Pisma myortvogo cheloveka

This is a post-apocalyptic movie where a group of Russian intellectuals, living in the airtight vaults of a museum, cling on in the twilight, going slowly mad according to their own pompous wonts.

The movie is unremitting in its depressing depiction of a dead world. I was stuck between turning it off because it was almost sacrilegiously depressing, and remaining because of the sheer cataclysmic beauty. The images are mostly tinted yellow, although some shots are in tints of blue. There is no way this experience is going to allow you the respite of polychromatic images.

There is a body of work that deals with the end of humankind in cinema, but any example I can think of seems completely notional in conception, this one actually felt like a recording of the end of days, as unflinchingly profane as a documentary of viaticums.

I think it's also a tombstone for communism in Russia, suggested as a blind alley, and advocates a return to pre-revolutionary values regarding family and religion. But only in an intensely personal way, as if recounting the death of a close family member. It is more than a warning against nuclear war. In its parodying of ridiculous, pontificating, and obstructive authority, it's an emesis of authoritarian communism, a whole-hearted, wholesale rejection.

As an endnote, there's a dolly-out in the first few minutes of the film that left my jaw on the floor, practically the best shot I've ever seen in cinema, my congratulations to Konstantin Lopushansky and his team.

The story takes place in an eastern European country(no reference is made to what country) after a nuclear war. A military regime has been imposed, there is no reference weather this is a local regime or an occupation. The soldiers tend to carry western weapons like AR pattern rifles and HK G3. The main character lives with coworkers under the university buildings where they once worked , all characters have a type of confession to tell relating to the catastrophe. Decay is everywhere but there is also irony in the decay and destruction, such as the scene in the library that is half covered in water with pages upon pages floating on this evil soup of corpses and texts that the main character ,as a true scholar, goes to a semi submerged desk to study a book. Just like "Threads" this is the only other movie that truly shows how final a nuclear apocalypse would be.

This "Letters from a Dead Man" simply has got to be, hands down, one of the top three most depressing and pessimistic movies I ever encountered in my life. Of all Sci-Fi films dealing with remnants of life after the apocalypse – and believe me they are quite numerous – this Soviet Union produced sleeper upraises the most nightmarishly realistic and harrowing atmosphere ever. Even in your worst imaginable nightmares and premonitions, the post-nuclear existence probably still doesn't look as decayed and melancholic as illustrated here in this film. Survivors are forced to live underground, in the caves and catacombs of destroyed buildings, and have little else to do but watch each other fading away emotionally as well as physically. They can't go the surface without wearing special outfits and gas masks, but even then there's nothing else to do but stroll around between ruins, car wrecks and rotting corpses. With monotonous photography and the exclusive use of a yellow-tinted picture, director Konstantin Lopushansky (an acolyte of the Russian master Andrei Tarkovsky) fabricates the ideally lugubrious ambiance, and he can also rely on the devoted cast and bleakly void screenplay to assist.

The story revolves on Rolan Bykov as a scientist – former Nobel Price winner, even – who entrenched himself underneath the remnants of a library building along with his wife and a handful of co-workers. The titular letters are addressed to his son whom the scientist hasn't seen or heard from since the catastrophe. The letters and above all the hope his son is still alive somewhere is what keeps the poor man going, but how long can you hold on to hope when you see everything and everyone around you dying? "Letters from a Dead Man" is a difficult but ultimately very rewarding cinematic experience to endure. Difficult, of course, because of the emotionally devastating imagery and atmosphere, and because there's actually very little substantial content. We literally stare at a handful of people languishing and eventually dying, with only a small hint at hope near the end. And rewarding because of the depiction of genuine humane sentiments and the thought-provoking messages. It's also highly remarkable how "Letters from a Dead Man" remains continuously vague regarding the cause of the apocalypse and eventually even searches the guilt in the own heart. In a time where movies released on the other side of the Iron Curtain (in Europe and particularly the USA) routinely blamed Russia for the potentially upcoming apocalypse, this tale suggests the root cause of the catastrophe lies in a human error during the launch of a space shuttle. The entire cast gives away tremendous performances. I don't know if these people are veteran actors and actresses in their home countries, but their grimaces and catatonic behavior suggest that they were selected especially for this type of discouraging parable. Fantastic film; though obviously not fit for all occasions and/or audiences.

