS NOT action packed, it flowes slowely. In second part one can find great songs - Russian romances. It is much more better than Doctor Zhivago. The director of this movie moved to America and made Runaway Train for example.
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paaskynen13 June 2006For anyone who wishes to get an impression of the Soviet view of modern Russian history this monumental film is a treasure. The story starts at the turn of the century (1900) in the yellowish sepia colours of old photographs which improves to black and white during the middle of the century and to full colour when the story approaches modern times (i.e. the 1960s).
The story focuses on a boy in a remote Siberian village, who is marked by the arrival and arrest of an anarchist during the czarist era. He later joins the Bolsheviks after the revolution and brings soviet communism to his village. His son, by the local beauty, fights the Germans during the Second World War. When he returns to the village, the oil industry takes off and we are treated to some Soviet economic idealism.
This film is long and slow, but utterly logic and very well made. It can be seen in three parts. -
eabakkum7 November 2012The Russian films from the Soviet era do not really fit in with the European tradition. The tragic history of Russia has left an indelible imprint on the cultural and artistic expressions. For centuries the society was based on an agricultural feudalism. At the start of the twentieth century, the Tsarist regime made an effort to transform into an industrial state. However the arrears was already insurmountable. The country lost several national wars, and already in 1905 a truly revolutionary spirit had seized the leading parts of the Russian people. When the regime was dragged into the first world war, it lost all credibility. When finally the Tsar left, only misery was left. Am I right? The war was followed by the Bolshewist revolution and by a cruel civil war. But worse was to come during the second world war, that was to a large extent fought on the Russian territory, with incredible cruelty from the Nazis. Clearly the early Bolshewist promise of a happy and united future had failed. After WW2 something of an economic miracle developed, including cosmonautics, but it was too little too late. The film follows the lifes of three generations of a Siberian family during those uproarious years. The plot is what is called in German an Aufbau (build up) story. We see how a hamlet of very primitive peasants transforms into an industrial oil district. Indeed one of the main characters has vague dreams about the founding of a "sun city" (which he probably read in a propaganda leaflet). But unlike the upbeat German Aufbau the atmosphere remains depressing. In fact there is not a single scene, that elicits a smile. Amazing, isn't it? In many aspects the characters are trapped by the traditional mysticism and ties with the harsh natural conditions. Life is slow, and so is the film. The plot consists of two parts. In the first part we witness the decay of the agricultural society. The second part describes the settlement of the oil industry. In both cases I find it hard to relate and empathize with the events, even though I had previously seen many an American "Go West" western movie. Probably the story contains lots of interwoven symbolism. For there are obvious hints in a scene of the late fifties, when the main character enters a deserted shack, with Stalin pictures on the wall. However, being a Dutchman I am not sufficiently accessible to possible other signals. What remains is a display of folk customs, which is perhaps amazing, but not really appealing. I can understand that it never became an international block buster.
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Huge swaths of Russian history represented as a sprawling, moving canvas. The scale of which can't be properly appreciated until you've stepped back to observe the full picture on display. A history of revolution, disillusionment, national pride, and hardship. Men cutting through a dense Siberian forest to build a road with no discernable end in sight. Holding out hope for the unforeseen future of their homeland. With each decade chronicled, a rebellious spirit is continuously fostered, inherited from one generation to the next. Whether it's on the battlefield, in the workforce, or on the political stage, this is no place for the weak-willed.
And as the past dies to allow the future a chance to live, so too does this multi-generational tale continues to evolve itself. We see the idealogical rift that slowly separates fathers from their sons; coexistence made tentative at best. Each must forge their own way forward. And yet the ghosts of their forefathers lingers, a fog hovering over the fields, engulfing the personalities of those that carry the bloodline. All of it is witnessed through the eyes of remote villagers. Individuals with their interconnected relationships simultaneously serving as a microcosm for the Soviet Union's state of being, reflecting the turmoil it takes to build a nation. Changes occurring in the outside world that seeps in, altering the course of all those involved. From small-village superstition to post-war industrialization; it's all here on display.
Siberiade is a moving, monumental piece of work. From minute one to its credit role, it never lets up. A crowning achievement in a year that birthed several classics and a must-watch for fans of Soviet cinema. Don't let this one pass you by. -
ofumalow6 July 2021Konchalovsky made tremendous films at the beginning of his career (Ivan's Childhood, Andrei Rublev etc.), then again very recently (Paradise, Sin, Dear Comrades). Both his Russian and Holllywood/international projects in between those poles were very uneven, and even at their best seemed less personal. Having caught up with some of his earliest and latest work recently, I was eager to finally see this very long (4 1/2 hours) film from the end of his original Soviet period.
