Briefe eines toten Mannes

It took me some time to remember the title of this film, and it's certainly a hidden gem. In it's very slow pace, it transfers the mood of what will probably be if we went through a nuclear war. Great cinematography, and the quality of the film just makes it more profound and hipnotizing.

If you find this film, take your time any rainy day, and drift away in a world of dead and dying.

This is a post-apocalyptic movie where a group of Russian intellectuals, living in the airtight vaults of a museum, cling on in the twilight, going slowly mad according to their own pompous wonts.

The movie is unremitting in its depressing depiction of a dead world. I was stuck between turning it off because it was almost sacrilegiously depressing, and remaining because of the sheer cataclysmic beauty. The images are mostly tinted yellow, although some shots are in tints of blue. There is no way this experience is going to allow you the respite of polychromatic images.

There is a body of work that deals with the end of humankind in cinema, but any example I can think of seems completely notional in conception, this one actually felt like a recording of the end of days, as unflinchingly profane as a documentary of viaticums.

I think it's also a tombstone for communism in Russia, suggested as a blind alley, and advocates a return to pre-revolutionary values regarding family and religion. But only in an intensely personal way, as if recounting the death of a close family member. It is more than a warning against nuclear war. In its parodying of ridiculous, pontificating, and obstructive authority, it's an emesis of authoritarian communism, a whole-hearted, wholesale rejection.

As an endnote, there's a dolly-out in the first few minutes of the film that left my jaw on the floor, practically the best shot I've ever seen in cinema, my congratulations to Konstantin Lopushansky and his team.

To fully understand this movie you should understand the mindset and milieu of the Eastern Bloc - preferably the Soviet Union - of the 1980s, in the height of the Cold War. This movie is radically different from Western post-apocalyptic movies like 'The Day After' or 'Threads' which deal with the very materialistic side of a nuclear holocaust, like the effects of bombs and life after the war. This Soviet movie is not a spectacle and its aim is far from simply entertaining or scaring. It ponders on the philosophic and moral side of a nuclear war, a suicide of mankind and whether it's inevitable or not.

There is barely any storyline. The main character is an unnamed scientist who lives in a makeshift shelter under a museum, among saved relics from all eras of history and some of his surviving colleagues. Being all scientists they are trying to grapple the whole point of what happened. There are no names, except for the wife and son of this scientist: Anna and Eric. Eric is presumably dead as he was outside when the bombs exploded. Nevertheless the scientist keeps writing letters to him, in a form of a diary, which is more to save his last thoughts of the world than actually meant to be delivered someday.

The pace of this film is just as slow and time would be in such a situation. Soviet art movies were not bound by economic constraints so it did not matter to their makers whether the tickets will sell well or not. Modern moviegoers would find the entire thing profoundly boring, and even the most dedicated movie hipster would look at the clock time to time. Being this slow is part of the image the movie builds. Just like the characters, the viewer is also immersed in an endless waiting, never to know whether something is going to change or happen. You actually have to watch it to the very end to see. Don't expect rich experiences. In such a dull and dead world it's a rare gift to see anything happen.

Interestingly, the makers took great care to emphasize that this is not happening in the Soviet Union. Or more exactly, it could happen, but this particular place is not a Soviet city. There is not a single object in the background with Cyrillic letters on it, but there are a lot of things with English labels, some are even consumer goods rare behind the Iron Curtain at that time. German beer cans float in the water - canned beer was a curiosity that time - and a bottle of Jagermeister is seen on a desk. Canned foods are also foreign, with English labels. Even the soldiers carry weapons that look like a crossbreed of American M-16 and M-1 rifles. It's a small detail, but back then every able-bodied Soviet men were familiar with Soviet military equipment, having spent years as a conscript, and this clue is giving away that the scene takes place in a foreign country. Even the military vehicles were selected to keep this illusion. The helicopter is a Ka-26 which was never used by the military (in the Soviet Union at least), the large truck is a MAZ missile trailer, but there was also a civilian version of it. The then- futuristic hovercraft that appears for no apparent reason was an experimental vehicle at the time, but such vehicles were already operating as ferries on the English Channel, and were praised as a great technical advancement of the time.

I'd generally recommend this movie for those who are desperate enough to take a plunge into a strange, lost civilization's vision of the violent end of the world. Not a date movie, except if your date is a hardcore movie culture fanatic or grew up in the Soviet Union.

I can't confirm there was a direct passing of the torch between Andrei Tarkovsky and Konstantin Lopushansky, or that the two even knew each other, but I can't help but feel like there was a spiritual passing of the torch, in a way, in 1986. That year sadly saw the release of what was to be Tarkovsky's final film, The Sacrifice, as he passed away at just 54 years of age the same year. 1986 also saw the release of Lopushansky's debut, Dead Man's Letters, and it scratches the same itch as some of Tarkovsky's sci-fi works do, but not in a way that feels derivative.

It's more a natural extension of the sort of bleak, introspective, and visually stylized substance of certain Tarkovsky films, and rather than suggesting Lopushansky was ripping off Tarkovsky, I instead hope to compare them in a way that's complementary to Lopushansky. In fact, Dead Man's Letters has moments that got to me more on a gut level than just about anything Tarkovsky directed, and with this film, he really doesn't overstay his welcome with a runtime of 83 minutes (some Tarkovsky films can have somewhat challenging runtimes).

It's the fact both made movies in Russia, both dealt with dark subject matter, and both were willing to use similarly striking color schemes visually that makes me want to compare the two. At the risk of disparaging Tarkovsky, too, it's been many years since I saw the bulk of his filmography, and now I'm older (though not necessarily wiser), I may be able to go back and appreciate certain titles of his some more. As for Lopushansky, the only other film of his I've seen is 1989's A Visitor to a Museum, which is similar to Dead Man's Letters in some way, albeit longer and more ambitious... surprisingly, I think I like Dead Man's Letters a little more, though.

It's worth experiencing for its atmospheric post-apocalyptic qualities alone, as well as for a couple of key sequences that really sneak up on you and prove devastating. It's not a fun watch, but it felt rewarding and worth the time for sure.

This is quite an obscure picture, even by Russian standards... It is dark (literally), morbid, disturbing at times... It requires quite an effort to watch. But it is one of those quite numerous Russian films that leave a deepest impression on the viewers by making them THINK. It is one of those brilliant "what if.." ponderings, never really giving you a final answer, or even if suggesting anything, leaving it open for the viewers to make their own conclusions. Perfectly cast (faces DO match the setting!), perfectly performed, and even the "special effects" - something Russian film-makers never have money or enthusiasm for - look quite convincing for their time. It IS hard to watch, and one probably has to be in a certain mood to watch it (I'd recommend watching it alone), but it is worthwhile experience and you will never regret it.