Films/DVD Asylum

Abram Room's, "Bed and Sofa," is a hoot. Of course, I like Sergei

67.160.130.12

This Post Has Been Edited by the Author

In Reply to: RE: Eisenstein and Vertov are your guys posted by Victor Khomenko on January 24, 2013 at 19:06:12

and Dovzhenko. The modern guys I also like.
There is something darker about not only the Russian soul, but other peoples in that latitude, in general. Scandinavian film, art, and literature isn't the happiest.
With all its famously gloomy weather, one would expect Ireland and England to have similar darkness, but that's not the case. Compare Chaucer to Gogol. Pushkin and Chekhov to Sheridan, Wilde, or Shakespeare (his comedies). Fielding, Sterne, Pepys to Dostoevsky and Lermontov, Tolstoy and Turgenev.
I spent a lot of time w/Russians over a five-year period. I didn't find them particularly morose, but then, it was business and we always were drinking---- a lot!
Perhaps it's the effect of the Cold War, but Russians seldom are considered among the most cultured or cultivated people on earth, yet in music, literature, and film they are as great as any. In ballet, they formed the basis for an art form they've dominated for a century.
It is probably that the architecture also is first-rank, but I haven't studied it. I'm sure the decimation of the second World War destroyed most of the grand buildings, anyway; painting is one art form that Russia appears to have lagged; it may be that government suppression was key.

Edits: 01/25/13

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