Khrushchev-era bureaucrats do their worst in Russia's entry into this year's Oscar sweeps: Andrei Konchalovsky’s DEAR COMRADES!

Russian-born writer/director Andrei Konchalovsky (shown below) has had quite a genre-jumping career both in English-language films (Runaway Train, Duet for One, Tango & Cash) and in his own language (including 1979's Siberiade through 2016's Paradise) and now, at age 83 he is offering up his latest, a pitch-black satire/drama of Khrushchev-era Russia entitled DEAR COMRADES! The result is a movie that moves from initially rather funny (albeit in a very dark manner) to ugly and finally unexpectedly moving, given that our main character Lyuda -- an attractive middle-aged mother who is also a Stalin-worshiping apparatchik -- has proven such as irredeemable creep for most of the proceedings.

As portrayed by the excellent actress Julia Vysotskaya (shown below, right, and further below), who is often Konchalovsky's leading lady, Lyuda undergoes one of those "dark nights of the soul" that, in the hands of a lesser actress and filmmaker, might prove anything from merely condescending to outright schlocky. 

Ms Vysotskaya keeps her character so on-track, truthful, angry and increasingly anguished that she carries us along moment to moment without missing a beat, as she's dragged kicking and screaming to confront who she is and what she has done. 

The small-minded hypocrisy embedded in all of the apparatchiks we see in the movie, though first used for humor, satire and dark fun, pretty quickly becomes so nasty and self-serving that only, TrustMovies suspects, the very thick-skinned and nearly unfeeling among us will be able for long to continue viewing Dear Comrades! as black comedy. Or even as satire. It moves well beyond either. 

The plot involves workers at a large factory going on strike and then demonstrating against the state. Which is of course ludicrous, as Russian workers under the Communist regime were always, according to the state, incredibly happy with their place in the overall scheme of things. (Just as the majority of Russian citizens today, as per their glorious current leader, are supremely blessed and content with Russia's brand of Capitalism.) How both the local powers-that-be, as well as the higher-ups in Moscow, handle this protest situation could hardly be worse.

The generation gap is also present and accounted for via Lyuda's daughter, whose disappearance during the protest sparks the remaining action of the film. Under whatever label you want to use -- political, religious, cultural -- how the elite and entitled evade, as they always do, in every country, the rules and restrictions that impede the rest of us, is brought to pulsating life (and death) in Dear Comrades! 

One might accuse the filmmaker of sentimentality due to the ending of his film, which some audiences may interpret as a scene of hope but which just might be the darkest would-be joke in the entire movie. This is 1962, remember, and look what has happened in and to Russia since then. Hope may spring eternal. Unfortunately, so does despair.

Dear Comrade! is Russia's entry into this year's Best International Film "Oscar" race, but what its chances are, given our (one hopes) soon departing President's treasonous, term-long fellatio-flirtation with Vladimir Putin, this may not be the most popular of countries just now. Whatever happens, awards-wise, it's good to see Konchalovsky working so close to his optimal once again.

Distributed via Neon and running 121 minutes, the movie opens for an Oscar consideration week-long virtual run at New York City's Film Forum this Friday, December 25. Catch it now, or maybe later, when it reopens for a normal (what the hell does that mean, these days?) theatrical run.

Andrei Konchalovsky's unusual view of the Holocaust, PARADISE, opens in theaters

On this past year's shortlist for Best Foreign Language Film, PARADISE, written and directed by noted Russian filmmaker Andrei Konchalovsky, would have seemed pretty much a sure thing for nomination. Except for one factor. While Holocaust-themed, as well as being one of the better of the many movies to tackle this subject over the past decade, the film has a decidedly religious bent. Not a specific religion, mind you, but a clear belief in the existence of god, nonetheless. This may have been enough to prevent its reaching that final nomination.

As good as it is -- and I do mean very good, in terms of movie-making -- for some people, particularly those who do not possess this religious bent, there will hang over Paradise a sense of fantasy that rather goes against the very idea of the reality of the Holocaust. It also makes the horror of it all -- which Mr. Konchalovsky (shown at left) brings home with remarkable specificity, originality and surprising strength and subtlety -- seem somehow acceptable, since, as a number of religions promise us, there will be that afterlife. Yet scene by scene, the movie is riveting and as it goes along, growing powerful enough -- the more we learn about its three main characters -- to make it finally memorable.

Those characters are a middle aged police officer/family man and Vichy collaborator, played by Philippe Duquesne, above, left; a young, blond, very handsome German nobleman, the near-perfect example of Hitler's "super-race" come to fruition (Christian Clauss, below), who, as an SS officer, is assigned to a concentration camp; and an attractive Russian "Countess-by-marriage" (Yuliya Vysotskaya, shown at center two photos below), whose connections to both men slowly come clear. 

As screenwriter, Konchalovsky alternates often intense and richly-handled narratives scenes with straight-up "interviews" with each of these three main characters. The narratives immediately engage us in their plot-enhancing manner, yet the interviews are equally striking, probing and very intelligently written.

We never see the person who is interviewing our three characters, nor do we hear his questions (we initially assume these interview must be taking place post-war, and we also assume it is a male doing the questioning). But the answers the characters give to the questions show us that each is taking the interview quite seriously, even if some of the answers are self-serving. The answers here are also often probing of the interviewee's inner self/motives.

Paradise is beautifully shot in rich black-and-white (by Aleksandr Simonov) with the aspect ratio an old-fashioned 1.37 : 1, which makes it appears that both the narrative scenes and the interviews (a scene of which is shown above) were shot at the same time in which the film takes place.

The horrors of the Holocaust (above and below) are re-created with surprisingly simplicity and force -- without the need for excessive violence. One scene of a guard simply kicking a prisoner stands-in amazingly well for so much we've already viewed of concentration-camp life, while another scene between our naive German officer and the camp commandant he has come to investigate regales us with horrific information handed out in quiet, staid manner than makes it all the more awful.

As the narrative scenes show our characters slowly unraveling, abetted by the interviews, the ironically titled Paradise builds to an awful and a moving conclusion, with children -- as below, and always the future of society -- figuring in a prominent way.

Overall, TrustMovies found the film a remarkable one and extremely well-done, even if, as a non-believer, he cannot countenance Mr. Konchalovsky's overall viewpoint -- which, it must be said, comes more from a Christian belief-in-an-afterlife standpoint, than from a Jewish one. Yet is the film in any way anti-Semitic? No. In fact, it is yet another fine, if flawed, addition to Holocaust cinema. It never questions the reality or importance of the Holocaust, even as it probes cultures, motives and deeds.

From Film Movement and running a long but never slow 132 minutes, Paradise, after playing various festival venues internationally and here in the U.S., opens theatrically tomorrow, Friday, October 6, in New York City at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema; on October 13 at the Cinema Arts Center in Huntington, NY; and on October 20 here in Boca Raton at the Living Room Theaters and in San Francisco at the 4-Star Theater. To view all other playdates for the film, past and present, simply click here and scroll down.