With its epic David Lean-like aspirations, Sunstroke is clearly meant to be Russian heavyweight director Nikita Mikhalkov’s answer to Dr. Zhivago or Lawrence of Arabia. However, clocking in at three hours, this admittedly ambitious and beautifully lensed story is too thin to prop up such a grand cinematic scheme. Set in 1920 in the wake of Tsarist Russia’s fall to the Bolsheviks, Sunstroke initially centers on a group of stupefied White Russian Army officers surrendering en masse to the victorious Red Army, handing over their epaulettes and swallowing their imperialist pride in a haze of confusion and disbelief that they are capitulating to workers and peasants. These beleaguered soldiers have been herded into a processing camp, and are supposedly being readied to be shipped out of the country into retirement, although such an easy passage for these men seems dubious from the get-go. Eventually, one lieutenant’s story is singled out and told in alternating flashbacks and flash-forwards, giving viewers a glimpse of 1907 Russia, a place and time far more comfortable for the aristocracy. Tsarist Russia is depicted as a gilded, peaceful heaven on earth for those in the upper reaches of the class structure, where the lieutenant, who is engaged, has a bittersweet Brief Encounter-like fling with a married woman. Although Mikhalkov invests his characters with real humanity and vision, the director never delivers on the film’s initial epic promise. A strong optional purchase. (M. Sandlin)
Sunstroke
Icarus, 180 min., in Russian w/English subtitles, not rated, DVD: $26.99 Volume 33, Issue 3
Sunstroke
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