Burnt By the Sun

This has to be one of my favorite movies we have watched so far. I don't have anything against silent or black and white films, but I felt this movie had a really great plot and it was interesting to see how it unfolded. I also like the characters in the film. Each one had a purpose and made it very enjoyable to watch. For example, Kotov had a very similar personality to Chapaev. They were both very proud individuals who believed in the cause and wanted nothing more than to promote Russian ideologies. However, like everything in Russian cinema, there are underlying themes and symbols that have to do with communist propaganda.

Immediately, I noticed the director's use of the Russian landscape in the first few scenes, depicting the beautiful motherland. Another thing I noticed right away were the farmers hard at work in the fields and the Russian tanks that came out of nowhere. I felt this scene had a correlation to the worker and the collective farm woman statue. The tanks were symbolic towards the hammer while the farmers represented the sickle.

Another symbol that I felt was very strange in the film was the small orb that was floating around in a few scenes. At first, it seemed like something out of a science fiction movie, but the more I thought about it, I realized that it was symbolic towards Kotov being "burned by the sun." The orb was actually a small sun that was almost on the hunt for Kotov. Wherever it went, death seemed to follow. This held true with both Kotov and Mitya. The title of the movie, "Burnt by the Sun" is very fitting for the plot. While it is also a title for a very popular tune in Russia in the 1930s, the "sun" in this case is supposed to represent Stalin. When someone thinks of the sun, the most common thought is that it is a celestial body in which all the planets revolve around. In Russia during this time period, Stalin was viewed no differently. He was the "sun" that everyone revolved around. He was the supreme leader that controlled everything. Once Stalin felt Kotov was a threat to his power, Kotov became helpless very quickly. Stalin set his confidants out to find him to attest to his "crimes."

In the movie, we don't see what happened to Kotov after Stalin's agents arrested him. However, he was later shot and killed after confessing for charges against him. What I found ironic about how this situation went down was the fact that Young Pioneer children had just come to Kotov's house to praise him as a hero in the Revolution and the Civil War before the agents came for him. Kotov even sent the Pioneers on their way after leading them in an oath of loyalty towards Stalin. It just seemed very unfair.

Overall, I thought this was a fantastic movie. I did some research and it turns out it received an academy award for best foreign language film. I'm not surprised at all. I feel like the movie was made to give the audience a sense of what Russia was like under the Stalin's regime. While it had propaganda, it was more for history's sake. I think that is why it had such an impact with the international audience. I hope we watch more movies like this in class.