Earth (1930)

In the introduction to this film, Kino inserts their opportunity to give a small history to this film, specifically the time period as well as the turmoil the director, Aleksandr Dovzhenko, had endure to merely get this film made. It provides a nice introduction, but not enough to fully develop the story Dovzhenko originally planned. This is a political film. This is a social film. This is a dated film. That is not to say that I am against, or have trouble with, silent film. Eisenstein and von Sternberg are two of my ultimate early filmmakers, but oddly I had trouble with Earth, Doyzhenko's 1930s silent film about collective farming. It isn't that the shots are not beautiful, his eye alone is worth the 75 minutes, but where I just struggled with this film was two-fold. Kino's choice of music - albeit perhaps original - just didn't seem to match accordingly to the scenes as the progressed. While the transfer itself is not a worry of mine (Kino is always a hodgepodge of good or bad depending on the week), I do feel specifically with this film we were missing something in the translation. Words would be loose, images would come and go without any rhyme or reason, and our characters would ultimately end up like stale bread without the crusts. Again, beautiful shots - but perhaps a bit too overwhelming of a mission to endure with a film with such a bold thesis statement. For years, this singular film was on several top ten lists, ranking among the best from Russia, but I just don't see it. These characters were laughing off-screen, and I cannot be persuaded that they were doing that for the story. Currently, as I type this review - watching the film for a second time to be sure I didn't miss anything - I just witnessed this beautifully developed scene with a man and a woman holding each other, only to be followed by a scene of a man "walking"/"dancing" home for nearly five minutes. It is this false juxtaposition that dates this film horribly. I wanted to be involved, I wanted to witness a Russian Birth of a Nation, but all I ended up with what one mixed (nay, underdeveloped) message after the next. It just didn't work - and it sadly felt like a 1930s film. Is it my taste or did I completely misunderstand this film? The world may never know.

Still moving along my book entitled Videohound's World Cinema: The Adventurer's Guide to Movie Watching by Elliot Wilhelm. Here is what he had to say about Earth.

"I wanted to show the state of a Ukrainian village in 1929," wrote director Alexander Dovzhenko in 1930 of his masterpiece, Earth, "that is to say, at the time it was going through an economic transformation and a mental change in the masses." The change that the great director portrays is the struggle to establish a collective farm program in the face of the murderous old-line landowners, the kulaks. But through this struggle forms the spine of Earth's plot at its most conventional level, Dovzhenko's film is far more than a sophisticated piece of advocacy drama. Earth bits of a great deal; it attempts to be nothing less than a poetic cinematic tribute to the cyclical glory of nature, as seen through the eyes of those who tend to and love the land. The complete, stunning success of Dovzhenko's film is all the more staggering when you consider the immensity of its goal. It is capable, even 70 years after its creation, of making one marvel anew at the majesty and logic of the natural world, as well as producing the sheer elation that comes with rediscovering - with all the force of a tidal wave - the primal, incomparable power of cinema. Correctly voted one of the ten greatest films of all time by more than one international panel of film critics".

It is ok to disagree sometimes. I just didn't have the same love as Mr. Wilhelm had for this film. The problem is, I know that I am going to see this film again in many of my books. Not going to leave Earth behind. Maybe I will pick it up again - but this time in my life, it just didn't speak the wonders that I feel everyone else saw.

Mark: Yellow highlight with black mark. Not positive.