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16 out of 20 people found the following review useful: Can Art Transcend Propaganda?, 5 August 2006 Author: bobdunn9 from Virginia, USA
Like 'The Birth of a Nation' or 'The Triumph of the Will', 'Earth' is a brilliant, groundbreaking film even if morally despicable. And in retrospect of what happened after its release, Stalin's liquidation of millions of Kulaks, its hard not to compare Dovzhenko's Marxism to Reifenstahl's fascism or Griffith's racism. Apologists for all of these filmmakers tell us to 'ignore the story' or 'ignore the propaganda'. Even the Kino DVD introduction instructs us to not take the film literally.Perhaps instead of asking, 'Can propaganda be art?' the better question is , 'Can art transcend propaganda.' In 'Earth', I think Dovzhenko partially succeeds. The lyrical cycles of birth and death on the Ukrainian steppe are told with visual poetry. In fact, as the film goes on Dovzhenko obviously becomes uninterested in the circumstances of Vasily's murder and martyrdom for the collectivist cause. No doubt, the Soviet regime produced this film to (a) encourage collectivization against private ownership, and (b) Encourage a retro-pagan worship of agrarian life against orthodox Christianity. The collectivist vs. Kulak story in (a) is crude and unconvincing propaganda to a modern audience with historical perspective on Stalin's brutalities in the 1930's. However, it is with the fertile imagery and montage of natural cycles in (b) that Dovzhenko succeeds beautifully and transcends the story and makes it timeless.
11 out of 13 people found the following review useful: An Unusual & Memorable Film, 5 March 2004 Author: Snow Leopard from Ohio
What an unusual and memorable film this is, almost more like a poem or an impressionist painting than a movie. It's filled with activity and images that push the actual story into the background. Sometimes the characters overreact to events in a highly exaggerated fashion, while at other times they barely respond to what happens - yet it seems both real and believable. The movie is probably not quite as great as some would have it, but it has an unusual appeal that makes you want to watch it (or, perhaps, experience it) over again.The scenes often have little connection with one another, and it's clear that the plot is not meant to be the main emphasis. On the surface, the story is about the collective farm, their hopes of getting new machinery, and their rivalry with the independent landowners. But it's intended to be something more subtle and worthwhile than a political message. The themes and images involving the characters and, especially, the "Earth" itself, are more vivid than the slight story-line.To be sure, the collectivist perspective from which the film was made is rather obvious. But that does not detract from this unusual achievement. And while it would not work as light or casual entertainment, it is well worth watching, and it's a movie you won't forget afterwards.
17 out of 25 people found the following review useful: True communist poetry., 7 March 2006 Author: miloc from Bronx, New York
From its opening, with an elderly man dying surrounded by impassive adults and obliviously playing children, to its wildly emotional finale, this breathtaking silent work transcends its politics and functions as poetry. It's unmistakeably Soviet -- the messianic fervor of the scene in which the farming community greets the arrival of a tractor would seem like parody if it weren't for Dovzhenko's extraordinary sense of lyricism. Using repeated shots of the expectant farmers crying out "It's coming!" intercut with an empty horizon, he builds the moment so completely that you're excited in spite of yourself; you totally believe in that tractor. (As one of the "rich farmers" says, shellshocked by this threat to their future, "It's a fact. It's here.")To call the film propaganda, while true, seems rather beside the point. Aren't all films? Dovzhenko's manipulations are certainly no less devious than those of western film. Switch the communist message to a patriotic or even capitalist one, and the setting to the World War II Pacific or the old west or wherever you choose and it's no different than, say, "Shane" or "Gone With the Wind" or "The Passion of the Christ" -- just much, much better.The story, told in rich montages of motionless figures, fruit, machinery, skies, rippling fields, and above all faces, weaves its "official" message about collective farms and private property with larger themes of religion, the generation gap, and the cycle of life: the Earth that gives life takes it away. A group of children giggle and spy on an old man listening at his friend's grave for a last message; a man sits up on his deathbed to eat a last sweet pear; a serious young radical, alone, gives himself up to a joyful moonlit dance before falling into the dirt. Dovzhenko's approach has less to do with narrative than with creating visual textures; it looks as though Terrence Malick watched this more than a few times before making "Days of Heaven." Dovzhenko's discontinuities and repetitions can be initially bewildering, but they pack a concrete wallop. The images accumulate and crystallize, carrying greater and greater weight, and, as an aging farmer becomes suddenly radicalized by tragedy, the direct shots of his face, hardening in bewilderment and outrage, take on a thunderous power.
