Caros Camaradas - Trabalhadores em Luta

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-

The story happens in 1962, on a small Russian town during the cold war. The people of city seems to be getting angry and impatient with the central government due to wage cuts and general raise in prices. These changes cause tensions to build up rapidly between factory workers and the communist party members until explodes in a gruesome way.

The movie follows a member of the communist party called Lyudmila Danilovna (played by Yuliya Vysotskaya) that works for and represents the central government in the city. 'Lyuda' (for short) is an ideologue that believes on the party propaganda even thought she might express mild dissatisfaction privately from time to time. Her father, an ex party member, is a melancholic retired man that seems not to believe in the party lines anymore. Her daughter is a "full-of-life" Leninist factory worker, that believes that Stalin is an assassin dictator. The tension that sprouts from those different generations, personalities and occupations inside a highly unstable political regime leads the main character to restore and reinforce her personal relations(family, neighbors and friends) instead of the party propaganda.

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.

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.

In the movie you can sense the whole crescendo of this Soviet secret crime fo 1962, by following a very eager communist woman , interpreted by director's wife Julija Visotskaya. At first we see her condemning all rebels and even saying that all should be killed. But...she also has a very young, adolescent daughter who is at the square when the shooting occurs... I was not expecting SUCH a good cinema, though. Love the movie, compliments to the team! The added value of the movie is the surreal REAL atmosphere of soviet union. Perfect music choice, almost moving!!! A must see!