Earth (1930) User Reviews

EARTH (Alexander Dovzhenko, 1930) ***

[Bunuel1976 · 7/10 · 1 January 2014]

This is one of those "critics' darlings" titles that frequently crops up in "All-Time Best Films" polls; however, it is also one which certainly seems to have lost its edge with the passage of time. While I am generally a fan of politically-themed movies, I have always admired the early Russian classics for their pioneering use of film language but found them oppressively heavy-going viewing overall. This belated Silent is considered to be its director's masterwork and, despite the brevity of its running time (70 minutes), this standard opinion holds true regardless, notwithstanding the relative simplicity of its plot: tragedy strikes a farming community when oncoming progress (the use of a new tractor to plough the land in place of the old horse-driven method) divides it into two factions.

The intertitles on the copy I acquired (taken from the Kino DVD) are stiltedly Americanized and the acting style is typically hammy; what ultimately saves the film and preserves its reputation as a precious cinematic document are the strikingly lyrical compositions – highlighted by the extended funeral sequence of the murdered tractor driver which is powerfully intercut with the breakdown of the killer in a field, the lonely naked wife of the murdered man in the throes of sexual frenzy, a middle-aged villager going through labor pains, an elderly priest invoking a curse upon the godless community that has shunned him and an impromptu political rally by the mourners!

Earth - The Realities of Communism

[arthur_tafero · 7/10 · 18 March 2022]

This film is far more revealing about how communism did not work as well as it was planned for collectivist farming and other forms of communes. In theory communism sounds like an equitable system to raise the poor out of poverty, but in reality, there is always someone around who wants to be a boss or wants a bit more than everyone else. When you factor these types of people into the picture, you get more of a form of corrupt capitalism than communism. Either way, the film is living proof that collectivism could never work (and failed again in China decades later under Mao), and that families come before politics and countries.

Poetic and spiritual, but also incredibly naive

[gbill-74877 · 8/10 · 27 April 2020]

This film really got me thinking. How is it possible to like a propaganda film made at the behest of a dictator, extolling the virtues of a specific policy that would lead to the death of over ten million people? We find the work of Leni Riefenstahl problematic to say the least, but how is this any different? The answer I think is not just in the beauty of the images in this film (and they are considerable), it's in the beauty of communism's ideals - to sweep aside the old power structures of religion and the unfairness of a class-based society, so that the common man could share in the fruit of his labor.

That's what director Alexander Dovzhenko is showing us, these ideals, and he presents them in such a poetic, spiritual way as to be deeply moving. We see the waves of grain billowing in the wind, and the towering clouds floating majestically in the sky. We see the creatures under the sky as equals, and brothers. It's presented as the inevitable flow of power to the people. God is no longer the paternalistic deity of our fathers, god is in land and the bounty our shared labor creates. Vindictive to none and fair to all, it's a new world in which "We'll prosper with tractors." It's all incredibly naïve, but there is great power in its idealism.

In an era of extreme capitalism reminiscent of the Gilded Age, it's easy to gravitate to the concept expressed in the film of simply taking the wealth (in this case, the earth) away from the rich, but at the same time it shouldn't be forgotten just how horrible communism was in the Soviet Union. The collectivism we see extolled here killed millions, and they were ironically concentrated in Ukraine, where Dovzhenko was from and made the film. The kulak who murders out of his opposition to collectivism is essentially pardoned by the crowd, whereas the reality under Stalin was far different. One can only wonder what Dovzhenko thought of how communism played out in reality over the decades which followed.

The film's spirituality and exuberant love for the peasantry made it suspect by communist leaders at the time, who I think would have preferred a more naturalistic approach. In one fantastic scene the peasant father says through a steely stare that "There ain't no god," but the music we hear throughout the film is soaring with a kind of religious reverence, and while weeping over a funeral, one of the elderly peasant women says "Without a priest. That's all very well, if there is no God, but what if there is!" It's in these things and in the sublime beauty of Dovzhenko artistry that made me appreciate this film somewhere deep within me.

An Unusual & Memorable Film

[Snow Leopard · 5 March 2004]

What an unusual and memorable film this is, almost more like a poem or an impressionist painting than a movie. It's filled with activity and images that push the actual story into the background. Sometimes the characters overreact to events in a highly exaggerated fashion, while at other times they barely respond to what happens - yet it seems both real and believable. The movie is probably not quite as great as some would have it, but it has an unusual appeal that makes you want to watch it (or, perhaps, experience it) over again.

