Farewell (1983 film)
Farewell (Russian: Прощание), Proshchanie) | |
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Directed by | Elem Klimov |
Written by | German Klimov Larisa Shepitko Rudolf Tyurin |
Starring | Stefaniya Stanyuta Lev Durov Aleksei Petrenko Leonid Kryuk Vadim Yakovenko Yuri Katin-Yartsev |
Cinematography | Vladimir Chukhnov, Aleksei Rodionov, Yuri Skhirtladze, Sergei Taraskin |
Edited by | Valeriya Belova |
Music by | Vyacheslav Artyomov, Alfred Schnittke |
Production company | |
Distributed by | Sovexportfilm |
Release date | 1983 |
Running time | 121 minutes |
Country | Soviet Union |
Language | Russian |
Farewell (
Plot
The existence of the village of Matyora, located on a small island of the same name, is threatened with flooding by the construction of a dam to serve a
Cast
- Stefaniya Stanyuta as old Darya
- Lev Durov as Pavel Pinegin
- Aleksei Petrenko as Vorontsov
- Leonid Kryuk as Petrukha
- Vadim Yakovenko as Andrei Pinegin
- Yuri Katin-Yartsev as Bogodul
- Denis Luppov as Kolyana
Production history
While scouting locations in June 1979 for her planned adaptation of the ecological fable, original director
Themes
Ecology and Progress
Farewell joins the longstanding tradition of soviet film of inspecting the relationship between technology and nature. Sergei Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov, and Alexander Dovzhenko were all preoccupied with the beauty of the machine whose representation was largely positive until the cultural liberation of the Khrushchev Thaw. The construction of the world's largest dam in Siberia, among other environmentally destructive projects such as the Chernobyl disaster which occurred in the same year of the film's official release, were beginning to bring about ecological degradation that was "too drastic to ignore".[3] The flooding of Matyora in Farewell is a direct reference to and symbolic exploration of the fall-out of such decisions.[3]
Farewell's characters represent the different positions society might take with respect to progress. Darya represents old world ideals of ecological sanctity, she is the “embodiment of passive resistance to technological progress”.[3] Her son, who must evacuate the village, is caught between the two worlds, but his good intentions do not stop him from preparing the town for its destruction. And finally, Darya’s grandson is emblematic of city life, totally unmoored from his traditional roots and helpless against spiritual corruption.
Nostalgia
In evoking an idyllic village in Siberia, untouched by much of the political upheaval of the twentieth century, Farewell evokes a “mythic land” that signifies to Russians what the Wild West does for Americans.[3] The ancient tree that cannot be uprooted, the intertwining of Christianity and paganism, and the dense myopic fog of the film’s closing scene all represent the nostalgic mood of the late soviet era – the search for lost unity, a displaced identity, and the disorientation of a society robbed of its future.[3]
Klimov reflects the disillusionment of a post-industrial Soviet society which has officially abandoned the rhetoric of attaining communism in any near future.[3]
By romanticizing the simplicity of village life, Farewell uses images of a mythic Russian past to create a longing for an impossible mythic return, "the loss of an enchanted world with clear borders and values".[4] This enchanted world, "post-soviet nostalgia" is a augmented memory which "re-imagines the crash of Communism, as the crash of something very personal, innocent, and full of hope . . . that marked childhood and youth".[5] In Farewell, the idyllic Matyora is literally submerged under the weight of progress and time, making remnants of the pre-Soviet past literally and spiritually irretrievable.
References
- ^ Литература об Иркутской области (1986)
- ^ Валентин Григорьевич Распутин: Биобиблиографический указатель
- ^ a b c d e f g h Johnson, Vida (Autumn–Winter 1988). "The Nature-Technology Conflict in Soviet Film: A Comparison of "SIberiade" and "Farewell"". Studies in Comparative Communism. 21 (3/4): 341–347 – via JSTOR.
- ISBN 0786724870.
- ISSN 1750-3132.
External links
- Proshchanie at IMDb
- Farewell at AllMovie
- Article on Proshchanie at Film Reference
- Part 1 on Mosfilm's Youtube channel
- Part 2 on Mosfilm's Youtube channel