Burnt by the Sun (Utomlyonnye solntsem) (1994)

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General		Extras
Category	Drama	None
Rating
Year Of Production	1994
Running Time	146:00
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Nikita Mikhalkov
Studio Distributor	Umbrella Entertainment	Starring	Oleg Menshikov Nikita Mikhalkov Ingeborga Dapkunaite Nadezhda Mikhalkova André Oumansky Vyacheslav Tikhonov Svetlana Kryuchkova Vladimir Ilyin Alla A. Kazanskaya Nina Arkhipova Avangard Leontyev Inna Ulyanova Lyubov Rudneva
Case	Amaray-Transparent
RPI	?	Music	Eduard Artemyev

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	Russian Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.66:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.66:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

   The spirit of Anton Chekhov runs deep in Russian director Nikita Mikhalov's Burnt by the Sun. Like the plays of the great Soviet artist the film is a snapshot of a moment of societal change in which the past and the future collide with devastating effect. Also like Chekhov the film blends deep sorrow and farce in an examination of the human condition.

Kotov (director Nikita Mikhalov who also contributed to the screenplay) is a hero of the Bolshevik revolution. Revered by all, his picture hanging in all the right places, he has retired to a country home with his young and beautiful wife Maroussia (Ingeborga Dapkunaite) and their young daughter Nadia (the director's real daughter Nadia Mikhalov). It is 1936 and the battle for control of the state is well over. Another battle, however, is just around the corner.

Life is idyllic in the country, in a Chekhovian way, with tea parties, trips to the swimming home and endless opportunity for discussion between the young, the old and the dotty neighbours. For the first 30 minutes of the film it is hard to see where the conflict might come from as Mikhalhov painstakingly builds up a picture of life on a rural estate that could have been lifted straight from The Cherry Orchard.

One fine day a crazy old man enters the household, running riot and creating mayhem, before revealing himself as Dmitri (Oleg Menchikov) a former resident of the area. The old man disguise is the first of many games he will play.

The middle two thirds of the film is consumed with the question: why is he here? Is it because Dmitri and Maroussia were lovers. He abandoned her, leading to a half-hearted suicide attempt. Their feelings rush back as the pair are brought together. Is the film to be about the lure of the past - the revered but much older Kotov versus the younger and vibrant Dimitri?

When Dimitri reveals he is a member of the NKVD, Stalin's Secret Police, the plot darkens. Is his return a simple visit or part of the storm that would become the dictators purges?

Burnt by the Sun won the Grand Jury at the Cannes Film Festival and the 1994 Academy Award for Best Foreign language film. It is well acted by the principals and there is a standout performance from the directors' daughter. The version on this release is the longer (146 minute) cut of the film. Mikhalkov was clearly intent on setting up the country life and punctuating the idylls with the bizarre - the interruptions of the military in the form of odd training methods and a ball of light that appears at key times - but the effect of the longer cut is to draw out the film and perhaps challenge the patience of some viewers. When the tale turns pitch black towards the end it achieves a measure of sorrow and profundity (perhaps like the end of Uncle Vanya) but the conclusion seems rushed compared to the drawn out scenes of tea parties with the constantly boiling samovar.

That said Burnt by the Sun is a sobering experience and a reminder of one the darker periods of human history.

Video

    Burnt by the Sun was shot on 35mm film and projected at the European widescreen ratio of 1:66:1. That ratio is preserved for the DVD release. It is 16x9 enhanced.

Burnt by the Sun is a long film, at 146 minutes, hence my concern to find that the transfer has been crammed onto a single layer DVD. Why? The only logical answer is that a 4Gb transfer is the only one currently floating around the digital universe. Umbrella Entertainment, one suspects, got the transfer and thought it a waste to stick on a dual-layered disk.

In fact, my concerns were largely unfounded. This film looks like a 1994 Russian movie but the overall presentation of the film is not too bad.

Compression, surprisingly, is no real problem. Only occasionally do compression artefacts show up. Softness, particularly in diffuse light, is more of a problem. Overall it lacks sharpness.

The flesh tones are reasonably accurate.

There are subtitles which are burnt into the print. This gets a bit complex in the opening minutes where a song is translated from French to Russian and then to English. The subtitles are easy to read.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    Burnt by the Sun features a Dolby Digital 2.0 Russian track running at 224 Kb/s.

The soundtrack is adequate for the film. The dialogue can be heard clearly and appears to be in audio sync.

There is no apparent damage to the soundtrack.

The score is by Edward Artemyev. It consists of strings appropriate to the period. The film draws its name from the Russian folk song which features a few times in the film. It gives that sense of the bittersweet to the narrative.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

There are no extras.

   Burnt by the Sun is available in Regions 1 and 2. The Region 1 is not 16x9 enhanced but otherwise the versions available in other Regions are similar and similarly devoid of extras. This version is actually marked All Regions.

    Burnt by the Sun is a powerful film about the Stalinistic purges although the dramatic aspect of the narrative doesn't really emerge until late in the piece. For many the length of the film combined with an average transfer will be too much. For my part I thought it a road worth taking but perhaps too much of a look back at an older style of Russian filmmaking. Interestingly, the director is apparently making a sequel to Burnt by the Sun.

Video
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Extras
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Overall