The scenes often have little connection with one another, and it's clear that the plot is not meant to be the main emphasis. On the surface, the story is about the collective farm, their hopes of getting new machinery, and their rivalry with the independent landowners. But it's intended to be something more subtle and worthwhile than a political message. The themes and images involving the characters and, especially, the "Earth" itself, are more vivid than the slight story-line.

To be sure, the collectivist perspective from which the film was made is rather obvious. But that does not detract from this unusual achievement. And while it would not work as light or casual entertainment, it is well worth watching, and it's a movie you won't forget afterwards.

Dovzhenko's masterpiece.

[Rigor · 10/10 · 9 May 1999]

This great masterpiece of Soviet cinema has images so powerful and an editing technique so bold that at times the narrative is transcended. By this I mean that the film goes beyond it's original intention of arguing for changes from individualistic to more technologized and collective agricultural strategies and becomes a kind of realization of what a "liberated" agricultural zone would really look and feel like. This is a film ripe with the excitement of the creation of a new art to match a hopeful new world. It hardly needs to be mentioned that Stalinsit forces decried the final results of this masterpiece; calling it decadent and stylistically elitist. In actuality the film is too Marxist (I would go so far as to say too Leninist) for Stalinism. The film respects the ability of the viewer (and the viewers were assumed to be proletariat working class and agricultural workers) to grapple with rigorous ideas and images and to function outside of the narrative frame of individualistic melodrama. Like many early Soviet films this work seems not only ahead of its time, but, actually ahead of ours.

Pioneering artistic film making

[vitachiel · 7/10 · 5 November 2012]

This is one enjoyably weird film. Knowing nothing of it beforehand, I soon figured out that I was watching a dramatized epic about the germ of Soviet society. But what if there wouldn't have been subtitles? Then I probably would have thought I was a spectator of a really freaked out ghost story.

Farmer horror, that's what it is. Ecstatic, possessed faces. Heroes turning into loony madmen, dancing like überhappy drunks. A widow naked, gone crazy with unutterable despair. People sliding off the roofs of their farmhouses, collectively shouting 'it is here!' But what is here? The new Messiah? The ultimate truth? Zombie heaven?

No, just good ol' plain communist pizazz.

True communist poetry.

[miloc · 10/10 · 7 March 2006]

From its opening, with an elderly man dying surrounded by impassive adults and obliviously playing children, to its wildly emotional finale, this breathtaking silent work transcends its politics and functions as poetry. It's unmistakeably Soviet -- the messianic fervor of the scene in which the farming community greets the arrival of a tractor would seem like parody if it weren't for Dovzhenko's extraordinary sense of lyricism. Using repeated shots of the expectant farmers crying out "It's coming!" intercut with an empty horizon, he builds the moment so completely that you're excited in spite of yourself; you totally believe in that tractor. (As one of the "rich farmers" says, shellshocked by this threat to their future, "It's a fact. It's here.")

To call the film propaganda, while true, seems rather beside the point. Aren't all films? Dovzhenko's manipulations are certainly no less devious than those of western film. Switch the communist message to a patriotic or even capitalist one, and the setting to the World War II Pacific or the old west or wherever you choose and it's no different than, say, "Shane" or "Gone With the Wind" or "The Passion of the Christ" -- just much, much better.

The story, told in rich montages of motionless figures, fruit, machinery, skies, rippling fields, and above all faces, weaves its "official" message about collective farms and private property with larger themes of religion, the generation gap, and the cycle of life: the Earth that gives life takes it away. A group of children giggle and spy on an old man listening at his friend's grave for a last message; a man sits up on his deathbed to eat a last sweet pear; a serious young radical, alone, gives himself up to a joyful moonlit dance before falling into the dirt. Dovzhenko's approach has less to do with narrative than with creating visual textures; it looks as though Terrence Malick watched this more than a few times before making "Days of Heaven." Dovzhenko's discontinuities and repetitions can be initially bewildering, but they pack a concrete wallop. The images accumulate and crystallize, carrying greater and greater weight, and, as an aging farmer becomes suddenly radicalized by tragedy, the direct shots of his face, hardening in bewilderment and outrage, take on a thunderous power.