It took me some time to remember the title of this film, and it's certainly a hidden gem. In it's very slow pace, it transfers the mood of what will probably be if we went through a nuclear war. Great cinematography, and the quality of the film just makes it more profound and hipnotizing.

If you find this film, take your time any rainy day, and drift away in a world of dead and dying.

The world after a nuclear disaster. A world taken from the pages of Revelation. Dim light illuminates a scene of utter destruction. Survivors are sheltered in damp underground shelters while a nuclear winter screams over their heads. In the absolute turmoil the thirst for survival and the world human soul seeks the hope to continue ...

Letter from a Dead Man, established amidst the panic of a nuclear holocaust, the result of the irrational arms escalation with which the United States and the Soviet Union were putting pressure on each other and which threatened to transform life on our planet into something impracticable. However, the accident at the Chernobyl plant, which occurred five months before the premiere of this film, determines its most obvious message.

The panic to lose everything is definitely achieved, to reset the historical evolution of one single action, to forget the identity of species and break the commonly admitted social contract was identical in capitalism and socialism, especially because it was the common sense of the ordinary citizen who was demonstrating in pursuit of a understanding. What was the point of mutual annihilation, if no one would emerge victorious from the final battle? What is the goal of total domination, if there is nothing left to dominate? What is the meaning of the will to try to impose your own model, if the future is nothing more than a barren terrain lined with rubble?

But despite the uncompromising staging of the film, Konstantin Lopuschanski retains, maybe naturally, a humanistic core. Aside from the anti-nuclear aspect, "Letter From a Dead Man" is a haunting reminder for reason, in the resolute emphasis on human humanity, which ultimately represents a final anchor of hope. Therefore, the film closes with a quote from the infamous 1955 "Russel Einstein Manifesto" against nuclear war: "There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge, and wisdom. Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? "

The protagonist and his fellow sufferers are constantly preoccupied with questions about humanity, about the conditions of the human race and the absurdity of war. A resident of the museum bunker, for example, dictates a pathetic pamphlet to his secretary about the fatality of the civilization process in the machine, marked by deep disgust for progress and the awareness of the ultimate end of humanity - as a testament for subsequent civilizations. "Mankind was a tragic species, doomed perhaps from the very beginning." One of the roommates expresses his deep love for humanity in a farewell prayer shortly before his suicide; "Love created art, an art which reflects our unbearable yearning for perfection, our immense despair, our endless cry of terror..."

there is a also a great thought-provoking scene where the professor (the protagonist) remembers his childhood nightmare; when he was frightened by a big locomotive; and now it seems to him that it was he - with his inventions - who created the giant locomotive that overran humanity: and his most terrible dream is the one in which he sees his son on the rails...

Finally the professor tells his prodigal son the story of his fears, dreams and research, all of which together expresses one thing: his ambivalence between hope and self-abandonment, which characterize his whole situation and the essence of the movie. The movie also gives more suggestion to an existentialist and humanistic side that states that the face of death is not scary anymore given that everything has perished. And that hope can still be found in youth as the only remaining symbol of innocence, and that it is impossible to imagine that humanity will be wiped out permanently from the face of the earth.

Lopushansky assisted Tarkovsky during the production of Stalker - and that influence is clearly visible in every shot. that is its: sepia tones, long, static shots or slow driving on the landscape, melancholy intonation of caring questioning about where modern man is heading imbued with religious faith, etc. Visually, almost the entire film is coloured of sepia, brown-black, a ugly, grainy, 'dirty' sepia. it's not that high-contrast, sharp and somehow 'beautiful' sepia of STALKER. This is a film about a world that has driven itself to the grave, with a slow, elegiac, torturous atmosphere, it shows the last twitches of a man's futile attemps to save humanity.

But given all these great quotes etc, the movie's plot, in the beggining, is hard to grasp and many big factors in the film is not understandable at first. Thus it have a relatively poor structure and narrative.