Arthouse 1981-1990 Aleksandr Sokurov Drama USSR

Aleksandr Sokurov – Odinokiy golos cheloveka aka The Lonely Voice Of Man (1987)

adminFebruary 8, 2015

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Sokurov’s first full-length feature film, filmed in 1978 and restored in 1987 at Lenfilm. The plot is based on the motives of Andrey Platonov’s works “The Potudan River” and “The Origin of the Master”.
The picture has become today a film classics, but in 1978 Sokurov was not allowed to defend his diploma at VGIK. Moreover, the film was sentenced to destruction by the cinematographic authorities. The authors miraculously managed to save the negative. In this picture, Sokurov formed an alliance with screenwriter Yuri Arabov and cameraman Sergei Yurizditsky.

Sokurov found a cinematic equivalent to Andrei Platonov’s prose. This writer is close to him in his outlook. The special spirituality on the screen of unadorned faces of unknown people (non-professional performers were filmed in the film), disturbing landscapes of the meager Russian province – all this surprised with the unusual authenticity of almost a document and at the same time the power of artistic generalization. The young director has already here approached the main theme of his future work – the theme of the tragic gap between body and spirit, and in this he felt himself the heir of the Russian literary tradition.