I found this film to be very powerful. The tension between Kotov and Mitya, whether about Maroussia or Mother Russia, was very interestingly done. The fear of going against Stalin’s government caused deep trouble among citizens, even though Kotov was a revolutionary war hero. The fact that this alone was not enough to protect him from the government highlights the danger of being a prominent person in the 1930s. It is striking how Mitya can get back into Kotov’s family, and cause so much trouble.
\nA scene I found particularly striking was the scene with Kotov and his daughter Nadia on the boat. The chaos and insanity on the beach are juxtaposed with the tranquility on the water. The purity of Nadia, added to this pure tranquility of drifting on the water, gives Kotov a tenderness he may not have gotten otherwise. Initially seen as a hardened (albeit respected) war hero, the emotion and evident love he has for his daughter humanizes him. Rather than be brusque with Nadia, they are allowed to be together calmly, for maybe one of the last times ever. His daughter telling him the simple phrase “I adore you” gives a childlike air to the scene. This statement creates even more sympathy towards Kotov, especially as the movie progresses, and we see his family torn apart by Stalin’s violence. I interpreted this scene to be interrupted by Stalin’s violence in a less obvious way: when Mitya jumped into the water and brought the chaos of the beach and his allegiance to Stalin into the peaceful water. He brought Stalin’s presence into one of the few places where Kotov and Nadia could simply be father and daughter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I found this film to be very powerful. The tension between Kotov and Mitya, whether about Maroussia or Mother Russia, was very interestingly done. The fear of going against Stalin’s government caused deep trouble among citizens, even though Kotov was a revolutionary war hero. The fact that this alone was not enough to protect him […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-unit-11-stalinism-thaw-and-stagnation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1019"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1048\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}