Film Review
Renowned Soviet filmmaker Mikhail Kalatozov followed up his
internationally acclaimed masterpiece
The Cranes are Flying (1957)
with another cinematic tour de force, a gripping survival drama whose
startling design and camerawork anticipate the director's most visually
spectacular film,
I Am Cuba
(1964). With its sparse tale of willing self-sacrifice for the
good of the motherland,
Letter Never
Sent occasionally feels like a Soviet propaganda film of the
1920s, the kind that sanctified the hardworking proletariat and
portrayed Communism as the nearest thing to Utopia. But by giving
well-defined identities to its characters and depicting their ordeal
with such harrowing realism the film sets itself apart from propaganda
films of the past and ends up being something that will strike a chord
with everyone on Earth - an impassioned tribute to man's pioneering
spirit and courage in the face of adversity.
With very little in the way of plot, it is the constant stream of
jaw-dropping visuals that makes
Letter
Never Sent such a compelling and memorable cinematic experience.
The work of Kalatozov's cinematographer Sergey Urusevsky on
The Cranes are Flying seems
positively tame compared with his wildly bravura contribution to its
follow-up. In Urusevsky's hands, the camera seems to take on a
life of its own, swooping with the intoxicating grace of an eagle in
some shots, waltzing with a dizzying frenzy in others, imbuing every
scene with a heightened sense of drama which palpably evokes the
emotional states of the protagonists as they repeatedly lurch between
euphoria and despair. Overlapping dissolves are used with
mesmeric artistry in the scenes in which one character writes the
titular letter to his beloved and then in the gripping sequence where
the protagonists risk being burned alive in a forest fire. Huge
angled close-ups expose the tensions between the characters, suggesting
that external dangers are not the only threats that have to be dealt
with. Lust, disloyalty and guilt will play a large part in
deciding the fate of the protagonists.
Urusevsky's inspired use of the handheld camera in this and other films
was years ahead of its time and brings a brutally realist edge to his
art. Complex tracking shots add further drama to the film,
complementing Kalatozov's penchant for flamboyant melodrama to create
an almost operatic sense of spectacle in the film's more dramatic
moments. The stylish shots of the doomed protagonists, seen in
silhouette against the most Hellish of landscapes, have a beauty that
is stark, terrifying and hauntingly poetic. The conviction that
the four main actors bring to their performances, playing their
characters not as heroes or idealists but as ordinary young people
trying to fend off death for as long as possible, adds to the film's
nerve-racking power.
Throughout this grim ordeal that Kalatozov and Urusevsky paint with
such fierce intensity and unwavering artistic brilliance, we are
reminded how unutterably insignificant man is when set against the
overwhelming might of Nature. And yet, having plumbed the depths
of despair in vistas of unimaginable ferocity (first a cauldron of
fire, then a rain-sodden wilderness which becomes a never-ending snowy
wasteland) the film miraculously ends with the candle of hope still
burning. Not even Nature in her foulest of moods has the power to
crush the resilience of the human spirit. Kalatozov would take us
on a similar journey in his final film,
The Red Tent (1969), but this is a
pretty mild excursion compared with what
Letter Never Sent has to offer.
© James Travers 2014
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Film Synopsis
A party of four young geologists undertake an expedition to the central
plateau in Siberia in an arduous quest for diamond deposits. Just
when they are on the point of giving up, they succeed in finding
diamonds but disaster quickly ensues. Caught in a forest
fire, one member of the party is killed and the others find themselves
cut off from their boat and their precious supplies. Their radio
transmitter damaged beyond repair, they are unable to contact the
outside world and ask for help. What ensues is a nightmarish
struggle to survive in the most hostile of environments, but survive
they must if their efforts are not to have been in vain...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.