Beanpole

This film set in post-war USSR is beautifully shot and superbly acted. Every scene is a work of art that reglects the melancholic mood of that generation. Not a light watch, but extremely rewarding.

... and seared by the cold - this magnificently performed and beautifully filmed piece of cinema reveals the challenges faced by two young women in post war Leningrad. Damaged and psychologically disturbed by their experiences, shell shocked from the battles, real and imagined, battles they would never have aspired to fight some years earlier, while surrounded and enveloped by uncertainty, indignity, poverty and despair.

You could expect a 1945 Leningrad setting to be joyful after the Russian victory over Nazis, but writer/director Kantemir has caught the downside in Beanpole. It's a deeply moving, complicated story about two former soldiers who tackle the melancholy and desperation of victors with no spoils---just ruined buildings and crushed hopes.

This melancholy drama centers on two women: Iva (Viktoria Miroshnicenk) and Masha (Vasilisa Perelygina), who attempt to bring meaning to their lives after the devastation. Mostly it's about Masha's attempt to have a life within her, mainly a baby. Her first baby died at the hands of Iva, who now owes Masha a baby.

Through a series of lengthy scenes and shots (sometimes they are too long), the audience is drawn into the emotional needs of the protagonists set against the needs of the other Leningrad citizens to gain happiness and hope after a ravaging war. The scenes between Iva and Masha are lovingly and deeply felt as Masha navigates getting a replacement baby and Iva resists the machinations to do so.

Given the wide scope of WWII, Beanpole is a small-scale drama, whose intensity comes from the characters rather than the setting. Love is the operative word, married to hope to make a satisfying character study in a drawn-out drama of human longing, regardless of the time period.

A heavy film, the title does not reflect all the hardship of the war, the incessant search of the two women for survival and personal fulfillment in a sexist and cruel era, deranged by the post-war hunger, and allied to all this drama, the Tall Woman suffers from freezing post concussion and hysterectomy Masha, which makes it incomplete after the loss of the child (which I could swear it was no accident), warm colors, contrasting with the coldness of the war, exceptional drama, intelligent and original script...

I just think that people who are not from Russia or not from a former USSR republic don't understand how deep and important this film is. we are (russians and ex-soviets) are so used to the glorification of WW2, but this film doesn't do it. no, it shows how bleak and joyless the life after war is and it may not seem so groundbreaking for the western viewer but it is for me. also Kantemir Balagov isn't even 30 years old and he is a master of the craft alreasy. it means something.