“Moscow Doesn’t Believe in Tears” is one of my favorite Russian films and a thorough re-watch helped expand my appreciation from it. However, this time through I had boundless more context going in. Since “Burnt in the Sun” and the discussion of fatherhood and Mother-Russia are still percolating in my thoughts I thought it would be interesting to look at the maternal and paternal figures in the movie. Firstly the females I think all show different phases of the Russian maternal figure. Atonina shows the working class family and the past of Russia especially highlighting the rural living that is far removed from the booming industrial city. Katya is the modern soviet woman\/ representation of the country. A persevering character that underwent severe struggles but emerged as an industrial icon and powerhouse. Finally you have Lyudmila. Lyudmila is hard to place as she is the laziest out of the three main females who has aspirations of marrying into wealth and fame. This reminded me of the Rouge text we read earlier in the semester and I could see this being a representation of an earlier more aristocratic Russia. I read these three females as representations of Russia overtime but I could easily be wrong. It could be a commentary on the right way to live in a soviet society or about the different modes of thought in one. What I find real interesting are the paternal figures in the movie. If the question is “Who’s the father of Russia?” then the film portrays a Grimm realization of that question. We have Rudolph, a man of great promise that is destroyed by his alcoholism, Nikolay, the rapist, victim blamer, abandoner, and egotistic ass. Finally you have Gosha, who seems to be great for Katya, except he is narcissistic, he beats up kids, and he is sexist which seem to contrast everything Katya stands for. It is also important to note that Katya has an sexual relationship with a cheating husband, but I don’t know what the meaning of that could be in the metaphorical sense. Overall, I don’t see any father-figure particularly good. I think the film purposefully does this to highlight the fact that it is Katya who single handedly raises a child and fend for herself. It is Katya, a possible stand in for Mother Russia, who was the mother and the father of the future (Alexsandra). I most likely thought too outside of the box, but there are is probably something I said that was actually intended in the movie. Either way, it’s a fascinating subject.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
“Moscow Doesn’t Believe in Tears” is one of my favorite Russian films and a thorough re-watch helped expand my appreciation from it. However, this time through I had boundless more context going in. Since “Burnt in the Sun” and the discussion of fatherhood and Mother-Russia are still percolating in my thoughts I thought it would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1025,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1082","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\/1082","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\/1025"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1082\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}