Stevecorp Don't listen to the negative reviews

Monkeywess This is an astonishing documentary that will wring your heart while it bends your mind

Joanna Mccarty Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

Roy Hart If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

Kirpianuscus beautiful landscapes. and seductive story. clever mixture of humor and drama. a bitter love story. and Russia in a splendid portrait about past, tradition, image about world, love and duty. Oleg Menshikov does one of that characters who are essence of a state of soul. the science to explore the emotions of young Tolstoy, the madness of gesture from profound love, the dialog with Jane, the search of sense in an absurd universe, all as embroidery of significant details. Julia Ormond gives a special aura to her character. and that is not a real surprise. the film is about evolution. the evolution of lead characters. the evolution of Russia itself. an admirable scene - the presence of Nikita Mikhalkov as Alexander II . a not great film. but, surely, a beautiful one.

richard2robinson The second time I saw this film I could see why people had said it was sentimental, overly staged. However I thought it was worth seeing a second time...Because the first time I saw it, one woman in the group of friends I went with was an international expert on Russian literature and Dostoyevsky in particular. She said she thought the film got to the nub of a Russian preoccupation... this woman wrestling with her identity. (OK she happens to be an American woman). If such an intellectual heavyweight thought it worth her 3 hours, it can't be that bad.The comments in other threads about the film not getting enough coverage don't tell us anything about the intrinsic value of the film. If anything they simply tell us that markets everywhere are different (a triumph of anti-globalism?) AND/OR that many many good films are made which we never hear about. Many good books are written and never published. Many beautiful people never make it to Hollywood...

Philip Van der Veken I've seen movies from all over the world, a lot of them was American of course, but several of them came from Europe and Asia. But I can't remember ever having seen a Russian movie before. This was the first one and I must admit that it was quite surprising, although it wasn't an undivided success in my opinion.The movie tells the story of Douglas McCraken, a foreign businessman and inventor who wants to sell a new and experimental steam-driven timber harvester in Siberia in 1885. But not everything goes exactly as planned. To make sure that his machine is accepted by the Russian government, he'll need the help of his lovely assistant Jane Callahan. While she is on her way, she meets a young cadet and falls in love with him. But the lovely Jane has more admirers and after an incident, the love of her life is exiled to Siberia...Not everything worked, but overall I must say that this was a quite enjoyable movie. The main problem that I had was that it sometimes didn't seem to take everything very serious. The mix of drama and slapstick didn't really work very well and even annoyed me from time to time. Nevertheless, I must admit that there was some nice humor in it as well. For instance the sequence with the American drill sergeant who proves that he doesn't know anything about classical music, but who's too proud to admit that, is excellent. But still I think it would have been much better if there was less humor and more realistic drama in it. Overall I would say that the acting in the movie was good, although I wished to see Richard Harris in a bigger role. Now it just felt like he was in the movie because of his name, not because of his talent. I would like to end this review by saying that this is an enjoyable movie, even though it sometimes didn't feel right. I give it a 6.5/10. Perhaps even a 7/10, but certainly nothing more than that.

dbborroughs This long Russian film set before the Soviet take over is of the sort they don't make any more. The story of a "mad" inventor, a young woman, and a cadet in the military is a wonderful way to spend a rainy afternoon. This is a small scale epic that haunts you long after you've finished watching it.I've heard that this film was brought to Cannes with great expectations only to have it poorly received and so found itself doomed to near oblivion. I don't know if this is true or not but I do know that this film really needs to be seen by more people because its simply a good story about love and the choices we make.Richard Harris is wonderful in what is really a supporting role as the inventor, who's attempt to make money in Old Russia is the catalyst for love and tragedy. As the lovers Julia Ormand and Oleg Menshikov are perfect who's lives and love take some decidedly unexpected twists.Despite it being over three hours I doubt you'll be bored, I wasn't. (Though now there's a fuller version running almost five hours out there. One can hope that this will show up on American shores since the prospect of knowing more about these characters is exciting) If you can, see this movie, its very good stuff.