Russian Symphony

Third Konstantin Lopushansky film I watched in the same week. Another masterpiece. I can’t say I understood all or even most of it, but its strange and wild energy kept me glued to the screen. It is a beautiful movie. Dark. Heavy. But beautiful. Like Dead Man’s Letters and A Visitor to a Museum, this film lives inside the same post apocalyptic world, but here the world is not dying anymore. It is already dead. Water is rising fast. Nothing can stop it. People know these are their last days, so they hide and lose they're humanity trying to save themselves only, they go mad in every direction. It feels like the end of history. The end of time. The main protagonist is a man who is slowly losing his mind while trying to understand what is happening to the world. He learns that a group of children is trapped in a sinking school. He wants to do something good before he dies. He wants to save them, but he realizes that no one's listening to what he's saying and that everyone is preoccupied with selfish thoughts so he's seen as crazy throughout the movie, he walks from place to place. From empty streets to ruins to government buildings where officials still have cars and helicopters. He begs them to help him save the children. Nobody listens. They think he is only trying to save himself and nobody hears him. The water keeps rising. The dead start to return. Everything feels already set. Like the world is following a plan that no one can change. The film shows how small people become at the end, and how nobody listens anymore. In the end he does not save anyone. Not himself or the children. The last ten minutes are just him moving slowly through the snow, with nothing to solve, only the feeling that some things cannot be changed. Russian Symphony is beautiful in a way that you feel more than you understand, as if maybe understanding was never the point of this film. :)