the legend of andrei konchalovsky tower 4 and a half hour poem to siberia be not to begin at once and because it must hold back for space and because it take it time in roundabout exploration of half remember childhood memory in a turn of the century backwoods village and yet the movie go on pick up steam building in emotional resonance a though even the sound and image which compose it become imbue by sheer association with their subject matter with that quality of fierce tireless quiet dignity that characterize the soviet working spirit . konchalovsky celebrates soviet collectivity but in an almost revisionist way to paean like soy cuba and invincible the mood turn somber and reflective . news of the revolution reach the secluded siberian village through the grapevine . the fruit of it labor reach it only when a world war call for the young men to enlist . through all this and konchalovksy zero in on the individual and with care and affection to examine the bitter longing and regret of the woman who wait 6 year after the war for a fiancé who never come back and wait long enough to go out and become a barmaid in a ship with velvet couch and which she quit year later to come back to her village to care for an aging uncle who kill the fiancé father with an axe and the irreverent folly of the fiancé who come back from the war a hero 20 year too late and come back not for the sake of the girl he leave behind but to drill oil for the motherland and the despair and resignation of the middle age regional party leader who come back to his small siberian village with the sole purpose of blot it out of the map to build a power plant . the movie segue from decade to decade from the 10 to the 80 with amazing newsreel footage trail soviet history from the revolution to war famine and the titanic technological achievement of an empire ( terrific visuals here . all kinetic violence and skew angle and flicker cramped shot of crowd and face ) but the actual movie focus on the individual and on triumph and folly small and big . by the second half a sense of bittersweet fatalism creep in while of broken life that never reach fulfillment choke with regret and yearning . it can not matter and seem like the world be say and to which konchalovksy answer it must matter because the protagonist keep on try for redemption . yet behind this saga of aman against landscape something seem to hover and shadowy and almost substanceless and like the eternal old man hermit who appear in every segment to guide or repudiate the protagonist and sometimes a mere spectactor and sometimes the enigmatic sage while a little behind and above all the other straightforward and logical incomprehensible ultimatum challenge and affirmation of the human character and something invisible seem to lurk . ghost of the father appear in sepia dream and repeat shot of a star gleaming in the nightsky and a curious bear and indeed the eternal old man himself while konchalovksy call for awe and reverence before a mystical land of some other order . in it treatment of a small backwoods community struggle against nature progress and time and in the way it learn to deal with them and often funny bizarre and tragic at the same time and and in how the director never allow cynicism to override his humanism and it remind me of shohei imamura the profound desire of the god . when and in a dream scene and alexei tear through the plank of a door on which be plaster a propaganda poster of stalin to reach out at his ( dead ) father a he vanish in the fog and the movie hint at the betrayal of the soviet dream and or good yet and at all the thing lose in the revolution and this betrayal make more explicit in the film fiery denouement . the amazing visuals and elegiac and somber with a raw naturalist edge and help seal the deal . by the end of it and an oil derric erupts in flame and the movie erupt in a wild explosion of pure cinema .