But "Siberiade's" episodic tapestry of successive generations over the course of the 20th century is sort of like a very Russian version of those three-hour Claude Lelouch extravaganzas--you know, the ones where he just throws together a bunch of archetypal characters and historical incidents sprawling over decades, hoping the "sweep" of it all will carry you along. This, too, is the kind of epic that's all width and not much depth. In fact it feels more like one of the robust, broad, somewhat pandering directorial movies of his brother Nikita Mikhalkov, who plays a leading character in this movie's 2nd half.
Similarly to his sibling's films, the female characters are all sexpots, there's a lot of broad comedy, and the visuals are often pretty without any true lyricism, just as there's sentimentality but no spirituality. It feels like a movie that well-connected Muscovites would make about Siberia, rather than Siberians themselves, as if we're in a 20th-century version of Chekhov's seriocomic provincial Russian life--particularly since after the beginning, almost nothing takes place in snowy weather. (But then, maybe that outsider perspective IS the point, that a far-flung region with its own distinct character became simply a source of natural-resources extraction wealth for a distant central government.)
The characters behave colorfully yet all sort of blur together, drifting in and out of the anecdotal storytelling, played at different ages by different actors. There's no sense of a grand narrative arc, or overarching themes that are treated with any real seriousness--at least not until the second half, when despoiling of the land becomes the major thesis. (But it's not really established in the first half that the characters feel terribly connected to the land--indeed, it seems more of an adversary to them.)
Which is not to say that "Siberiade" isn't entertaining and flavorful, with some memorable passages. (Though the rather arbitrary shifts to tinted B&W don't particularly help.) It's just that I want something more for my 4.5 hours' time, particularly from a director who's made considerably shorter films that nonetheless seemed far more substantial, even more ambitious. -
Dr_Coulardeau24 April 2014This film is probably a master piece. To summarize the history of Russia and the Soviet Union in some four odd hours is in itself a miracle. But what's more it concentrates on Siberia and it follows one little village, Elan, in this region, and in this village essentially three generations of the Ustyuzhanin family, in fact Afanasi, the grand father, then Nikolai the father and Aleksei the son, as opposed to the other family in the village, the Solomins. The first family are the poor ones, the underlings before the revolution, the others are the top family. The revolution of course transforms these relations and we follow the lives of these three men essentially in their village, when they are there since they are often rejected, or they just go away, and then they come back. Dramatically.
Afanasi is the only one who does not come back. He is always there and lives alone with his son and no wife.
Nikolai comes back as a Soviet officer, a Communist cadre and it is dramatic because he had been thrown away at the beginning of the revolution and his paramour, from the other family, had escaped from the village to find him and follow him. It will be a difficult situation since she will be burned to death by the white Cossacks during the civil war after the revolution. He comes back with his young son in the 1930s and is killed by the other paramour of his wife, the one she left behind.
Aleksei is sent to an orphanage, then on one visit to the village and his relatives a recruiting unit at the very beginning of the war against Nazi Germany accepts his enlisting, though he is slightly too young, and he will be a hero in the war, saving his captain all by himself. But in the 1960s he comes back as a master driller to drill for oil in his village because he knows there is some: he discovered it with his father when he was a kid when they marched into the marsh known as the Devil's Mane and there oil was oozing out all over the place and they managed to set it on fire, accidentally. Aleksei though wants to leave after a while, with the woman he had taught how to dance when just under 18 before he enlisted, and it is when he finally can go and is going to go, alone because the woman refuses to follow him, he goes say goodbye to his drilling mates and it is then oil is struck and starts bursting out. But it gets on fire for some unimportant reason and the derrick falls and traps one man. All the others go and Nikolai manages the situation to save that man, but Nikolai is caught by the fire and dies.
But the film is a lot more important than that. It is a real film about history. You cannot force history to do something it does not want to do because you have to work with people and people do not necessarily want to change and you have to convince them. It may take three generations to move from the superstition about the Devil's Mane to the acceptance that the village is going to be completely transformed by that oil, and the most dramatic war possible in the meantime after a very dramatic and heroic revolution.
The film then shows how at the beginning of this political revolution Nikolai was naïve and thought it was easy to make people do what they did not want to do, and he is killed just because his rival in love refuses to follow him and kills him. It fails because of some private business and affair, a love story that had not gone the way one of the lovers wanted. Trite, and yet history is also the result of such capricious and unpredictable elements. It will take thirty years and one generation for what was then possible in the 1930s to become a reality in the 1960s.
