Anatoli Solonitsin Movies

Imbued with a state-promoted "social realism," the intent of this film - showing how a father accepts responsibility for raising a few children that are not his own - is noble, but the nobility of the action loses its some of its sheen when the full pathos of human emotion is not sufficiently explored. The story concerns a man who returns home after a 15-year absence, delayed because he was certain his bride-to-be had been unfaithful and he was unable to face her and the situation. He was right, as it turns out. His father informs him he is actually the father of a 14-year-old girl, plus, if he wants them, two additional children his wife had with the man she married - the couple has died and the children are orphaned. After fighting opposing battles with his feelings and his conscience, the father cannot find sufficient reason to refuse, and indirectly, forgives his former fiancee for her actions as he takes on the children. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Twenty-Six Days in the Life of Dostoyevsky was entered on February 16th at the 1981 Berlin Film Festival to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Dostoyevsky's death on February 9th, 1881, and won a "Best Actor" award for Anatoly Solonitsyn as Dostoyevsky. Solonitsyn was a favorite actor in Andrei Tarkovsky's films, and this was to be his penultimate role. This brief imaginary period in the famed Russian writer's life encapsulates one of his darker moments in 1866. At that time he was still a relatively unknown writer whose first widely acclaimed work, Crime and Punishment, was just on the horizon. His life was at a very low ebb as he struggled with debts he could not pay, and as he fought depression over the loss of his wife to tuberculosis, and the death of his brother, who was very close to him. His first literary journal had to be scrapped because of political reasons, and the second venture needed funding. The police come to see him, sent by his publisher who is demanding recompense for debts overdue. Desperate to escape the pressure on all sides, Dostoyevsky decides to undertake the impossible and write the story of The Gambler in 26 days, thereby satisfying the debt to the publisher at least. The secretary who takes down the dictation for the book slowly becomes enamored of Dostoyevsky, whose foibles and passions are revealed in the autobiographical tale she is transcribing. As "The Gambler" himself, Dostoyevsky traveled through Europe in 1862, deeply involved in two disparate loves: gambling and Polina Suslova Ewa Szykulska. Before long, the secretary becomes more and more entwined in Dostoyevsky's life as their relationship begins to blossom and the basis of a mutual love is formed. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

A group of middle-aged men and women on a holiday take a trip to Yalta for a short vacation. Soon they shake down into smaller cliques that have an affinity of interests, with romances springing up among some of them, such as a charming woman and rather shy man who begin to feel a genuine attraction in spite of the fact that they are both married. Dreams and reminiscences are openly shared, reaching a final denouement in the last evening before the group splinters off and goes their separate ways. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker, an allegorical science fiction film like his earlier Solaris, was adapted from the novel Picnic by the Roadside by brothers Boris Strugatsky and Arkady Strugatsky. The film follows three men -- the Scientist (Nikolai Grinko), the Writer (Anatoliy Solonitsyn), and the Stalker (Alexander Kaidanovsky) -- as they travel through a mysterious and forbidden territory in the Russian wilderness called the "Zone." In the Zone, nothing is what it seems. Objects change places, the landscape shifts and rearranges itself. It seems as if an unknown intelligence is actively thwarting any attempt to penetrate its borders. In the Zone, there is said to be a bunker, and in the bunker: a magical room which has the power to make wishes come true. The Stalker is the hired guide for the journey who has, through repeated visits to the Zone, become accustomed to its complex traps, pitfalls, and subtle distortions. Only by following his lead (which often involves taking the longest, most frustrating route) can the Writer and the Scientist make it alive to the bunker and the room. As the men travel farther into the Zone, they realize it may take something more than just determination to succeed: it may actually take faith. Increasingly unsure of their deepest desires, they confront the room wondering if they can, in the end, take responsibility for the fulfillment of their own wishes. ~ Anthony Reed, Rovi

The award-winning young director of this unusual wartime drama died shortly after beginning work on her next film. Voskhozhdeniye, which won the Grand Prize at the Berlin Film Festival, is Larissa Shepitko's last complete work. As the film progresses, the inner lives and states of the protagonists emerge as the compelling focus of the drama. Two partisans resisting German incursions into Byelorussia during World War II are separated from their fleeing comrades and are captured by the Germans. Along with a number of local villagers, they are sentenced to die. One of them dies with such overwhelming dignity, such grace, that no one present is unmoved, and the flame of resistance is successfully transferred to several of those who observe his death. This spiritual giant of a man also outfaces a despicable Russian schoolteacher from the area, who is an active collaborator with the Germans. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

The award-winning director Andrei Tarkovsky, (one of his better known films is Andrei Rublev), the son of a famous Russian poet, was born in 1935 and grew up in and around Moscow during the Second World War. This non-linear autobiographical film is considered by many Russian-speakers to be his best film and is his most personal meditation on time, history and the Russian countryside. In a series of episodes and images, he captures the mood and feeling of the period just before, during and after the war. Lyrical reminiscences of his mother and of his father's poetry figure large in the film, along with extraordinary images of nature. Combining black-and-white and color work, with some unusual documentary footage, this highly regarded movie is structured with the logic of a dream. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi