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| CATEGORY: | Video |
| DIRECTOR: | Nikita Mikhalkov |
| THEATRICAL RELEASE DATE: | 13 November, 1996 |
| MANUFACTURER: | New Yorker Films |
| MPAA RATING: | NR (Not Rated) |
| FEATURES: | Color, Widescreen, NTSC |
| TYPE: | Foreign Film - Russian |
| MEDIA: | VHS Tape |
| # OF MEDIA: | 1 |
| UPC: | 717119605933 |
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Customer Reviews of Anna
Simple and sweet Sometimes, it is the simplest, sweetest things in life that have the most impact on one's psyche. As a student of international relations, my focus is Russia and Eastern Europe. This film is not a piece filled with overly-artistic, distracting elements. It is a simple piece on the life of a young girl, growing up under Soviet rule, who later experiences the demise of what she was she was taught to love.
Perhaps it is compelling because the film is set at a time in which I can personally remember these events. As a young girl, a slight bit younger than Anna, I can relate to Anna's story, albeit from a different perspective, that makes this film so enticing.
It is an interesting look into the life of a family under Soviet rule, and its demise. It paints an image of life that is unforgettable and undeniably interesting. It is truly a gift to be able to peer into someone's personal experience under something so callous and cold as the Soviet rule. This film is a combination of documentary and film , brilliantly combined to exoke myriad emotions.
Do not expect too much from this work and you can see the masterpiece that it is. Anna is truly an enjoyable film, even for those not specifically intrigued with Russian culture. Enjoy.
MUCH LESS IMPORTANT THAN IT WISHES
In a nutshell: daughter Anna gets fatter, Russia loses some weight. The pretentious voiceover is so deadpan that you realize the Anna's father/director actually convinces himself that his forbidden home movies have meaning beyond his own wishful (f)artistic pseudomartyrdom. Plays like a bad segment from Michael Apted's __UP series on continuous repeat with a voice-over pasted on from the boringest most egotistical professor you've ever had.
Educational but Hardly Enlightening
Mikhalkov may have just as well labeled Anna "for Western audiences only." His narrative is a catalogue of disparate and incongruous thoughts, commentaries and ideas that flooded the public discourse in Russia in the immediate wake of the Soviet Union's collapse. The film's usefulness is limited to chronicling, not providing an insightful analysis of, what happened in the last days of the Soviet Union. Word of caution: Mikhalkov's perspective is unmistakeably Russian, unfailingly ignorant of or oblivious to the experiences of non-Russian peoples in USSR--Balts, Central Asians and other non-Slavs.
I must admit the flowery, cliched language of Mikhalkov's voice-over (I am a native Russian speaker) left me irritated. The poetic pretensions of his commentary were designed, I am sure, to evoke the simultaneously unique and universal "humanness" of his own experiences and of those of his family, but they sounded banal at best and rang false at worst. I do not begrudge his having had a "dacha" near Moscow (in addition to a nice apartment in the city) or having a personal Mercedes in the early 1980s--he was a beloved actor and director in the Soviet cinema and he deserved the material rewards wrought by his labor. His perspective is not unwelcome, it is simply unrepresentative of the vast, overwhelming majority of people's experiences in the Soviet Union.
Mikhalkov's biggest failure in Anna is his inability to truly listen to what his daughter was saying without attempting to find validation for his own theories. Because I at times saw myself in Anna (we are the same age and I also grew up in the Soviet Union), I was somewhat upset at Mikhalkov's inability to trust her, trust that the naivete and purity of childhood will eventually give way to serious contemplation and that inevitably, Anna will understand the truth about the country she was born into. Did he not say in the beginning of the film that he cried at the news of Stalin's death? He also seems to think that indoctrination only occurs in oppressive regimes and does not realize that imparting any information to children qualifies as indoctrination. There is nothing inherently strange or "communist" about being afraid of war. American kids in the 1970s and 1980s grew up on Red Dawn, for Pete's sake, and were as terrified of invading "Russians" as Russians were of America.
And the conclusion, frankly, is not a conclusion at all. Crying at the mention of one's country may be a sign of patriotism, as Anna does. What I want to know is whether Anna came back to Russia after studying in Switzerland. That would be a befitting end to the story of her self-discovery and a true test of her patriotism.