Burnt by the Sun

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Burnt By the Sun
Burnt by the Sun is a 1994 film by Nikita Mikhalkov and depicts one day in the life of a senior Red Army officer (Nikita Mikhalkov) vacationing in the countryside with his wife and child during the 1930's Great Purges in Stalinist Soviet Union. The film is a tragedy, and in the English release the film is dedicated to "all those burned by the sun of the Revolution".

Overview
In the Soviet Union during the summer of 1936, Army commander Sergei Petrovich Kotov (Nikita Mikhalkov), his wife, Marusia and his daughter, Nadya, are enjoying their family vacation. Marusia's lost love, Mitya, missing for 13 years, suddenly shows up at her family's dacha. Although he's greeted warmly, Mitya has a secret agenda: to arrest Kotov for his part in a nonexistent conspiracy to assassinate Stalin. (source)

Themes
Themes to consider for research:
 * The sun
 * Influence of Stalin and the balloon
 * Differences between Stalinist Russia and Soviet Russia
 * Peasants and the countryside culture vs urban Soviet culture
 * Utomlennoe Solntse and other variations of the suicide tango

Film Criticism
"The movie can be read as a parable about the approaching change in Soviet direction as the war begins, or about the treachery of friendship, or about the dangers of complacency. Unfortunately, unless it can also be read as a story, it has little interest for viewers, who cannot be expected to care about characters merely because of what they symbolize."

- Roger Ebert's 1995 review of Burnt by the Sun

"The pathos is complete. The directorial tone and method enforce this sentiment. In 1995 Burnt by the Sun was the winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Picture. It richly deserved both prizes."

- Nick Taussig's review of Burnt by the Sun

"The Icarian theme encapsulated in the film's title (actually, the words of a popular song that the characters sing) suggests that no matter howhonorable and sincere the revolution's agents (such as Kotov) might have been, they were doomed by flying too close to the "sun" of a flawed utopia. The "sun" is at the same time the apex of a brutalized society organized hierarchically around a "sun" potentate; even its most idealistic officers are implicated in this reality. The film reminds us, however, that our ex post facto perspective on the 1930s is also flawed; for many, this was still an age of belief. The filmmaker uses details such as Kotov's insistence that the dacha household abandon their"bourgeois" pastime of croquet and take up instead the "people's game" ofsoccer to make the point."

- The American Historical Review's review of Burnt by the Sun