And in the 1960s we are no longer speaking of that kind of romantic revolution Nikolai had in mind. Aleksei and the other oil drillers around him are confronted to the stubborn desire of the central authorities in Moscow to develop the country and to decide in Moscow what is best for everyone and the small village and the country around is going to become the largest man-made sea with the largest hydroelectric dam and factory on the Volga. It is a pure miracle that makes oil burst out of its underground lair on the very same day, killing Aleksei, as the central committee of the Communist Party or some other bureaucratic authority like this one is meeting to take a decision in favor of the dam. The events stop the dam project in its shoes and in its trail. Unluckily, and Konchalovsky knew all about it in 1979, that was the last moment when history was right against the bureaucrats. After that the USSR entered a very dark time when bureaucracy was the only possible authority and initiative from people was discouraged and even choked, and stagnation started, leading finally to regression and the fall of the USSR. We feel that end the director could not know under the open discourse about the heroism of this Aleksei. [. . .] I must reckon it is not easy to find that film in DVD. I got the US edition in NTSC in Russian with English subtitles. But it was worth it.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU -
Turin_Horse7 September 2013This is one of the films I most regret having set my interest on to decide to watch it. Four and a half hours of a story running through several generations of a small Siberian village, which just can't be less interesting, moving and appealing no matter the point of view you want to look at it: epic, sentimental, historical, or all at once, which seems to have been the pretension of the director, failing completely and pitifully in his vain attempt. A loose thread of familiar and personal stories intermingled with historical events which are unable during more than four painful hours to drag your attention into them just for five minutes. Not a single character is developed in a way that you can feel any emotion or at least some interest in his/her whereabouts. But there is some epic in the film: the number of senseless, histrionic scenes which make you plead "please stop this once and for all!!!".
The reason why I watched this film was that other film by director Konchalovsky is actually among my all time favorites: Runaway Train. After having watched Sibiriada now I wonder if they are the same person or I mixed up names or something. -
gerdak17 December 2002This is just one of these rare cinema experiences. I've seen this film twice in cinema about 15 years ago. The first time in a stonecold auditorium (they ran out of heating oil) we all just sat there with gloves, jackets and other stuff to keep you warm. The film made such an impact with its beautifull images and its rare story. Russian cinema has a couple of these slow and long movies. Siberiade is a long (over 4 and a half hour) and slow movie. Long shots of man wading through cold swamps in search of oil. I like it!!!! It is a shame there was no videorelease in Europe, and now lets wait for the DVD!! Martin
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Morten_515 April 2019With this mesmerizing, beautiful Soviet epic from 1979, writer-director Andrey Konchalovskiy shows proof of his brilliance as a filmmaker. Despite its immense running time, it's truly captivating, thanks in part to Levan Paatashvili's photo.
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tedg16 January 2008Inexplicably this is compared to "Doctor Zhivago," I suppose because there are Russian revolutionaries. Egad. The films couldn't be more different.
This is inspired by "2001." Equally inexplicably, "Solaris" is called the Russian 2001 because. Heck, because it has space hardware. Jees.
The structure of "2001" is its reason to be, a fight among three narrative perspectives. We never know who wins: the human, machine or divine. Each is presented in a way that could be interpreted to subsume the others, and we are never grounded. Its sublime, each level above the other in a sort of Escher narrative.
This is the same, very deliberately so. We have the same three: we have the human story of sex, love community and how that embraces everything, Miss Marplewise. We have the "machine" or the revolution and its apparatus, some figurative and some literal. And we have the mystical energy and laws of nature, which are deliberate, clear, pervasive here.
(If there is something particularly skillful in this project cinematically, it is how this mystical mist pervades.)
Its not at all as deft in the balance as Kubric's masterpiece. But you can see the three climbing over each other, and the standoff presented at the end.
Its a long slog, and you'll have to wade through overly optimistic celebrations of revolutionary purpose. But its rewarding in a sort of Polish (meaning dreamy) way.
On a second viewing, I have to remark on how the fundamental nature of this is different from most else that I watch.
I'm particularly sensitive to the fact that most every element that I see in every film project is a matter of market forces. An artist can modulate within that pull, but never really escape the sender-receiver dynamic. This film differs in the way that some monumental architecture does from what surrounds it.
In the soviet system, you pay your dues and prove that you are a worthy artist. That means of course that you have to satisfy the artistic bureaucracy, the nature of which one can only imagine. But once you achieve some level of power, you become a dilettante, with amazing reach. Everything we see here is because it was envisioned to be so, quite apart from what we normally have to deal with in the "free" world.
Its the inversion that is striking. This film really is perfect in many ways. You can see that every frame and nuance is the way the filmmaker wants it regardless of whether he thinks people care. I didn't care much, because the thing is as soulless as most other Soviet art. But its very clean, and big and sentimental.
And its different, and that's a welcome shower.
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.