Candles in the Dark

Natalya Andreychenko is the great actress here, playing the most interesting character and part, at first protecting her niece by any means from having anything to do with any underground revolution movements and then changing attitude completely as she understands her niece has taken a final stand. The story, the dramaturgy, the direction, the play-acting, everything is excellent and combine in fulfilling the purpose of the film: to give a clear picture of the Estonian singing revolution. There are some precarious tendencies to sentimentality and bathos, but the risks are avoided, and it all ends up in a general harmonisation of the miracle of a singing revolution of just lighting candles and insisting on the human right to celebrate Christmas. In some ways this is a Christmas film for all times, the message is universal, and as Günther Maria Halmer as the priests says, if people have no right of religion, they have no rights at all, and the most stupid thing an autocracy ever can do is to target and make martyrs out of priests, which mistake they always seem to commit, which must turn the whole people against the regime. All the actors are good, the director Maximilian Schell, an old veteran actor, is himself quite convincing as a communist colonel with some sense of realism in spite of all, and he makes the best of a good script and his own good direction, but it's Natalya Andreychenko and Günther Maria Halmer who really make the film.