Burnt by the Sun
Directed by Nikita Mikhalkov
Screening at the 42nd Sydney Film Festival
State Theatre, June 9-24
Reviewed by Peter Boyle
As a hero of the Red Army in the civil war, Colonel Sergue‹ Petrovitch Kotov lived comfortably and happily in Russia in the 1930s — until he too fell victim to Stalin's bloody purges.
His last hours of freedom were enjoyed one summer, in his dacha with his young wife, adoring daughter, friends and family. Accounts of amazing confessions, show trials and executions of other leading Communists didn't perturb him. He was a darling of the Revolution, and loved and admired — along with Stalin — by millions. Surely he was safe. He should have known better.
Burnt by the Sun covers Colonel Kotov's last day of freedom. It is an emotional day for him, but for the most part this has nothing to do with his eventual arrest and execution.
Initially, the day is emotional because he realises how much he loves his wife, Maroussia (Ingeborga Dapkounaite), and daughter Nadia (Nadia Mikhalkov). Maroussia's childhood sweetheart, Dimitri (Oleg Menchikov), returns unexpectedly and stirs old passions. The resulting tension between Maroussia and Kotov does not escape the vivacious six-year-old Nadia, who takes the opportunity to secure the prime spot in her father's heart.
Kotov is played by director/writer Mikhalkov and Nadia by his real daughter. This makes for some convincing emotional scenes between daughter and father.
In Chekovian style, the real action — in this case Stalin's terror — is offstage for most of the film. We hear references to newspaper stories about the political show trials and are treated to bizarre/comic images of Stalin worship.
But Stalinist terror is encroaching on the family. Dimitri, a member of the secret police, is really at the Kotovs' dacha on business, although this combines strangely with his personal agenda. Kotov, when he was involved with the secret police, used his position to get rid of the competition for Maroussia's affection by assigning Dimitri to dirty jobs far away. Now Dimitri has his chance for revenge, but it is bittersweet, for Maroussia will be dragged down with Kotov.
There are echoes from Mikhalkov's previous film, Urga/Close to Eden, including an innocent truck driver on a hopeless search for a non-existent village. However, in Burnt by the Sun the innocent and the not-so-innocent get burnt.
Stalin's Russia was a terrible place, and Burnt by the Sun makes this clear in a powerful way. Yet Mikhalkov insists that he does not want to say that everything was bad in those days. People still laughed, fell in love, had children.
The problem with the Russian Revolution, he observes rather superficially, is that it made the mistake of insisting that everything in Russia before 1917 was bad, and the problem with the current regime is that it thinks that everything in the Soviet era was bad. Under Stalin's rule everyone was both an actor and a victim, but those who knew what was going on bear more responsibility.
Burnt by the Sun is strong dramatically but doesn't offer much political insight. Disillusionment with Russian politics seems to have left Mikhalkov with nothing but nostalgia for peaceful family life. To aim for anything more is to play with fire and risk getting burnt.