11 out of 15 people found the following review useful: Dovzhenko's masterpiece., 9 May 1999 Author: Rigor from Chicago, USA
This great masterpiece of Soviet cinema has images so powerful and an editing technique so bold that at times the narrative is transcended. By this I mean that the film goes beyond it's original intention of arguing for changes from individualistic to more technologized and collective agricultural strategies and becomes a kind of realization of what a "liberated" agricultural zone would really look and feel like. This is a film ripe with the excitement of the creation of a new art to match a hopeful new world. It hardly needs to be mentioned that Stalinsit forces decried the final results of this masterpiece; calling it decadent and stylistically elitist. In actuality the film is too Marxist (I would go so far as to say too Leninist) for Stalinism. The film respects the ability of the viewer (and the viewers were assumed to be proletariat working class and agricultural workers) to grapple with rigorous ideas and images and to function outside of the narrative frame of individualistic melodrama. Like many early Soviet films this work seems not only ahead of its time, but, actually ahead of ours.
15 out of 23 people found the following review useful: Just stunning, 25 June 2004 Author: Wayne Malin (wwaayynnee51@hotmail.com) from United States
This silent film focuses on a small Ukranian village in 1930. It's about small independent farmers working against a "collective"--a state run collaboration of farms. The film (kind of) is about their conflict.To be truthful there isn't much of a story--that's secondary in this film. The imagery is what counts and it's truly stunning. It contains some of the most gorgeous footage I've ever seen of nature and, in images, clearly documents man's love of the earth. There are characters and a minor story but they're actually pretty bad--the story is painfully slow, the acting horrendous (one very good-looking actor just stands there with a big beautiful grin on his face no matter WHAT the scene is about) and has some of the most laughable dialogue cards I've ever seen (I'm assuming it doesn't translate well from Russian). Also the "restored" print looks pretty terrible. Still the images are incredible and there's a beautiful music score going along with it.Historically and visually this is a landmark of world cinema--a definite must-see. Try to see the unedited prints which contain surprising (for 1930) female nudity.
6 out of 9 people found the following review useful: Interesting visually and a fine example of that period's propaganda, 16 June 2005 Author: ocelot999 from Boston, USA
A visually experimental film (even by today's standard) and a fine example of propaganda from that period. One has to remember that at the time, collective farms in Russia were still a bold social experiment (as was propaganda as a phenomenon for that matter), and it was not at all clear that it will end in failure. So the film's authors were not necessarily insincere or somehow oppressed by "Stalinist forces" to show it in a positive light. This may seem unusual for the westerners not accustomed to hearing of communism other than as a swear word. I hope that somebody undertakes to restore this film using modern digital technique, to remove all the flicker and uneven brightness, imagine how much more beautiful it could be. I have to mention also that English translation of the inter-titles is not accurate, at some points distorting their meaning. For example, when the arriving tractor stalls, the women shout "It stopped" and not "It's here"; later the party boss says "A tractor cannot stop" translated as "the tractor can't arrive" (or something), depriving the English-speaking audience of a subtle moment of satire in the film.
2 out of 2 people found the following review useful: Earth, 15 June 2008 Author: zolaaar from Berlin, GER
Dovzhenko was a 'modernist' who drew deepest inspiration from traditional arts. His ode to the beginning of the collectivization is actually an orgy of intoxicant images of bulging clouds, waving wheat fields, ripening fruits and pelting horses.The arrival of a tractor is hailed by the farmers. They begin to believe that an improved life has started, but Kulaks murder the young leader of the village party committee. This only encourages the village inhabitants in their resoluteness. In a sublime finale sequence, Dovzhenko unites birth, death, harvest, technical progress and solidarity, when the dead are returned to Earth that he loved so much.No abstract summary can do justice to the extraordinary sensualism of this remarkable film. Whoever searches for the roots of Andrei Tarkovsky's cinema has to start with "Zemlya".
