Konchalovsky made tremendous films at the beginning of his career (Ivan's Childhood, Andrei Rublev etc.), then again very recently (Paradise, Sin, Dear Comrades). Both his Russian and Holllywood/international projects in between those poles were very uneven, and even at their best seemed less personal. Having caught up with some of his earliest and latest work recently, I was eager to finally see this very long (4 1/2 hours) film from the end of his original Soviet period.
But "Siberiade's" episodic tapestry of successive generations over the course of the 20th century is sort of like a very Russian version of those three-hour Claude Lelouch extravaganzas--you know, the ones where he just throws together a bunch of archetypal characters and historical incidents sprawling over decades, hoping the "sweep" of it all will carry you along. This, too, is the kind of epic that's all width and not much depth. In fact it feels more like one of the robust, broad, somewhat pandering directorial movies of his brother Nikita Mikhalkov, who plays a leading character in this movie's 2nd half.
Similarly to his sibling's films, the female characters are all sexpots, there's a lot of broad comedy, and the visuals are often pretty without any true lyricism, just as there's sentimentality but no spirituality. It feels like a movie that well-connected Muscovites would make about Siberia, rather than Siberians themselves, as if we're in a 20th-century version of Chekhov's seriocomic provincial Russian life--particularly since after the beginning, almost nothing takes place in snowy weather. (But then, maybe that outsider perspective IS the point, that a far-flung region with its own distinct character became simply a source of natural-resources extraction wealth for a distant central government.)
The characters behave colorfully yet all sort of blur together, drifting in and out of the anecdotal storytelling, played at different ages by different actors. There's no sense of a grand narrative arc, or overarching themes that are treated with any real seriousness--at least not until the second half, when despoiling of the land becomes the major thesis. (But it's not really established in the first half that the characters feel terribly connected to the land--indeed, it seems more of an adversary to them.)
Which is not to say that "Siberiade" isn't entertaining and flavorful, with some memorable passages. (Though the rather arbitrary shifts to tinted B&W don't particularly help.) It's just that I want something more for my 4.5 hours' time, particularly from a director who's made considerably shorter films that nonetheless seemed far more substantial, even more ambitious.
But "Siberiade's" episodic tapestry of successive generations over the course of the 20th century is sort of like a very Russian version of those three-hour Claude Lelouch extravaganzas--you know, the ones where he just throws together a bunch of archetypal characters and historical incidents sprawling over decades, hoping the "sweep" of it all will carry you along. This, too, is the kind of epic that's all width and not much depth. In fact it feels more like one of the robust, broad, somewhat pandering directorial movies of his brother Nikita Mikhalkov, who plays a leading character in this movie's 2nd half.
Similarly to his sibling's films, the female characters are all sexpots, there's a lot of broad comedy, and the visuals are often pretty without any true lyricism, just as there's sentimentality but no spirituality. It feels like a movie that well-connected Muscovites would make about Siberia, rather than Siberians themselves, as if we're in a 20th-century version of Chekhov's seriocomic provincial Russian life--particularly since after the beginning, almost nothing takes place in snowy weather. (But then, maybe that outsider perspective IS the point, that a far-flung region with its own distinct character became simply a source of natural-resources extraction wealth for a distant central government.)
The characters behave colorfully yet all sort of blur together, drifting in and out of the anecdotal storytelling, played at different ages by different actors. There's no sense of a grand narrative arc, or overarching themes that are treated with any real seriousness--at least not until the second half, when despoiling of the land becomes the major thesis. (But it's not really established in the first half that the characters feel terribly connected to the land--indeed, it seems more of an adversary to them.)
Which is not to say that "Siberiade" isn't entertaining and flavorful, with some memorable passages. (Though the rather arbitrary shifts to tinted B&W don't particularly help.) It's just that I want something more for my 4.5 hours' time, particularly from a director who's made considerably shorter films that nonetheless seemed far more substantial, even more ambitious.