Earth

[jboothmillard · 7/10 · 24 September 2014]

I found this silent film listed in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, the title did not suggest any particular format or story possibilities to me, but it was rated five out of five stars by critics, so I was hoping it would be worthy of that. Basically this film portrays the lives and collective experience of the Ukrainian proletariat villagers (i.e. "proles", these are labourers), through a series of montages it examines many of the natural cycles. The people go through life, love, sex, violence and death, all relating to their collective farms, a group of farmers from the village unite together to purchase a tractor, but peasants oppose the union and any threat to authority, the revolt will forever remain in the memories of the people. Specifically this film portrays what could have happened if Communism was more idealistic, this film was made before Stalinism was set and before the Kulack class was liquidated. Starring Stepan Shkurat as Opanas, Semyon Svashenko as Vasili 'Basil' Opanas, Pyotr Masokha as Khoma 'Thomas' Whitehorse, Nikolai Nademsky as Semyon 'Simon' Opanas, Vladimir Mikhaylov as Village Priest, Yelena Maksimova as Natalya - Vasili's Fiancée, Yuliya Solntseva as Vasili's Sister and Ivan Franko as Arkhip Whitehorse - Khoma's Father. Admittedly because the film has no dialogue, only some moving music and intertitles to read, it was hard to concentrate or completely absorb some of what was going on, but it was very interesting to watch how things flowed along, its brilliance is probably just its simplicity, it is indeed a most watchable silent drama. Very good!

mind-bogglingly great

[jonathan-577 · 10/10 · 27 December 2006]

Now I regret all the times I've railed about how propaganda is synonymous with contempt for the audience. It is sometimes hard to know what to say about a movie when it is a 'best of all time list' warhorse, but not this time. I have never - ever - seen a movie with a more deliberate, or surer, sense of rhythm. Two sequences that are nothing but long montages of fruit are absolutely riveting. A man sits, re-evaluating his world view, and because it takes a long time to do that we fade to black THREE times over about a minute, without him moving or changing position. This glacial tempo lulls us, so that Dovzhenko can jolt us with the arrival of a speedy tractor; or a collectivo's joyous dance through the dust over several lengthy wide shots is disrupted by his abrupt murder. Then the movie climaxes with an unbelievable crescendo where at least FIVE events are montaged, in perfectly comprehensible rhetorical construction. The movie begins with a death scene whose understated acting is mind-boggling even now, forget 1930; the final shot balances all the anti-church rhetoric with an image that is absolutely redemptive and spiritual, only the point is that redemption is found in LIFE. I'm not being pompous, this movie actually functions on that level. It achieves poetry AND propaganda in a way that I've never ever experienced before. It kind of reminds me of Brian Wilson's "Smile" in its modest grandeur, so true that it's painful, but so f***ing great that you want to experience it again and again. You can get it for free at the St. Catharines Library.

Alexander Dovzhenko's communistic propaganda to glorify the Soviet collectivization.

[SAMTHEBESTEST · 7/10 · 15 June 2021]

Zemlya / Earth (1930) : Brief Review -

Alexander Dovzhenko's communistic propaganda to glorify the Soviet collectivization. Earth is often misunderstood by foreign cinema viewers and sometimes even by their own Soviet audience. It's fair to acknowledge the mixed reviews as the Political and revolutionalist Propaganda films always have two sides and two different kind of supporters. I wasn't familiar with this Soviet Collectivization and hostility of Kulak landowners stuff so for me it was quite a new thing to watch and to learn. In the peaceful countryside, a young man Vassily opposes the rich kulaks over the coming of collective farming. Others come in support and after a tragedy what they chose is all you have to watch in the film. The branding of local revolution always attract me, that is one of the main reason why i found all those Sergie Eisenstein's hard-hitting realistic Russian classics highly impressive. With Earth, the same factor has worked for me. Watching this entire proceed of collectivization and that Kaluks' reference, the machine use, farming and all, everything has been fantastic to watch with amazing framework. It gives you those pauses to understand the situations, i mean if anyone finds it difficult to understand then you get these slow moments to recollect what you have missed. It generally happens with foreign language cinema if the film is highly inspired by some revolt from remote place, especially when it's a silent film. Earth has different motives to tell, it may please some chunk of audience who follows the communist propaganda and it might lacerate some who are or were against it. The best to say is, it is more understandable to Soviet audience who can judge it better than others. Overall, it's a gutsy film with some real motives, we just need to look at it from postive perspective.

