This is no movie for those who only like action films. Amators of Italian and French social-realist dramas from the '50s, however, will find it very much to their taste. Director Lydia Bobrova pictures the bleak life in the Russian countryside by showing some events in the life of three brothers and their families. The three brothers are different in character, but all suffer from the dreariness of kolchoz life, which contrasts starkly with the glamour of the celebrations of the Moscow Olympics of 1980, which the protagonists can see on TV. Before Gorbachov's perestrojka, the director would not have had the chance of making this sad, but sensitive and realistic movie. At the Toronto film festival, a critic wrote. "...the film achieves a powerful air of authenticity that is destined to make it a classic of Russian cinema.' The title is derived from a nostalgic Russian song that is performed several times in the movie. The wild geese have the possibility of moving on to milder climes, a possibility that Russian country people don't have.