Before I Die #620: Earth (1930)

This was the 620th film I've now seen out of the 1,199 films on the "Before You Die" list which I'm gradually working my way through.

Original Russian Title: Zemlya

Director: Aleksandr Dovzhenko

A curious old silent Russian movie that was intermittently hypnotizing and baffling, the latter only slightly due to poor subtitles.

This tidy little, 76-minute movie tells the story of a group of Russian peasant farmers who obtain a mechanized tiller/thresher, a highly advanced piece of machinery for the day. One group uses the thresher to till the fields of the wealthy land-owning kulaks, in a bid to take control over the land on which the peasants do most of the work. The young man most responsible for the tilling is killed that night, while drunkenly wandering home. This death leads to his young wife's death through grief, and his father swearing revenge. This leads to a greater uprising in which the kulaks are brought down, thus heralding a new age in which peasants have control over their own lives.

Earth is a quick watch, which I found to be fortunate. Although I can appreciate the film artistry and clear passion that went into this pre-Stalin era Russian movie, it was quite obviously meant for a particular audience. Namely, the common Russian peasant of the 1920s, '30s, and even '40s. Like many of the great Russian movies in and around the time of the Bolshevik Revolution, this one wears its propagandic nature right on its sleeve: the kulaks are evil, and the common peasants are the downtrodden heroes. As simple as that premise is, this movie is actually rather confusing for someone who doesn't understand exactly how Russian agrarian society was organized, along with its built-in tensions. I honestly had to pause the movie and do a bit of research on the Internet so that I didn't get lost. For me, one mark of any great piece of art is that is doesn't rely as much on context and can stand on its own feet. In this regard, Earth doesn't hold up well. A Russian citizen or Russian scholar would probably follow the grander themes without trouble, but the rest of us are bound to be at least a little confused.

There are plenty of wonderful outside shots in the film,
including Vassily's funeral march. The implication is also
rather clear - nature itself, in the form of the sunflowers'
down-turned heads, mourn the loss of one of their own.

Though the narrative elements are not terribly accessible, director Dovzhenko's skills as a filmmaker are quite clear. He uses a variety of then-deft film techniques to tell the story in evocative, poetic ways that can be quite engaging. He will superimpose shots of nature with the age-lined faces of the peasants. He will allow the camera to linger on farm machinery as it churns away, not unlike the brilliant Russian film Man with a Movie Camera from the prior year. Such fascinating camerawork and editing made me wish I had been watching a better copy of the film, as opposed to the online streaming version I found, which was passable but hardly of Criterion Collection quality.

Put this one in the same category as movies like Battleship Potemkin and October - silent Russian Revolution propaganda movies by excellent filmmakers in their day, but movies which now are mostly for academics and pure students of the visual aspects of film.

That's 620 movies down. Only 579 to go before I can die.