Ancient Mariner Redux: Утомлённые солнцем? (Burnt by the Sun?)

During the transit to Vladivostok, our Fine and Foreign Films group presented the 1994 Russian film entitled Burnt by the Sun (Utomlyonnye solntsem). Winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, this movie was directed by and starred Nikita Mikhalkov. In terms of iconic film industry families, the Mikhalkovs are the Russian equivalent to America's Barrymore family.

In 1936 Russia, revolutionary war hero Colonel Sergei Petrovich Kotov enjoys an idyllic summer in his dacha with his young wife, Maroussia, and six-year-old daughter Nadia (played by Mikhalkov's daughter, Nadezhda Mikhalkova), as well as other engaging family and friends. Visiting unexpectedly from Moscow, Cousin Dmitri (Mitya) charms the women and little Nadia with his games and pianistic bravura. But Kotov isn't fooled. At the time of Stalin's repression, with telephone calls in the middle of the night presaging doom, he knows that Dmitri has a darker purpose for his ostensibly social visit. The film ends with Mitya and a couple of thugs carrying Kotov off to the Gulag under the orders of his former patron, Joseph Stalin. This is a provocative and emotionally compelling movie that entertains but not in the "feel good at the end" way.

In April, 2010, Mikhalkov co-wrote, directed, and starred in a sequel, Burnt by the Sun 2 (Utomlyonnye solntsem 2). In 1941, Colonel Kotov has miraculously survived the death sentence and Stalin's Purge. He now fights on the front-lines as a private. His daughter, Nadia, is a nurse risking her own life to save others. In the war-torn nation even former enemies must fight together to defend their land against the threat of fascism. People stand up united for the sake of victory.

Unlike the original film, this sequel flopped at the box office in Russia. Could that be a sign of cultural change over the last six years? Are military heroics no longer appropriate in this nation now a decade removed from the Soviet regime?

The sequel movie poster prominently adorns a theater in downtown Vladivostok. That movie house sits across the main street from the parade ground that hosted the Victory Day Parade, celebrating the 65th anniversary of the capitulation of Nazi Germany to the Soviets. The monument depicted below represents the dedication of that parade ground to "The Fighters for the Soviet Power in the Far East," similar to the fighters portrayed in the movie sequel.

Based on the positive public reaction to the Victory Day parade, not only in Vladivostok but throughout Russia, national spirit and pride abound, as do respect for and confidence in the military.

Perhaps the unsuccessful debut of Mikhalkov's World War II era sequel to his original Academy Award Winner has less to do with theme and content, and more with competition from the other films showing with it...capitalism at its finest, so to speak. The four posters below appear just to Mikhalkov's right on the same theater facade. Burnt by the Sun 2 vies for viewers with several American entries, including "Iron Man Two."