Just perfect...

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

In Mikhail Kalatozov's Letter Never Sent, four geologists are searching for diamonds in the wilderness of Siberia. Three men, one woman. Andrei and Tanya are in love. Sergei is in love with Tanya. Sergei is a strong man who had been on such expeditions but had returned with no luck. He is jealous of the nerdy Andrei's and the beautiful Tanya's relationship but never cares to hide that feeling. Sabinine (The Leader of the expedition) often spends his free time writing letters, which he will never send, to the woman he once loved. This is how the film begins: By presenting a set of characters, each having different perspectives but are present in the wild forests of Siberia for one reason. With the hope of serving their country, they are present there hunting for a diamond vein. It's no surprise that the diamond deposit is discovered in the film after days of hard work. Previous expeditions had failed but this one expedition proved that there indeed was a diamond deposit in Siberia. Soon, the four geologists, filled with zeal and satisfaction, find themselves engulfed by a huge forest fire and completely cut of from the civilized world. Will they survive? Before the opening credits, the film pays tribute to the people of the Soviet Union who have given their lives for the benefit of the country, whether it be astronauts seeking answers for the mysteries of space or geologists going in to the wilderness hunting for diamonds. Throughout the entire film, we see the characters suffering in the piercing cold and bleak atmosphere of Siberia. Their goal at this point is to safely deliver the map, on which the whereabouts of the diamond deposit is marked, to Moscow. We see sacrifice. We witness loss. We witness alienation, hunger, despair. This is where I realized that similar to numerous Soviet films, Letter Never Sent contains shards of Propaganda. Adventure? Nope. I look at this one as a miserable survival film filled with some unnecessary moments of melodrama, patriotism and hyperactivity. The fact is that I don't mind patriotism and propaganda. But in this case it's overdone. I just didn't care for any of the characters. Not even the gorgeous Tatiana Somailova whose performance in the 1957 Soviet Classic The Cranes are Flying (Also directed by Mikhail Kalatozov) was spellbinding. It was because of this film that I was intrigued to check out Letter Never Sent.Now the big question: What relation does the film and it's title have? As stated earlier, Sabinine wrote letters to a woman he loved from his past. He wrote them, feeling nostalgic, without the intention of sending them (Of course, the team is already in the middle of nowhere). This relation is explained further in the final moments of the film but it's significance is again directed more towards patriotism, in my opinion. Another disappointing aspect. Unlike the ingenious masterpiece The Cranes are Flying, this film lacks true emotions. I went in with high hopes of seeing another Soviet masterpiece but eventually I was left disappointed. Albeit this film failed to emotionally engross me, Sergei Urusevsky's miraculous cinematography makes the film worth watching. Urusevsky and Kalatozov have collaborated in multiple films and their most well known work is of course The Cranes are Flying, where the film used astonishing camera- work. Though I believe Letter Never Sent takes it to a whole new level by composing unbelievable images. The camera work is well ahead of it's time. It looked like that the camera glided through the wild fire and the horrible blizzards very smoothly. The technical artistry of this film deserves a standing ovation and at times it completely overpowers the dissatisfying screenplay.On the positive side, Letter Never Sent is one of the strongest proofs of how visually powerful cinema can be. If you ever tell me to compile a top 10 list of the most visually stunning films ever crafted, this one will gladly make it to the top 5. Mr. Urusevsky, you rock. (And I will highly recommend The Cranes are Flying in case you haven't seen it yet).filmsmostbeautifulart.blogspot.in