3 out of 4 people found the following review useful: Clunky propaganda plot and performances but visually and technically impressive and important, 22 June 2008 Author: bob the moo from Birmingham, UK
In Ukraine the landowners hold out against progress and the rights of communally worked farms of the people. When one such farm gets a tractor to further help them one of the richer farmers murders one of the collective, hoping to stop the movement in its tracks. However the opposite is true and the collective rises up out of the oppression and the tragedy to overcome the selfish and cruel approach of the rich.This is one of those films that I knew I had to see rather than one of those films that are less well regarded but are less demanding to watch. I am glad that I finally got round to it because it is technically and visually a very good film with some very striking images. This is different from it being a good film due to the narrative though because in this regard it is quite a mixed bag. The structure of the tale is not great and it doesn't flow together in a way that I found engaging but more of concern to the modern viewer is the sweeping unquestioning propaganda that the story essentially is. It would be nice to pretend that this does not detract from the film but it does – and not because I happen to disagree with the point being made but just because it is the simplistic clumsy point making of propaganda and it does jar slightly.Dovzhenko's visuals are where the film is strongest though and it is worth seeing for this because whether is the depiction of sorrow or the beauty of the open fields, he catches it really well. If only he had done more with the performances then things would have been helped, not to mention the clunky dialogue cards (although I have to assume that those are mostly down to poor translation). So as long as you are not expecting this to be a fun experience or a great story then it is indeed a classic film that you should watch as part of an education in cinema.
4 out of 6 people found the following review useful: mind-bogglingly great, 27 December 2006 Author: jonathan-577 from Canada
Now I regret all the times I've railed about how propaganda is synonymous with contempt for the audience. It is sometimes hard to know what to say about a movie when it is a 'best of all time list' warhorse, but not this time. I have never - ever - seen a movie with a more deliberate, or surer, sense of rhythm. Two sequences that are nothing but long montages of fruit are absolutely riveting. A man sits, re-evaluating his world view, and because it takes a long time to do that we fade to black THREE times over about a minute, without him moving or changing position. This glacial tempo lulls us, so that Dovzhenko can jolt us with the arrival of a speedy tractor; or a collectivo's joyous dance through the dust over several lengthy wide shots is disrupted by his abrupt murder. Then the movie climaxes with an unbelievable crescendo where at least FIVE events are montaged, in perfectly comprehensible rhetorical construction. The movie begins with a death scene whose understated acting is mind-boggling even now, forget 1930; the final shot balances all the anti-church rhetoric with an image that is absolutely redemptive and spiritual, only the point is that redemption is found in LIFE. I'm not being pompous, this movie actually functions on that level. It achieves poetry AND propaganda in a way that I've never ever experienced before. It kind of reminds me of Brian Wilson's "Smile" in its modest grandeur, so true that it's painful, but so f***ing great that you want to experience it again and again. You can get it for free at the St. Catharines Library.
4 out of 6 people found the following review useful: Silent Soviet Cinema's Apex, 15 February 2006 Author: Jason Forestein (jay4stein79@yahoo.com) from somerville, ma
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
As majestic as the early films of Eisenstein are, his silent era work cannot hold a candle to the fluid, gorgeous humanism present in Dovzhenko's Earth. This is, perhaps, a little ironic, considering that the film is largely concerned with the benefits of collectivism and the wonder of tractors. Or is it? Maybe Earth is a subtle undermining of the "Soviet spirit," implying that the collective, which rejoices at the tractor's entrance, is foolish for doing so--foolish for abandoning their joyous, pagan, and, consequently, slightly anarchic past. Does Dovzhenko appreciate the mechanization of agriculture or does he despair at the effects of progress?Like most Soviet filmmakers, Dovzhenko demonstrates ideology that is never clear and always ambivalent. Really, though, that is not and should not be the point of this film. What matters are the images. This film is filled with beautiful and poetic visuals--incomparable in early cinema, if you ask me. Nothing comes close to touching the absolute perfection of the shots here. It's amazing. Eisenstein, Griffith, and Murnau may have introduced important elements into the cinematic language, but Dovzhenko made, I think, the first cinematic work of absolute beauty. Fans of Wong Kar Wai or Terrence Malick would do well to visit this film by their forbearer.
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