Dead Man's Letters (1986)

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Good concept, poorly executed.

Blistering performances.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

This is a post-apocalyptic movie where a group of Russian intellectuals, living in the airtight vaults of a museum, cling on in the twilight, going slowly mad according to their own pompous wonts.The movie is unremitting in its depressing depiction of a dead world. I was stuck between turning it off because it was almost sacrilegiously depressing, and remaining because of the sheer cataclysmic beauty. The images are mostly tinted yellow, although some shots are in tints of blue. There is no way this experience is going to allow you the respite of polychromatic images.There is a body of work that deals with the end of humankind in cinema, but any example I can think of seems completely notional in conception, this one actually felt like a recording of the end of days, as unflinchingly profane as a documentary of viaticums.I think it's also a tombstone for communism in Russia, suggested as a blind alley, and advocates a return to pre-revolutionary values regarding family and religion. But only in an intensely personal way, as if recounting the death of a close family member. It is more than a warning against nuclear war. In its parodying of ridiculous, pontificating, and obstructive authority, it's an emesis of authoritarian communism, a whole-hearted, wholesale rejection.As an endnote, there's a dolly-out in the first few minutes of the film that left my jaw on the floor, practically the best shot I've ever seen in cinema, my congratulations to Konstantin Lopushansky and his team.

The story takes place in an eastern European country(no reference is made to what country) after a nuclear war. A military regime has been imposed, there is no reference weather this is a local regime or an occupation. The soldiers tend to carry western weapons like AR pattern rifles and HK G3. The main character lives with coworkers under the university buildings where they once worked , all characters have a type of confession to tell relating to the catastrophe. Decay is everywhere but there is also irony in the decay and destruction, such as the scene in the library that is half covered in water with pages upon pages floating on this evil soup of corpses and texts that the main character ,as a true scholar, goes to a semi submerged desk to study a book. Just like "Threads" this is the only other movie that truly shows how final a nuclear apocalypse would be.

The movie is about fatal for the Mankind consequences of the nuclear war. It is not said explicitly, in which country the plot is set. But from some details you can easily derive, that it was in the USA, for example - the main character says: "...from Niels Bohr to our President..." (Soviet leaders were never called "presidents" in the Soviet Union in 1986). Meanwhile, the reason of the war is stated as accidental and no one seems to be guilty of it: as the main character remembers, an operator of the central control panel desperately cried, that there was a computer mistake and rocket launches should be canceled, but he was late by 7 seconds, because he choked by the coffee and could not shout immediately.The main character is a Nobel Prize laureate in Physics, who feels very confused that his science, either accidentally or not, led the Mankind to such a horror. There are also some other hopeless adults, all they are deeply shocked and desired. The main character try to give a little hope for a small group of children (all of them are shocked and never speak), and writes kind letters to his friend Eric (although there is no hope, that they will be read by someone). All people sit in a dark cellar under a (former) museum of history, some of them sometimes go out in gas-masks and special costumes to exchange canned meal for anesthetics. A strict police regime, the main policy of which being to try to save lives only for few healthy people, leaving ill ones alone and without any help, is established in the destroyed and burnt city. But even this "save lives" means "to hide themselves deeply under the surface of the Earth for more than 30 years". There is no any news, which could provide a hope, that in other parts of the Earth the situation is better.Although quite a few special effects were used, there are some scenes in the film, which are horrible up to such a degree, that I was not calm enough to look at them. In the end of the film I even weeped a bit. I think, that this film should be seen by each human on the Earth. THIS should never be forgotten...

It took me some time to remember the title of this film, and it's certainly a hidden gem. In it's very slow pace, it transfers the mood of what will probably be if we went through a nuclear war. Great cinematography, and the quality of the film just makes it more profound and hipnotizing.If you find this film, take your time any rainy day, and drift away in a world of dead and dying.