RATING - 7/10*

By - #samthebestest.

What the...?

[daustin · 3/10 · 13 November 1998]

I don't usually have a problem with surreal films but this one was deadly. There are some nice visual touches that justifiably lend this movie historical importance but watching it is a misery. The dialogue: "Gonna die, huh?" "Yep." The naked fat woman running around in her house for arcane reasons. The MOST boring characters I have ever encountered outside of a Slasher film. Admittedly all these things have their artistic rhyme and reason, but they're still about as fun to watch as an elderly relative cutting their toenails.

Just stunning

[preppy-3 · 10/10 · 25 June 2004]

This silent film focuses on a small Ukranian village in 1930. It's about small independent farmers working against a "collective"--a state run collaboration of farms. The film (kind of) is about their conflict.

To be truthful there isn't much of a story--that's secondary in this film. The imagery is what counts and it's truly stunning. It contains some of the most gorgeous footage I've ever seen of nature and, in images, clearly documents man's love of the earth. There are characters and a minor story but they're actually pretty bad--the story is painfully slow, the acting horrendous (one very good-looking actor just stands there with a big beautiful grin on his face no matter WHAT the scene is about) and has some of the most laughable dialogue cards I've ever seen (I'm assuming it doesn't translate well from Russian). Also the "restored" print looks pretty terrible. Still the images are incredible and there's a beautiful music score going along with it.

Historically and visually this is a landmark of world cinema--a definite must-see. Try to see the unedited prints which contain surprising (for 1930) female nudity.

Beautiful Simplicity

[gavin6942 · 7/10 · 25 June 2013]

In the peaceful countryside, Vassily (Semyon Svashenko) opposes the rich kulaks over the coming of collective farming.

This film is often cited alongside Eisenstein's "The Battleship Potemkin" (1925) as one of the most important films of the Soviet era. C. A. Lejeune praised the film's main section, saying that it "contains perhaps more understanding of pure beauty in cinema, more validity of relation in moving image, than any ten minutes of production yet known to the screen."

Indeed, what makes this film great is its simplicity. Each shot is focused on a face or an action without any attempts to have too long of a length between cuts. This creates a sense of the image rather than a moving picture... still telling a story, but done with each piece rather than the aggregate.

Not even bad in a "fun" way

[TooShortforThatGesture · 2/10 · 4 September 2006]

Just dull dull dull dull dull. Oh -- and pointless. What "art" there is in this movie is limited to still compositions. A great work to demonstrate the importance of a cinematographic eye rather than a compositional one. Some pretty black and white pictures of fruit ripening on the vine and some waving wheat. A silly segment where a man discusses the fact that he's about to die, gets a little something to eat and says "ok I'm going to die now" and does. Other than that -- 70-odd minutes of obscure and ineffective propaganda in favor of tractors and collectivization. If Lenin had seen this movie he would have gone into investment banking, rather than waste more time espousing communism. Please don't waste your time on this.

Earth

[spoilsbury_toast_girl · 15 June 2008]

Dovzhenko was a 'modernist' who drew deepest inspiration from traditional arts. His ode to the beginning of the collectivization is actually an orgy of intoxicant images of bulging clouds, waving wheat fields, ripening fruits and pelting horses.

The arrival of a tractor is hailed by the farmers. They begin to believe that an improved life has started, but Kulaks murder the young leader of the village party committee. This only encourages the village inhabitants in their resoluteness. In a sublime finale sequence, Dovzhenko unites birth, death, harvest, technical progress and solidarity, when the dead are returned to Earth that he loved so much.

No abstract summary can do justice to the extraordinary sensualism of this remarkable film. Whoever searches for the roots of Andrei Tarkovsky's cinema has to start with "Zemlya".

Can Art Transcend Propaganda?

[bobdunn9 · 9/10 · 5 August 2006]

Like 'The Birth of a Nation' or 'The Triumph of the Will', 'Earth' is a brilliant, groundbreaking film even if morally despicable. And in retrospect of what happened after its release, Stalin's liquidation of millions of Kulaks, its hard not to compare Dovzhenko's Marxism to Reifenstahl's fascism or Griffith's racism. Apologists for all of these filmmakers tell us to 'ignore the story' or 'ignore the propaganda'. Even the Kino DVD introduction instructs us to not take the film literally.

