Berlinale 2009, Day 4 (Powest plamennych let)

The „International“ is a delightfully soviet-communist cinema from the 1960s. With its typical architecture and being one of only two cinemas (the other one is the IMAX) in Berlin with the equipment to show 70mm movies and coming from the same period as the movie it was the destined venue for today’s „epic“.

Powest plamennych let (Story of the flaming years)
USSR 1960/61, Julia Solnzewa, 91′

The only reason we watched this one, was because of it being part of this year’s retrospective which shows old 70mm movies, a film format for which the film roll is twice as wide, which gives you basically three times the space for the same picture. The result is/was a really crisp, stunning picture. As a byproduct the sound was, at least in the period they came up, extraordinarily good.

We were slightly hesitant, as this was a Soviet movie on World War II and this could only mean one thing: loads of propaganda! Most of the time it was bearable, as the director (The scriptwriter’s widow. He was supposed to be the director too but then died.) switched between showing the immensely beautiful Ukrainian countryside (the documentary), depicting war on a really grand scale (the war movie), then again criticizing it (the anti-war movie) and lastly throwing in ridiculous propaganda scenes (the… uhm…) to make the (really big-budget) rest of the movie even possible.

Everything about it was grand: The war scenes used incredible amounts of men, tanks and everything else. There were many shots showing the scenery filled with war, with incredible amounts of extras and stuff moving about. The scenery shots showed the beautiful countryside with endless rolling hills, wide rivers, vast fields… It was just beautiful.

But perhaps the most monumental of it all was our dear soldier Ivan Orlyuk. I think they poured all of the enthusiasm left in the USSR into this one man. We never want to see his smiling, patriotic face again! Main girl wasn’t nearly half as bad although she, too was larger than life being a spirited country school teacher with unshakable belief in the USSR and panties of steel! *hrrr*

As Soviet propaganda is not as bad as Chinese propaganda and because the director tried to minimise the propaganda scenes, the movie was bearable enough to savour the awesome picture quality and the beautful shots, but if you have an aversion towards propaganda you will run out of the theatre. Also, this movie is kind of pointless to watch an a TV, no matter how big. You need a really big screen and 70mm equipment.

PS: To understand the first comments, here’s the original post written by the Choco Parfait:

It’s too difficult to write a posting, and so I will proceed with the further films. Also, I was utterly depressed that we did not get into “Playtime” that day, and so please come back when I’m able to write about the most horrid movie of my life.