sophia7

First, I saw this without subtitles in my native language, so I may have missed a bit, but the poignant story came through anyway. It's time-tested: family dealing with pending death, but much more slips in: love, politics, real estate exploitation, to name just a few. The sites of the Mediterranean are delightful, as are visions of a life that is disappearing there. At the end, I thought, unlike another reviewer here, that these actors truly inhabited their characters; they caught me up. I did find the smoking disturbing, but that people resort to smoking again in a time of crisis is not unusual. The only consistent smoker was a young person, so go figure. Enjoy this film, if you can. It does not disappoint.

I watched this film because of Jeremy Renner, but it was good all around. Very puzzling plot at first, but then you realize that it is unconventional and let yourself be surprised by the turn of events. Very gritty visuals and iconic landscapes of the west with Nevada-style diners in the middle of nowhere. This could be a cult film. If you see this on DVD you may have to squint to see the fine print and realize that this really is a film with a message--see Restorative Justice websites--a community approach to healing criminal injustice. Something new to me, but maybe worth looking into if you know any crime victims--or, I suppose, criminals. I agree, what is in Ana's trailer, and what happened to her husband, and why the title?

Loved the film, romantic, idealistic--presents something of Russian life in a way outsiders can understand it. Nice that the Countess reads newspapers and Lev's diaries in Russian in some scenes. My question is, why is Anthony Quinn mentioned in the credits--it says In Memory of Anthony Quinn. Anyone else watch all the credits and see that? Hard to say if this film outdoes Doctor Zhivago, it is more introspective than that perhaps. At times I thought the film was really about the Countess than the writer-hero, but maybe that was the intent, to show that she was part of his fame and success--as was the case with so many male writers in the past--the woman toiled silently to keep house and home together and the man wrote and lived in the world of the mind. In the case of the Tolstoys they also became rich, but then Lev wanted to discard all that, while she thought they were entitled to the fruits of their labors for themselves and their children. The roots of the tsarist system are revealed in this film too, and some explanation perhaps of why the aristocracy was overthrown.