Oleg Yankovskiy

  • Andrei Tarkovsky – Nostalghia AKA Nostalgia (1983) (HD)

    Andrei Tarkovsky1981-1990ArthouseDramaUSSR
    Nostalghia (1983) (HD)
    Nostalghia (1983) (HD)

    Exiled from the USSR, consummate film poet Tarkovsky poured his stirrings of homesickness into this spectrally beautiful, metaphysical exploration of spiritual isolation and Russian identity. While researching the turbulent life of a 17th-century composer in the perpetually mist-shrouded Tuscan countryside, a soul-sick Russian poet (Yankvosky) forms an unusual kinship with an apocalypse-obsessed local madman (Josephson). Tarkovsky evokes the textures of dreams and memories through ravishing monochrome and sepia-toned reveries and flashbacks, while conjuring the hushed and haunted tone of a trance in this late-career masterwork.Read More »

  • Andrei Tarkovsky – Zerkalo AKA Mirror (1975) (HD)

    1971-1980Andrei TarkovskyArthouseDramaUSSR
    Zerkalo (1975) (HD)
    Zerkalo (1975) (HD)

    A dying man in his forties remembers his past. His childhood, his mother, the war, personal moments and things that tell of the recent history of all the Russian nation.Read More »

  • Sally Potter – The Man Who Cried (2000)

    Sally Potter1991-2000DramaUnited KingdomWar

    A Russian Jewish father emigrates to America in 1923, with a promise to send for his mother and young daughter when he is settled. When his village is burned in a pogrom, his mother is killed and his daughter is separated from other youngsters who make it to the port to emigrate. She ends up on a ship bound for England, where she is renamed Suzie and raised by a British family. Many years later, Suzie’s talent for singing and dancing sees her accepted into a Paris dance troupe where she is befriended by Lola, a fellow dancer from Moscow. Cesar, a handsome brooding gypsy who works with the troupe later becomes her lover. Lola pursues Dante, an egotistical tenor who is performing in the area. All is well until the Nazis march into Paris, and Suzie’s Russian Jewish background places her in danger. She must decide whether to leave Cesar and her friends and continue the search for her father in America.Read More »

  • Karen Shakhnazarov – Tsareubiytsa AKA The Assassin of the Tsar [Russian version] (1991)

    1991-2000DramaKaren ShakhnazarovRussia

    Quote:
    A good portion of the film depicts the last days of the Russian Imperial Family in Yekaterinburg, largely narrated by Timofyev’s voice-over from the perspective of Yakov Yurovsky, the chief guard and ultimately executioner of the family. In the scenes, Yurovsky is impersonated by Timofyev (McDowell) and Tsar Nicholas II by Dr. Smirnov (Yankovsky). Other members of the family function merely as background, with few or no lines.Read More »

  • Roman Balayan – Khrani menya, moy talisman AKA Guard Me, My Talisman (1986)

    1981-1990DramaRoman BalayanUSSR

    Quote:
    The setting for this off-beat drama of love and jealousy is the Pushkin Poetry Festival in Boldino. Liosha (Oleg Yankovsky) and his wife Tania (Tatiana Drubich) are walking through the plush forest around Boldino when a mysterious figure pops up from behind a tree and asks the couple a question on an esoteric point of Pushkin scholarship. From that strange beginning, the man, whose name is Klimov (Alexander Abdulov), starts to ease himself into the couple’s private space, and trouble ensues. Complementing this story is the festival itself, enactments of Pushkin’s works, and emotional debates among the festival-goers over the meaning of his poetry.Read More »

  • Vadim Abdrashitov – Povorot (1979)

    Drama1971-1980USSRVadim Abdrashitov

    Victor and Natasha drive back to Moscow after a good honeymoon trip by the Black Sea. Already nearing home, Victor hits an elderly lady while driving too fast. All of a sudden, their plans for a good life together are in doubt. Victor is going to face trial, may go to prison.

    To start with, the situation seems to him just ridiculous and sad. They are so young and bright. Their whole life is ahead of them. The lady that was hit by Victor was old, probably half blind and careless in the street. Surely the old lady is more to blame for her own death than Victor, isn’t she? Why did this have to happen precisely to him? Should he accept the blame for the accident and thus risk long-term prison, and the end of his career and marital prospects? Does he have to pay for it or not? Should he not escape, somehow? What is the point of self-sacrifice in such a situation? The film also shows a clash between the young and the old, the bright and the ordinary, the haves and the have nots.Read More »

  • Andrei Tarkovsky – Nostalghia AKA Nostalgia (1983)

    1981-1990Andrei TarkovskyArthouseDramaRussia

    Quote:
    The opening scene is a single shot showing a family and their dog descending a hill, a large tree in the foreground, the distant countryside vanishing into the rolling fog. The camera pushes in imperceptibly, but continuously from the beginning. On the soundtrack, possibly diegetic, a sole woman sings. Meanwhile, the film credits scroll up over the scene. The family and dog, upon reaching the area in front of a hut, stop moving. Verdi’s Messa da Requiem fades in, overlapping for a brief moment with the woman singing. Once the foreground tree fully disappears, the scene freezes; the credits continue until the title appears, and the scene fades to black. The Requiem continues an audible transition to the second scene.Read More »

  • Emil Loteanu – Moy laskovyy i nezhnyy zver AKA A Hunting Accident AKA The Shooting Party (1978)

    1971-1980ArthouseDramaEmil LoteanuUSSR

    There is a lot to admire in Emil Loteanu’s film My Tender and Affectionate Beast aka Moy laskovyy i nezhnyy zver (1978). First of all, the music by Evgeniy Doga, especially the Wedding Waltz, lives its own life, has become very popular and often performed piece in Russia, and is truly amazing. Camera work is very attractive, so are costumes, sets, and landscapes. Very famous and talented actors play principal characters. Among them -Oleg Yankovsky, the narrator, the tender beast of the title, Kirill Lavrov, a weak and corrupted count, and Georgiy Markov, the middle-aged widower who had hopes for new love with the girl of his dreams. Read More »

  • Andrei Tarkovsky – Zerkalo AKA The Mirror [+Extras] (1975)

    1971-1980Andrei TarkovskyArthouseDramaUSSR

    SYNOPSIS
    With Zerkalo (The Mirror), legendary Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky crafts perhaps his most profound and compelling film. What started off for Tarkovsky as a planned series of interviews with his own mother evolved into a lyrical and complex circular meditation on love, loyalty, memory, and history. Time shifts and generations merge as a single extraordinary actress (Margarita Terekhova) plays the narrator’s former wife as well as his mother. Tarkovsky’s memories as well as those of his mother are intermingled as a dark, sumptuous, and dreamlike pre-World War II Russia is evoked, accompanied throughout by the voice of Tarkovsky’s father reading his own elegiac poetry. The spectacle of nature and its ubiquitous and ever-shifting presence is captured by Tarkovsky’s camera as if by magic–the family cabin nestled deep in the verdant woods, a barn on fire in the middle of a gentle rainstorm, a gigantic wind enveloping a man as he walks through a wheat field–all creating indelible images with deep if mysterious emotional resonance. As the timeline shifts between the narrator’s generation and his mother’s, newsreel footage of Russian wars, triumphs, and disasters are juxtaposed with imagined scenes from the past, present, and future, crafting a silently lucid cinematic panopticon of memory, history, and nature. (Rotten Tomatoes)Read More »

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