Puteshestviye molodogo kompozitora (The Young Composer’s Journey)

Original post date: 19 May 1987
Rating: ✭✭✰✰

 Another Soviet film. It’s 1908 and a shy, earnest, gangly young composer sets out for Georgia (theirs, not ours) to record folk songs. A rebellion against the Czar has just been crushed and people are restive and paranoid at the same time. Everybody seems convinced that the young composer has come to lead the people in battle. And it doesn’t help that his self-appointed guide, a hard drinking, hearty laughing lout by the name of Leko keeps spreading this story around. I can’t help but think that, if these Russians would spend less time casting meaningful glances about and more time talking things out, these kind of misunderstandings could be avoided. Even though this movie was made only three years ago, the acting is the exaggerated kind we tend to associate more with silent movies. I guess one of the points here is that you really can’t separate politics from art—unless you’re in Hollywood, but that’s another story.

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