Perhaps instead of asking, 'Can propaganda be art?' the better question is , 'Can art transcend propaganda.' In 'Earth', I think Dovzhenko partially succeeds. The lyrical cycles of birth and death on the Ukrainian steppe are told with visual poetry. In fact, as the film goes on Dovzhenko obviously becomes uninterested in the circumstances of Vasily's murder and martyrdom for the collectivist cause. No doubt, the Soviet regime produced this film to (a) encourage collectivization against private ownership, and (b) Encourage a retro-pagan worship of agrarian life against orthodox Christianity. The collectivist vs. Kulak story in (a) is crude and unconvincing propaganda to a modern audience with historical perspective on Stalin's brutalities in the 1930's. However, it is with the fertile imagery and montage of natural cycles in (b) that Dovzhenko succeeds beautifully and transcends the story and makes it timeless.

Silent Soviet Cinema's Apex

[jay4stein79-1 · 10/10 · 15 February 2006]

As majestic as the early films of Eisenstein are, his silent era work cannot hold a candle to the fluid, gorgeous humanism present in Dovzhenko's Earth. This is, perhaps, a little ironic, considering that the film is largely concerned with the benefits of collectivism and the wonder of tractors.

Or is it? Maybe Earth is a subtle undermining of the "Soviet spirit," implying that the collective, which rejoices at the tractor's entrance, is foolish for doing so--foolish for abandoning their joyous, pagan, and, consequently, slightly anarchic past. Does Dovzhenko appreciate the mechanization of agriculture or does he despair at the effects of progress?

Like most Soviet filmmakers, Dovzhenko demonstrates ideology that is never clear and always ambivalent.

Really, though, that is not and should not be the point of this film. What matters are the images. This film is filled with beautiful and poetic visuals--incomparable in early cinema, if you ask me. Nothing comes close to touching the absolute perfection of the shots here. It's amazing. Eisenstein, Griffith, and Murnau may have introduced important elements into the cinematic language, but Dovzhenko made, I think, the first cinematic work of absolute beauty. Fans of Wong Kar Wai or Terrence Malick would do well to visit this film by their forbearer.

Humbling - the masterpiece of Soviet cinema.

[the red duchess · 10/10 · 20 December 2000]

'Earth' purports to be about people and history, about the huge traumas violent lurches in history can cause, as one period gives way to the next, especially when the first has been engrained into the psyche of a people for centuries. But, as the title suggests, the film is really about the earth, nature, as it opens and closes with two stunning emanations of a pantheistic spirit, as the wind blows over a vast meadow, creating a violent wave-like moment in an immoveable space, or the final montage of spring, renewal, fruit, sun, rain, following on from the delirious dramatic symphony, as a number of plot-points converge to the point of frenzy.

Nature is as subject to violence and change as the human order - is this what Dovzhenko is saying? Or rather, does immemorial, unchanging nature stand indifferent to the petty problems of man? In that opening hymn, any human activity is stilled, at one with nature, as a young girl stares with less personality and force than a neighbouring sunflower. Throughout, at moments where the human crises are at their most compelling, Dovzhenko emphasises nature, the monumental, dumb animals who observe the scenes with godlike calm; the huge skyscapes that obscure the apparent drama of the tractor arrival. Human poses that emphasise power are quickly cut down to size, reduced to mere heads. Even the rhythmic montage of industrial activity the tractor brings in its wake suggests the accelerated cycle of the seasons. And I thought only the Archers or King Vidor know anything about filming nature.

This is not to say that human activity is rendered pointless. Set against, or, rather, co-existing with the powerful sense of nature is an ennobling of humanity. This is a story about peasants, of whom there were nameless millions in Russia, and yet Dovzhenko films their drama as a Wagnerian epic, a real Twilight of the Gods. The opening sequence, as an old man dies, has a mesmeric, ritual, monumental quality, increased by the reverential pacing, the awareness of death, the deliberate gestures, the iconic close-ups.

The music throughout, for my money worthy of Herrman and Morricone (i.e. the best) has an epic Wagnerian quality; here it is hushed, foreboding; later dissonant violence clashes with Romantic outpouring and dramatic intensity, all with a cyclic, fluid, unstable rush - that final symphony I mentioned, the hero's funeral, overpowers with its combination of music, montage, narrative and image.

