Earth (Zemlya). 1930. Directed by Alexander Dovzhenko.

(3/12/00)

This film was shown with Russian intertitles and no translation.

It was quite frustrating to watch this film without translation because I am sure I would have enjoyed it far more if I could have understood what was going on.

The opening section is truly beautiful with its shots of the land, of sunflowers, of faces. Dovzhenko could just put faces up there on the screen and let us scrutinize them without needing to have them do anything. We see people of different ages and we see death. An old man eats a piece of fruit and then quietly dies. It is so natural, so peaceful.

The scene changes to one of agitation and arguing. From then on the film is hard to follow. The faces become less interesting.

The film seems a celebration of the earth and ancient ways, but there are influences of modernism, of the avant-garde. There is a rapid montage of scenes of a plow ortractor and then there is a segment which has crosscutting amongst four or five different threads.

There is one scene of the sky where the horizon line is not visible. A man runs around in a circle and then disappears, leaving a totally blank frame. Towards the end we return to something like the opening with scenes of the land, of earth, of fruit, only this time there is a beautiful rainstorm.