The naming of the film as The Unsent Letter seems a little bit mystifying, in that it suggests that the whole film is about the letter, whereas that's something of an under-developed tangent.The story concerns four Soviet geologists, prospecting for diamonds in remote Siberia. Gentle and committed Marxist-Leninist folk, they are all in love, Tanya and Andrey with each other, Sabinine with the wife he left behind (Vera), and Sergey is left with the thorns of the rose, in unrequited love with Tanya (oh no!). The idea of the expedition is that a source of domestic sparklers will lead to the betterment of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, perhaps even a new industrial revolution, releasing them from a reliance on foreign capitalists.The popular wisdom of today (social Darwinism) has it that communism failed because humans are essentially selfish, human nature is competitive, families are nepotistic. Ideas about human nature being essentially negative were around before the establishment and subsequent collapse of any nations along principles looking something like Karl Marx's. The classic counterargument was made by Prince Kropotkin, (who himself led geological expeditions in Siberia) suggesting that human competitive behaviour was actually a marginal characteristic that capitalism had harnessed and brought front and centre, in aid of which he cited various anthropological cases, which pointed to the pre-eminence of the spirit of co-operation over the spirit of competition. Why the history lesson? Well the folks in the movie were living under a different ideology, it was a hopeful ideology, where the spirit of co-operation was seen as an ideal. There were a class of people, represented in this film, who genuinely thrived under Marxist-Leninism (I do not deny the existence of nasties such as Joe Stalin and Beria and their havoc and undermining of Marxist-Leninist principles). It's critical that the way the characters think is understood, and is seen as realistic, for the film to sink in on any other than an aesthetic level (it is one of the most gorgeous movies ever made).Kalatosov was a hardcore ideologue, an earlier film of his, Nail In The Boot, is hysterically Stalinist / Robespierre-ian. He's toned that down here, although he clearly sees the state as some sort of greater, potentially immortal entity in comparison to the individual. He really did feel that people could pull together in the same direction, for something bigger than themselves, it's simply not just propaganda for him to represent the many people who felt like that. The reluctance to buy foreign diamonds is interesting because it's only superficially xenophobic, it's not like say, Americans not wanting to buy a foreign car. The Soviets believed that capitalist modes of production and wealth sharing were immoral, so buying South African diamonds was something inherently immoral for them, rather than about protectionism.On a personal level I found Sergei Stepanovich's story very moving to me, I can't think where I've seen a character like this before. He's in love with someone who's already in a love story, he's jealous, but not ashamed about it. He's never felt that he loves anyone before and he's getting past the age where love stories typically happen, but he's too honourable to do anything dastardly about it to anyone but himself, wandering off into a metaphorical fire of desire. I've gone through the exact same experience, it's so rare to actually feel like a film-makers has have fashioned a character that I can identify with.I mentioned that The Unsent Letter is one of the masterpieces of cinematography but the editing is brilliant too. I was staggered by one edit in particular, where the face of Vera is overlaid onto Sabinine's face, and they share one eye. I just felt, "What a perfect way to show that their souls had joined!". Kalatosov at heart seems to have been a bit of a romantic, and liked working in overpowering love stories into his work, for example in The Red Tent.

Saw this at Tribeca Film Festival in Spring 2007, and was absolutely floored. I walked out of the theater afterword amazed at what I'd seen and thrilled that such an amazing film existed and had been maintained by a tiny number of appreciators in such excellent quality for so long.The story is not the strong point of the movie. Rather, as with Terence Malick films, the story is just a starting point for the film, which is another beast entirely. What shines and carries the film from scene to scene is the cinematography. I didn't know if this was happened elsewhere at the time, but I didn't expect to see hand-held camera work in a 1959 Russian film, let alone the kind of early spinning, impossibly-filmed shot that appears early in the film. Later, there is a sequence that makes me long to know how they created the opportunity to film in such conditions.If you've read this far, you must track down this movie. My understanding is that Francis Coppola has a California archive maintain the only copy in the Americas, and that it's usually shown just one a year.

This is a totally excellent man vs. nature drama. An outstandingly dramatic soundtrack is coupled with some of the most powerful and unique visuals I've ever seen. If you thought Tarkovsky was a one-shot in the Soviet Union when it came to beautiful yet haunting images, you'll definitely think again after this movie. The characters and the story are perhaps not too well developed, but this somehow adds to the sense of not being totally in control, which is important here. It's nothing short of a tragedy that this movie is totally unknown; it would probably have been a candidate of reaching IMDb's top 50 if it were. Those looking for unknown classics should hunt this one down at all costs.