The aftermath of the German siege of Leningrad, which began in September 1941 and was not lifted until early in 1944, is used by young Russian writer-director Kantemir Balagov to dramatize the traumatic impact of the Second World War had on Russian women. Inspired, as the director (who also co-wrote the screenplay with Alexander Terekhov) explains in an interview included on the disc, by the memories of their suffering and sacrifice compiled by Svetlana Alexievich in her Nobel Prize-winning 1985 oral history, Balagov has fashioned a script focusing on two women who served together in the front lines of the Soviet army. Blonde Iya (Viktoria Miroshnichenko), whose tall and thin physique has earned her the titular nickname, is a nurse serving in a Leningrad hospital after the war, tending to severely injured soldiers. She carries an injury as well, but a psychological one: she suffers from periodic spells during which she has no control over her body. Despite the malady, she is generally cheerful, especially when tending to toddler Pashka (Timofey Glazkov), apparently her son, whom she occasionally brings with her to work, to the delight of the patients. But a terrible accident involving the boy—shockingly staged by Balagov—occurs, as does a surprise, when Masha (Vasilisa Perelygina), short and dark, returns from her military service, which had taken her all the way to Berlin. It is revealed that she, rather than Iya, is actually Pashka’s mother, and when she learns about the boy’s accident, she pressures her friend to bear another child for her with the hospital’s kindly director (Andrey Bykov), since an injury makes it impossible for her to carry another pregnancy to term. (Iya agrees, though with a condition that makes for yet another uncomfortable sequence.) Masha also enters a relationship with Sasha (Igor Shirokov), an insistent young suitor who invites her to meet his wealthy parents, though their dinner, where Masha reveals what she had to resort to in order to survive, predictably does not go well. In the final analysis, Iya and Masha come to realize that they may be able to depend only on one another. The physical state of post-war Leningrad as depicted in Beanpole is not particularly horrifying; the building exteriors appear relatively unscathed and the apartment interiors, though shabby, largely intact. And apart from the wounds exhibited by the hospital patients, some of whom suffer from paralysis, the devastation the film portrays is psychological. No one has escaped the trauma of the city’s long ordeal and the war that caused it—except, of course, those like Sasha’s parents, who were presumably insulated from the disaster by their party connections. Given Balagov’s unsparing approach—and his employment of long, often wordless takes—his is not an easy film to watch. But the powerful narrative and riveting performances by Miroshnichenko and Perelygina make it a harrowing and unforgettable experience. Strongly recommended. (F. Swietek)