¡Queridos camaradas!

The sight of massed workers marching against the Soviet government demanding MORE Communism may strike many as strange, yet it is just one of the many seeming contradictions here. Director and Co-Writer Andrey Konchalovskiy (RUNAWAY TRAIN, INNER CIRCLE) has fashioned his tale (with Elena Kiseleva) out of a tragic 1962 incident where factory workers were shot at by government officials leaving at least 26 dead.

Lyuda (Yuliya Vysotskaya; the Director's wife) is a committee member for the town of Novocherkassk. As an apparatchik, she eats and drinks better than those she serves. When we first see her she's in the midst of an affair with a married official. Her daughter is an agitator at the factory in question. And, her father hasn't lived down his anti-government views from his youth. Lyuda is clearly supposed to represent the many hypocrisies of the Soviet system. When the fateful day occurs, Lyuda is caught in the middle of the literal crossfire.

Konchalovsky builds his movie slowly. The details of the bureaucracy are laid out as are the intertwined loyalties which abound. The truth is both impossible to discern, but, seemingly frowned up. Andrey Naydenov shoots brilliantly in stark Black & White and framed in classic 1:37 aspect ratio. There is no musical score, only traditional Soviet music, often propaganda heard in the background. Even with this bleak style Konchalovsky manages to finagle a underlying streak of bitter humor. Chairman Nikita Khrushchev's policies were so unpopular that many Soviets were pining for a return of genocidal former leader Joseph Stalin. Just over two years after the massacre, Khrushchev would himself be forced out of office. No matter how much the events effect her personally, Lyuda is both a true believer and a blind loyalist - and, can't distinguish the two. Vysotskaya's performance superbly navigates her character's (and that of her country) paradoxes with skill and vigor. As does DEAR COMRADES! Itself.

The photography in "Dear Comrades" reminds very closely Konchalovsky's 2016 film, Ray (Paradise): 4:3 aspect ratio, black and white, digital camera usage. Yet, the two films are strongly different, although they somehow feel intrinsically connected.

"Dear Comrades" describes a workers strike occured in 1962 in Novocherkassk that was controversially smothered in blood, as seen from the point of view of a local party member (Yuliya Vyotskaya, who also the leading role in "Paradise").

It was impossible for me not to compare this film with Eisenstein's 1925 masterpiece "The Strike", which also features a revolution of the workers but against a zarist government. It is interesting to see how the tables have turned, and that same soviet government that threw over the zarist government acts exactly the same way. The film had also a bit of an "Ida" vibe, again minus the spiritual elements, and the ending sequence felt much like a classic hollywood drama's finale, intentionally so, which I found somewhat fitting to the slightly satyrical nature of the title.

Let me be clear: this film is far from a satyre, it depicts with an almost Bressonian simplicity the dynamics of power and secrecy that were central to the functioning of the Soviet Union.

Unlike the 2016 film, Dear Comrades has no spiritual dimension, it is strongly linked to the presentation of facts, as it should be, given the strong materialist/soviet tone of its story. Similarly to Paradise, though, it shows the brainwashing effects of the Stalinist era: the lead character has, until the end, a nostalgic attitude towards Stalin, whom she defends even when confronted with the gruesome crimes committed in his name.

I hope that Dear Comrades gets distributed widely. Konchalovsky has been directing very outstanding films the whole decade, and this is yet another one of them.

A woman who has staunchly devoted herself to building a Communist state in Russia in the 1960s is forced into a moral reckoning when the conflict between her ideology and those rebelling against it gets personal.

Yuliya Vysotskaya delivers a taut, sensational performance as Lyuda, a woman whose daughter is among those missing after a deadly riot at a factory. Suddenly, big picture ideals and abstract ambitions collapse around her and her entire life becomes laser focused on finding out whether or not her daughter is still alive. To an American audience watching this movie in 2021, it is impossible not to see our own cultural dilemma reflected, not necessarily in the specifics, but rather in the general attitudes. The Soviet Union of 1962 looks a lot like the United States now, with different factions of our country wanting completely opposite things and determined not to budge an inch.

"Dear Comrades!" has a lean spareness to it that I liked. It feels like hardly a frame is wasted, and it's all captured in striking black and white.

Grade: A-

Winner of major awards at Venice and Chicago film festivals 2020., and one of top 5 picked by the National Board of Review, USA, it is a remarkable screenplay written by the director and his co-scriptwriter Kiseleva (they have collaborated on 4 feature films, 3 of which I have seen) with the director's wife Yulia Vysostskaya playing the main role. Their works are slow paced but gather steam only as you reach the thought-provoking and stunning ends in each film. The one film that eluded me thus far of the 4 films is "Sin" (2019), a biopic on sculptor/painter Michelangelo, a copy of which was presented to the Pope by Putin. And the Pope is apparently an admirer of the director. One damning aside in the script is that Nobel Prize winner Mikhail Sholokov's "And Quiet Flows the Don" did not present the full truth of the events in the novel as one would have assumed it did. The award winning "Paradise" and "The Postman's White Nights" are the other wonderful works from the team. Reminds one of the late collaborations on the films of director Ken Loach with writer Paul Laverty, David Lean with writer Robert Bolt, and of Kieslowski with writer Piesiewicz in the evening of the respective director's careers.

Gripping portrayal of the bloody downthrow of the 1962 workers' uprise in Novocherkassk, told through the eyes of a convinced Soviet member of local government whose daughter goes missing after the incident that the KGB makes a government secret and seals off the city. Beautifully shot in black and white, with unusual camera perspectives, picture compositions and orchestrated movement within the frame. Excellent performance by the main actress and very skillful directing. Moving dramaturgy, despite a seeming gap in the middle and a relatively open ending, which give room for interpretation and pondering. Very worthwhile cinema.