StunnaKrypto Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

PlatinumRead Just so...so bad

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Lollivan It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

petarmatic The Russia under Stalin was a fascinating world, full of repression and murder. Many wanted to leave and did so, but many remained because they did not have any choice.Was it going to improve over many years? It never did. Soviet Russia stayed oppressive throughout the Communist era. Althghough Soviets achieved a lot, they disregarded human life on the small level. It finally went crumbling down like a house of cards, but it took more then 70 years.This film portrays well Stalin*s purges. Similar purges are conducted today in North Korea, although Russia has a Slav soul, there was a little bit of humanity left even during those times. Nazi Germany was looming in the dark, Stalin was suffering from paranoia. What a film set, and used so well to make this film. Stronglly recommended.

Armand or only testimony. or homage. a film in which Tchekov nuances are parts of a profound terrible lesson about values. about duty, about cowardice, about roots and fruits of love, about little things of life, about games as shadows and idealism as cage. about heroism and expectations. about death and power of sacrifice. about limits and beauty. about innocence and a cruel maleficent time. about portrait of a man. and its mark as mirror of a lost East.sure, a masterpiece. with many definitions. gorgeous images, Mikhalkov science of details, music, great cast, delicate questions. but its value is more subtle. it is art to create a drawing. a perfect image of a tragedy out of words, image, imagination. to make a gift to an universe for who the past is almost fiction. to reflect a present not very different by this hideous portrait. for say the Truth. as aura in a summer. behind the presence of a very familiar stranger. his words. his games. his mission. his death. letters of an old tale. about truth, faith and happiness. few money. and silhouette of Juda. a tale. same colors in a mirror. a mirror of East.

gizmomogwai Like the Italian film Life Is Beautiful which came three years later, Burnt by the Sun is an excellent foreign movie combining humour and colourful characters to depict tragedy in the first half of the twentieth century. Burnt focuses on Russia in 1936, just before the Great Purge. This movie isn't as funny as the beginning of Life Is Beautiful, but some whimsical discussion is heard of summer Santas and wizards; there's piano playing with a gas mask; there's a question about leaving the zoo. But this is a mostly serious movie. It shows a very close relationship between a Russian colonel, Kotov, and his young daughter Nadya. Then it bluntly shows Kotov being arrested, torn from her life. In this way, Burnt by the Sun reveals the human tragedy of Stalin's paranoia and purges.There's more- though Kotov is a man destroyed by the Soviet Union, the unfortunate irony is that he was actually a patriotic and loyal Soviet. The scene where he and his daughter are on a boat underlines that fact, and makes what happens later look tragically needless.I first saw this gem in a university class on the Soviet Union. It came with a disclaimer from the professor that sending people to summer homes of Stalin's victims was not the way the Purges were really done. Like Life Is Beautiful, we have to bend realism a bit, but it's worth it. I'm not sure if this movie needed the mysterious orb of light; when I saw it hovering over a field, I asked my professor if it was going to make a crop circle. Actually it was just symbolism. The ball of light and the sun mentioned in the title are the Russian Revolution, and this movie is about people burnt by it. Equating the Revolution to something warm and bright makes me wonder if the Revolution is seen in this movie as a mostly good thing; but this movie shows there were also negative consequences. Orb of light or no orb of light, this movie is still memorable and wonderful.

nognir616 Taken that you know nothing of Soviet history you'll easily believe everything you see in the movie. BUT someone who has a better knowledge of the situation can get some things straight. 1.The "purges" were what? Anyone who'd speak in opposition to the regime would be imprisoned, executed, e.t.c.? WRONG! Anyone who was proved to act against the people's benefit and interest was taken in. And that included: a)Government officers who were abusing their power, or not serving the people as they should b)Counter-revolutionists. You won't believe me, but there were many. Since 1922 when the soviet regime replaced the tsarist regime. The very reason that NKVD existed was for uprooting the counter-revolutionists, who were acting exactly like terrorist groups. c)Former tsarist officers and familiars. They were given the choice to live as the rest of the people. Most chose not to and cowardly left the country. Some others stayed in the country and in secrecy became spies to the western bourgeois. A small minority of them gave up on land and power and became part of the peopleTo be accurate, during the first semester of 1937 when the "purge" began, there were many innocent people falsely accused and ended up imprisoned or executed. And don't haste to blame "the insane dictator" Stalin for that. In most cases it went like this: the local commissars included in the lists people they had personal differences with, the only member of the Central Commitee of the Party being aware of that being none other than Nikita Khruschev, who had been undermining Stalin from the beginning, and was cunning enough for his deeds to escape Stalin's attention. Letters of complains regarding arrests of innocents were being sent to the Party HQ, none of them to reach Stalin himself (again, Khruschev responsible for that). Until one letter was sent to Stalin himself. Stalin took action himself. The kept letters were found and the local officers were imprisoned in place of the innocent ones who were lucky to escape execution. When Stalin passed away Khruschev came to power and replaced the government officers with his own trusting people, who forcefully took out of prison especially for that cause. The fall of USSR had just began...That's something you'd never learn from your information sources and media. Bourgeois like those that rule the countries you live were never more afraid of the ones who established a worker's regime. During the Lenin and Stalin era the soviet people became educated, was receiving medication to the maximum availability point (the medicines available then were extremely fewer in comparison with today), had food and were being paid well. During Stalin the people's expectations took form. Take the extremely diligent preparation for the WW2 and you'll understand why Stalin was a fatherly figure to the soviet people. In short, yes, you have been taught almost nothing but lies regarding Stalin. And that movie does nothing more that showing the world what the ones who can afford that kind of propaganda think about Stalin. Do not make the mistake to consider their opinion as historical facts.I'm accepting emails if anyone wants to discuss anything about it