• Literally Anything: Movies
  • Film Index
  • The Criterion Collection
  • Collections
  • Academy Award Nominees
  • Notes and Links
  • About
  LITERALLY ANYTHING: MOVIES

Updates

Earth / Zemlya (1930)

12/12/2016

Comments

 
Picture
Okay, 1930 is a lawless time.  There's nudity.  Straight up a lot of it.

DIRECTOR: Alexandr Dovzhenko

I get to review a movie straight from Ukieland!  I never get to do this.  But after teaching a unit on early Soviet cinema, I was glad to jump all over this.  I've seen this one before, but I remembered criminally little of it.  In fact, I remembered so little of this movie that I had to Wikipedia the plot at times.  I might be a bad teacher.

Dovzhenko is known for his unique juxtaposition of scenes and that is definitely seen in Earth.  This is a guy who is more about mood than plot.  Many of the texts describe Dovzhenko as more poetic than cerebral, which doesn't make a ton of sense until you actually watch one of his movies.  The scenes seem completely bizarre at times, often jumping between suicidal and wildly optimistic.  There is no forgetting that this is a story that stresses the nobility and exploitation of the worker.  Watching this back-to-back with Battleship Potemkin, however, slightly damages the impression of this movie.  I'm really a big Battleship fan and Earth touches the same themes with a much more subtle brush.  I can't blame this movie for the message being presented, but it was probably a poor decision on my part to watch these two so closely together.

I suppose that I warned about the nudity in this movie and I feel a need to talk about it.  Like Potemkin, the movie reaches a fever pitch at one point where the world just seems to explode into insanity.  This leads to a very surreal ending to the movie.  Potemkin places its oddity in the middle of the film and keeps it within the narrative.  Earth, however, takes a very different direction with its choice.  The movie builds up a weird tension through the mundane.  Eisenstein uses the mechanical to develop stress, but Dovzhenko rather uses images of nature and depression to make the viewer beg for release.  Yes, the violent ending is cathartic, but it does feel very "art school" angsty.   

I really like the movie, but there is something truly alienating about the movie as a whole.  Often the movie feels like an artifact of the era rather than emotional experience.  I feel like such a traitor, the Ukrainian bit and all.  It is just that I'm conflicted about this era in history.  This is propaganda because all of the movies in this era are propaganda.   The quality of this movie is phenomenal.  It's gorgeously shot and the mood is something that is both the target and the achieved goal.  But I can't personally invest in a lot of this movie which oddly fills me with guilt.  So is it the movie's fault?  Probably not.  But then I shouldn't  blame myself completely either.
Comments

    Film is great.  It can challenge us.   It can entertain us.  It can puzzle us.  It can awaken us.  

    It can often do all these things at the same time.  

    I encourage all you students of film to challenge themselves with this film blog.  Watch stuff outside your comfort zone.  Go beyond what looks cool or what is easy to swallow.  Expand your horizons and move beyond your gut reactions.  

    We live in an era where we can watch any movie we want in the comfort of our homes.  Take advantage of that and explore.

    Author

    Mr. H has watched an upsetting amount of movies.  They bring him a level of joy that few things have achieved.

    Archives

    May 2025
    April 2025
    March 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Literally Anything: Movies
  • Film Index
  • The Criterion Collection
  • Collections
  • Academy Award Nominees
  • Notes and Links
  • About