Film Review

'Burnt by the Sun' (Mikhalkov, 1994)

1995's Oscar-winner for Best Foreign Film manages the considerable feat of combining political satire with the warmth and glow of a feelgood family drama. Mikhalkov, both directs and stars as Serguei Kotov, a respected ex-military hero. By the summer of 1936, however, he's very much the family man who lives with his much younger wife Maroussia and their six-year-old daughter Nadia (played by Mikhalkov's real-life daughter Nadia). One day, the Kotovs are visited by the roguishly handsome Dimitri, who was a former lover of Maroussia Later on we find out that Dimitri has a dark mission related to Stalin and the government, which affects the Kotovs forever.
In my opinion, ‘Burned by the sun’ is a powerful example of what a genuinely Russian movie can be when it uses the good sides of western film-making: things that were rare for the cinema of Soviet times.

There are many reasons why I would recommend this movie to anyone, but if you have any knowledge about the Great Purge of the late 1930s in the Stalinist Sovient Union or have a family history related to it, you are in a much better position to have a strong opinion about the movie.  One reason is that 'Burnt by the Sun' authentically shows the natural manners, customs and morals of the people living during the Stalinist Soviet Union. In the midst of controversy following the film’s release in Russia, Mikhalkov was reluctant to comment extensively on the portrayal of political events, which is why I would recommend looking up some historical information about the political events at the time.Like most masterful movies, 'Burnet by the Sun' can be appreciated for its succession of unforgettable scenes: Kotov explaining war and peace to his young daughter by admiring her soft and unscarred feet; Mitia correcting his servant’s pronunciation while carefully loading his pistol; the peasant driving in circles all day, looking for a town that never existed; Mitia playing the piano while wearing a gas mask; Mitia standing fully clothed in the creek, reciting (in broken English) from Hamlet… these are all astonishing gifts that can be savoured again and again. 
However, if you are not the 'history' type person and you are more interested in the making of the movie, this would be a great choice if you want to see something different and unusual. In terms of the plot, more than the first half of  'Burnt by the Sun' is quite usual for a western film - presenting the everyday life of  an  ex-military hero (Serguei) and a visit to his wife's (Marussia's) family. We sense the tension between the main characters, because we meet Marussia's former lover - Dimitri. As the film progresses, dramatic hidden details appear from the characters' history. Mikhalkov presents the drama as vague ornaments for more of the first half, which perfectly and delicately contrasts with our first impressions. And the thing that impressed me the most was how all of the bravery and cowardice, honour and betrayal, freedom and constraint, representations of power and more, landed on one single conversation between Serguei and Dimitri which is towards the end of the film, as if the whole 135min are all about this 2 min dialogue and the moment Dimitri locks eyes with Kotov across the room: a short and subtle exchange that shifts the entire momentum of the movie. After the conversation Nikita Mikhalkov swiftly shows the brutal reality from which some people were part of during the late 30s in Russia, with a murder and a suicide at the end of the film.
'Burnt by the Sun' is also a quite artistic film because of  Mikhalkov’s portrayal of life in Stalinist Russia is rich in pathos and humour, chaos and harmony. The characters sing and dance in a beautiful and harmonious setting. 

But the destructive glare of Stalin gleams over them. Sunlike fireball passes through Mitya’s apartment, exiting through the bathroom and appearing together with the star-topped towers of the Kremlin, thereby repeating, in a different configuration, the star and water imagery with which the film began. Like Kotov and Marusya (who, we are informed in an epilogue, both perish), Mitya becomes a victim of the times, although by his own hand. Appropriately, during this scene he faintly whistles the film’s title song, a popular thirties tango by Yezhi Peterburgsky about a failed love relationship. Throughout the film the song is generated by characters on screen, emphasizing that it is part and parcel of the world represented before us. Time of day notwithstanding, inasmuch as the fireball has just been seen passing through Mitya’s apartment, the song’s first line seems to me to parallel the imagery of the final scene: “The spent sun [fireball] was tenderly bidding farewell to the sea [water]” (Utomlyonnoe solntse nezhno s morem proshchalos’). In an interview with the journal Sight and Sound, Mikhalkov commented that the fireball on the one hand symbolises revolution, and also Stalin, a “sun” built by honest and well-intentioned men like Kotov—who, significantly, displays a sunlike tattoo on one arm. On the other hand, Mikhalkov said during the same interview that the fireball was a “‘catalyst for certain scenes’”. Since the fireball  occurs only in two scenes, including that of Mitya’s suicide, the other scene is first approaching Kotov’s dacha, then passing through it, and finally moving away from it, eventually veering unpredictably into a tree and destroying it. Significantly, the fireball swoops low, momentarily becoming tangential to the river, providing 'what Lotman refers to as the key intersection of two different sign systems'. As concerns Mikhalkov’s explanation of the fireball’s representing Stalin, it is most interesting that Stalin’s appearance <">on an enormous banner during the final moments of the film is preceded by a leaden-gray balloon to which the banner is affixed—perhaps a parody on Mikhalkov’s own part of the sun link.

The critic Louis Menashe objects to the fireball, calling its value “dubious”; however, I believe that by making this supernatural image interact with the natural water imagery, Mikhalkov successfully reflects an arbitrary and “unreal” world in a deceptively real and natural setting.