This documentary film is a good introduction to Russian animation for those who are not very familiar with it. It covers a number of the more famous films and artists while also spending a lot of time on Russian culture itself and on what was behind the films that they made. It is indeed poetic, and the films that are covered are excellent. Despite that, I did find some flaws in this film.
First of all, while the material and interviews are excellent, I felt that the film as a whole lacked a solid unifying theme, and so by the second half was beginning to feel stretched out. There feels just a bit too much randomness in the overall edit, as if the directors couldn't quite decide where to go and simply decided to put in their favourite footage without worrying too much about direction.
My second "complaint" (though it probably would have little affect on someone unfamiliar with the subject) is that the material covered, while good, does not give an accurate impression of the sheer scope of ideas of Russian animation. It focuses almost entirely on the more popular works of the Soyuzmultfilm studio, though even there, it misses some very big things along the way. Aleksandr Tatarskiy (who directly taught nearly 60% of the Russians in animation today) and Pilot Studio (the first private Russian animation studio, which he founded), for example, are barely given any mention at all. Neither is mentioned any animation from other Soviet republics, some of which was very famous, nor what existed before Soyuzmultfilm's founding in 1936.
The focus of the film seems to be a relatively small, though mostly representative, selection of films from the Soyuzmultfilm studio, the atmosphere in which they were created, and what the people from that old school are doing today and think about where the art form is headed. One gets a sense that the directors are more akin to fans of Russian animation rather than researchers, so what emerges is a somewhat unfocused but sincere film about the films that they love best.
Having said that, there is a lot of interesting material in here. We are given tours of Garri Bardin's and Yuriy Norshteyn's studios (and see a very short segment of the unreleased "Overcoat"; Akaky Akakievich looking for fleas in his tattered coat).
I seem to have bought the last existing DVD copy of this film with English subtitles, so unless it is re-released, good luck finding it...
