The Postman's White Nights

The Postman's White Nights

There are films that will be a marvel worth seeing because it contrasts with the overall mediocrity of the film is being done right now. Ten films that are released, there are probably one or at most two, worth seeing by certain concepts. This is one of them. There will be something on it that will be familiar. It is even possible that you tend to identify with the protagonist. And that just happens much in 100 minutes of projection. Almost as if we were still in our mouse cursor on the computer screen. But there is something charming in this film.

Everything that comes from Russia is very particular. The Russians have always been taken seriously everything they do, from a game of chess, to read a book, through the launch of a cosmonaut and the making of a film that simply tells the life in a small community northern Russia. The film, which has been described as "drama" has much contemplation of the natural environment and deep sociological point about Russia. It actually has more documentary than drama.

We say something narration of the environment because it is perhaps the most surprising at first sight with this tape. The film has been shot in the Kenozersky National Park, located in northern Russia, not far (although all distances in Russia are spectacular) of St. Petersburg and Karelia ism. Since 2004, UNESCO considers "Biosphere Reserve" and the rating is not absolutely free. In the northern part of this reserve existed Lake Kenozero that you will see in the film and is the leit-motif of it. The whole plot revolves around a postman who daily cross the lake with his boat.

If we translate the English title of the film (do not get tired trying to translate from Russian by Google Translate) gives The White Nights Postman (The postman's White Nights), but for some unfathomable mystery someone has thought it best to title in Spanish postman White Nights ... It's the only mystery of the film, because everything else in it is linear, pleasant, right, well done, well mounted, wanting to convey clear messages about not overlook the public warned.

The film can only be understood by anyone who has lived and worked in the vicinity of large cities and, for years, have made the repetitive daily transit from home to work and an office building to another bedroom, and suddenly decided to go there to live in the country. From that moment, the everyday is perceived differently. One senses that trees make noise, the sun rises and declines, storm clouds announce the warm breeze and indicates a change of season. The person abruptly changes from "live" to "contemplate". To live is to experience the inability to stop time. To contemplate is recreated in the “here and now”. In Konchalovsky, director of the film, has said that "he has begun to understand the essence of contemplative cinema". In this film examines the life, just life, without rushing.

The landscapes Konchalovsky shows suggest that the time has stopped. The placidity of the lake increases that feeling. The actors are part of that landscape. They are not professionals, it is the inhabitants of that region they are telling their personal stories (at times, the director hid cameras for characters wandered off freely about their lives and acquire a greater authenticity tape). The film has, in this sense, much more documentary than drama. They are lives that "are" in the XXI century, but "are not" the century. Lives of a time that was and is no more. It is not unusual that such people go emptied of young and seems to have many prospects. Nothing that does not happen in any other country.

Human relationships are an important part of their daily lives. Vodka is an important part in the life of every community. The vodka and love. There is also a little story of unrequited love in this film. And horror stories of magic or the mailman explains to a child on the lake. Some touches of irony paradoxical taste the viewer as the scene that takes place in the near Plesetsk Cosmodrome when a rocket rises dramatically skyward.

The author of this film, Andrey Konchalovksy, is a veteran of film, brings shooting since the mid-60s, while his great films have been produced in the United States where he settled in 1980. His best known work is The Train Hell (1985) and, of course Tango and Cash (1989). Armed with these successes returned to his native Russia the following year. In 2003 it reached a Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival for his movie Dom Durakov, set in a psychiatric in Chechnya. The Postman's White Nights has earned him the Silver Lion for Best Director at the 2014 Venice Film Festival.

The film could be described as an example of "social realism". There is almost nothing spectacular happening is that we are seeing the simplicity of rural life, it is becoming harder to find. And following the withdrawal of the simple life, the individual shows helpless. We have recently seen as another Russian film, Leviathan (2014) by Andrei Zvyagintsev, he showed us aspects of bureaucratic corruption in the country. Konchalovksy not opt ​​for the path of the complaint. He's not telling us that the dangers to rural men are in the political structures of the current regime, but living in the fear of change that grips all the inhabitants of the shores of Lake Kenozero. The postman, the man who needs professional and is closer to modernity, is perhaps the closest to each of us, sad urbanites. And maybe that's why it moves us more than any other inhabitant of a contemplative environment to disappear.

Good management. Good assembly. The good scripting (by Konchalovsky ex aequo with Elena Kiseleva). Great photography (Aleksandr Simonov). And correct the soundtrack. As for the actors, they lack stage experience. They merely tell their life. And it has merit because there are all expressing our good day.

You'll like it if at the time liked Dersu Uzala (1975) by Kurosawa or vibrated with Calabuch (1956) by Berlanga. Movies simple, uncomplicated. Movies filmed in communities outside of time. If you identified with the frameworks in which these films were shot postman White Nights will like. Go see it, he shall pay. If, on the other hand these two titles mentioned bored him, think before you pay your entrance.

Rating: 6,5