Only the myopic and American could possibly see this masterpiece as propagandist. Dovzhenko utilises many of the 'intellectual' methods of Eisenstein, but continually disrupts them, collapsing political dialectics into a mystical, paganistic, spiritual ejaculation, with narrative always secondary to feeling - Vasili's death, a possessed dance at the crossroads; the old man who tries to communicate with the dead. The closing images of resurrection are all a staggering two fingers to materialism and socialist realism.

Masterpiece?

[communicator-1 · 3/10 · 5 December 2015]

First, let me state that I am a big fan of Foreign and Silent Films. I count Ingmar Bergman and Sergei Eisenstein among my favorites. Because this film has such a favorable reputation I looked forward to viewing it. I sat through the entire film, because I thought I must be missing something. I wasn't. How can this boring and silly film be considered a masterpiece? The acting (acting?) conveys either boredom or ridiculous hysteria, with nothing in between. Story is nonexistent with a complete lack of editing. The camera dwells on objects for interminable lengths of time, to the point that you wonder if it was intentional. I suppose that art lies in the eyes of the beholder, but this film provided me with the longest 73 minutes of my life.

Interesting visually and a fine example of that period's propaganda

[ocelot999 · 9/10 · 16 June 2005]

A visually experimental film (even by today's standard) and a fine example of propaganda from that period. One has to remember that at the time, collective farms in Russia were still a bold social experiment (as was propaganda as a phenomenon for that matter), and it was not at all clear that it will end in failure. So the film's authors were not necessarily insincere or somehow oppressed by "Stalinist forces" to show it in a positive light. This may seem unusual for the westerners not accustomed to hearing of communism other than as a swear word. I hope that somebody undertakes to restore this film using modern digital technique, to remove all the flicker and uneven brightness, imagine how much more beautiful it could be. I have to mention also that English translation of the inter-titles is not accurate, at some points distorting their meaning. For example, when the arriving tractor stalls, the women shout "It stopped" and not "It's here"; later the party boss says "A tractor cannot stop" translated as "the tractor can't arrive" (or something), depriving the English-speaking audience of a subtle moment of satire in the film.

A worthy effort, but as far as I could tell, it was just propaganda.

[lee_eisenberg · 5/10 · 26 September 2005]

"Zemlya" - called "Earth" in English - was the first (and so far only) Alexander Dovzhenko movie that I've ever seen. It was a good effort, but it was mostly just Socialist Realism. The story focuses on Vassily, a farmer doing everything possible to oppose the takeover of his farm. There's some magnificent imagery, but the movie is mostly propaganda. If it is about how much we love the Earth, then that's a total joke for the Soviet Union, considering the environmental degradation that their government created (think Chernobyl).

So, if you're going to watch this movie, I guess that you would mostly do so as a historical reference. And people with short attention spans won't like it at all.

A Living Organism

[dougdoepke · 24 January 2011]

Stalin may have wanted an ode to collective agriculture; what he got instead was a hymnal to mother nature and the toiling offspring who dwell in her bosom. Those opening shots of pulsating fields waving in the wind have no equal for sheer evocative power. Earth is revealed at once as a living, breathing being and bountiful provider. Flower, fruit, decay, renewal -- nature's timeless cycle. The soundless imagery is at times so wonderfully lyrical that contemporary viewers may be led to recognize how much has been lost to the technology-driven cinema of today. Even the occasional plot crudities are rescued by a style that is both brilliant and unerringly pictorial. Close-ups of weather-worn peasants, a lone kulak and oxen beneath an immense sky, great rolling plains and far horizons of the Ukrainian breadbasket -- this is the sheer lyrical sweep of the Dovchenko masterpiece, a montage that transcends all obstacles, real and man-made. Not even the estimable John Ford frames primitive elements as grandly as this. There are flaws. Too many rushing crowd scenes appear without purpose, except to mimic Eisenstein's "march of history", while the propaganda thread at times blends uneasily with the lyrical. Still and all, Dovchenko pulls off the theme of new beginning more seamlessly than might be expected. Far from being a mere relic of the silent era, or an ode to Stalinist collectivism, Earth remains an enduring testament to the power of cinema as sheer visual poetry.

