49. Earth (Zemlya) (1930)

Directed By Aleksandr Dovzhenko

Synopsis

Old Man Dies. Young Man wants tractor. Tractor gets to town, there is much rejoicing. Young man ploughs over a rich farmers fence, gets killed. Gets buried.

Review

Ahh, Soviet cinema! Very few people made films as pretty as the Soviets and this is no exception. It is not as frantic with its montages as Eisenstein or Vertov but it compensates that with just plain beautiful shots.

This film is set in the Ukraine and the shots of both cenery, animal life and peoples faces is enough to make this a great film. What Dovzhenko lacks in editing frenzy he makes up for in camera shots. The close up is a staple as is the long shot, where about 5% of the screen is earth and 95% is sky, giving us a feeling of imensity that was unequaled before this.

Dovzhenko also enjoys doing what Tarantino calls "the Sergio Leone", the very close close-up. People's faces are as much a part of the landscape of the Ukraine as the land itself. Plotwise it is the typical Soviet modernisation fare, one must fight the forces of capitalism, religion and superstition in order to bring progress. This is done however with quite a light touch, unlike Eisenstein's films for example. You can actually engage with the story itself instead of just the agit-prop. The funeral scene for Basil is particularly compelling as is the montage of the life-cycle of bread.

The film is not however without its boring moments- Some scenes, like Basil's walk before he gets killed take too long, of course this is meant to create a build up to the central plot mover of the film, but, as you don't know it's coming it becomes just a bit over-drawn. Recommended, buy it at Amazon UK or US.

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Earth was simultaneously lauded and derided by Soviet authorities due to its fairly ambiguous political message. Soviet influence is clear if one looks for it, particularly in the nearness to the "earth" of the peasants, but exactly why or how the symbol functions is unclear. Indeed, the film also deals with subjects such as death, destruction, and poverty.

Earth is widely considered Dovzhenko's best film, and is often cited alongside Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin (1925) as one of the most important films of the Soviet era.

It was named #88 in the 1995 Centenary Poll of the 100 Best Films of the Century in Time Out Magazine. The film was also voted one of the ten greatest films of all time by a group of 117 film historians at the 1958 Brussels World's Fair.

The starting scene of Earth, showing an old man dying among pear trees, probably influenced the music video of the 1994 Enigma song Return to Innocence.