Aerograd

For those who fondly remember the terrific visuals of Dovzhenko's "Earth", this is a very, very long way off. As some have mentioned this IS propaganda but the sort that shoots itself in the foot rather than pointing fingers. In the first thirty minutes alone there were three monumental speeches, all over-stressed and so painfully long they made me actually home-sick for the Academy Award-winning overacting we know so well. There's not really much of a plot here - the screaming propaganda would have buried it anyway - and the characters themselves go no deeper than comic-book roles. In fact, the characters don't develop either, so the film is quite static in just about every way. All the foreigners here are despicable as well as people making the signs of the cross. This is a textbook example of Stalinist film, with exclamation points at the end of every sentence. And as we remember from grade school, too many exclamation points weaken the ideas. Perhaps that was why the film is so tiring.