A miracle of a film

[laosonik · 10/10 · 29 June 2012]

This is the first ,and possibly the best, poetic film in the history of cinema.This is where everything started from.Tarkovsky,Paradjanov ...nothing would have been the same without Dozhenko and "Earth".The seed of a whole way of perception of life and universe seems to have been planted here.It is also the seed of maybe the best method of expression in cinematic form along with Bresson's first period (1950-59).A masterpiece so rare and solid,which goes straight to the point and shows the filmmaker's philosophy from the first until the last shot.A true monument of art with a transcendent power that scarcely can be achieved,"Earth" could have been the first or the last film ever on our planet.And this proves the unprecedented perfection and originality of it.

Lyrical human drama with a magnificent montage scene

[tomgillespie2002 · 9/10 · 16 September 2012]

The Soviet Union's political and social journey throughout the first few decades of the twentieth century presented a wide and rich palette for film-making innovators to work from. The most popular of the Soviet visionaries was Sergei M. Eisenstein, master of the montage, and champion of the working-classes. So breathtaking was Eisenstein's work, that it is easy for other great film-makers to be relatively forgotten. Although it would be extreme to label Aleksandr Dovzhenko, director of the magnificent Earth, as forgotten, time has been unfair to the director who was arguably as visually innovative and socially aware as his counterpart.

Earth begins with the death of a farmer, Semyon (Nikolai Nademsky), who says his goodbye's beneath a pear tree, blissfully ignorant of the turbulence his death will cause. The village is cut down the middle. One half are the kulaks, private-land owning peasants, who were seen to be growing rich in their greed by Stalin, personified in the film as Arkhip (Ivan Franko), who discusses with his group the idea of collectivisation, to a united resistance. The other, is the sceptical Opanas (Stepan Shkurat), father to the pro-collectivisation Basil (Semyon Svashenko), who is a member of All-Union Leninist Youth Communist League. The arrival of a new tractor lifts the communities spirits, but a murder sparks off a feud.

One of the many social revolutions to come out of the Stalin-era Soviet Union was the idea of collectivisation. After Ukranian peasants were given rights to own land at the turn of the century, Stalin saw them growing rich beyond their means and vowed to eliminate what he saw as its own social class. Collectivisation was to bring land back to the community, therefore generating more product and boosting the economy. But the Soviet army met stubborn resistance from the peasants, who were seeing their land and goods seized and distributed.

Dovzhenko's film has a somewhat ambiguous message, focusing more of the individual plights of a select group of characters. The collectivists and communists are clearly the more sympathetic groups in the film, but the film is more human drama than political propaganda. Like Eisenstein, Dovzhenko treats us to a simply brilliant montage scene, as the delight of the farmers at the arrival of a new tractor (which they urinate in to get going) is juxtaposed alongside the mechanics of grain production. This feeling of the metaphorical prevails throughout the film, as the seemingly endless grain fields and growing fruit are filmed as if tiny gods, watching the human drama unfold beneath them. The film had a mixed reception upon release, forcing Dovzhenko into depression, but is now rightly heralded as one of the most important to come of the Soviet Union, alongside Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin (1925).

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Soviet fable: rich farmers resist the people's use of the land

[netwallah · 9/10 · 28 February 2006]

The kulaks, or rich farmers, hold out against progress, brought to the collective farm in the form of a new tractor, driven by Vassili. One of the kulaks murders him at night, and the people hold a new sort of funeral celebration with new songs about the new life, instead of inviting the church to manage their grief. There is no god, Vassili's father says, and the priest goes back to the church to curse the people. The murderer goes mad, crying out that he won't give up his land, spinning in circles, pressing his face into the plowed earth. Because collectivism did not work, it is perhaps too easy to forget the people's condition before the revolution. They were landless serfs, bound to the landowners and living in the worst sort of poverty. Here, working the land together, their work ennobles them and provides a promise of a better, more equitable future. The film is shot with lyrical human optimism, stunning photography of peasant faces, old faces with years and character, young smiling faces with strength and courage. The land, too, is lyrically portrayed, the film opening and closing with images of rain in the orchards, apples and melons, pears, leaves... Some of the characters are photographed standing in grain fields, the low camera angle taking in the rippling wheat and the great white summer clouds. Vassili's bereaved fiancée hurls herself naked across her bedroom, tearing at the walls and calling his name. The people crowd the dusty lane marching and singing to lay Vassili to rest. Zemyla is a beautiful movie—sometimes the narrative is a bit murky and hard to follow, and sometimes the photography (or the print) is dark, but the imagery carries the story as well as it does in any silent film.