Earth (Zemlya)

Oleksandr Dovzhenko, 1930. I didn’t feel particularly moved by this film at first, but some of the imagery (the opening death, the dancing, the funeral) has stuck with me. That’s really been my experience with Soviet films thus far. They are very impressionistic and hyper-focused on imagery. Emotions are more often than not symbolic of a group of people than they are displays of individual experience. But then again, these films are propaganda. Or at least created with a political intention, for all the predictable losers who are going to say “well, all art is political”. Yes, I know. But the director made the film to first and foremost communicate a deliberate political message, so save it.

The final scene was unfortunate (not the funeral scene, which was beautiful). The very last frame is the wife of the murdered hero locked in an embrace with her new man, but its portrayed as if she’s reuniting with her first husband in the clouds. I suppose its meant to communicate we’re living in a God-less world where the dead die and the wheat continues to grow, but I don’t understand why it had to be portrayed so…luminously. I really thought it was her reuniting with the spirit of her dead husband, but it turned out to be some new guy we’ve never seen before. And then it ends.

Now that I think of it, her entire treatment was bizarre. After her husband is murdered, she strips naked and enters an erotic frenzy, squeezing her breasts together and wincing at the ceiling by the window, suggesting the elimination of her human pleasure device has left her in the throes of sexual withdrawal. If you look at it symbolically (as I assume it’s intended), I suppose Dovzhenko is simply reminding us the soil is never not desperately searching for the seed. Maybe that’s true, but it’s just a bit collective for my tastes.