Freaktana A Major Disappointment

Donald Seymour This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Logan By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Cheryl A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Eric Stevenson Sergei Eisenstein really did set a record for most critically acclaimed director of all time, at least in terms of most critical reviews. Really, there's some bad news about it under the questions section here? It's got a 100% on RottenTomatoes! Anyway, on to the movie itself. I am a person who loves history and learning about it. It was great to see a part of history that honestly, I knew little about. I guess I know less about Russian history than I thought. This more or less became history within history because it was made back in the days of Joseph Stalin. Then again, all of Eisenstein's films were made at this time.They could be considered propaganda by today's standards and probably were back then. While this film is not as investing as "The Battleship Potemkin", you could consider it more of a light hearted movie. The war scenes in this film are beautifully done. Another one of the best scenes might be at the very end with the people in a winding line. It shows how influential one person can be. In a weird way, it reminded me of "Gandhi", another great biopic. Obviously, this guy went down in history as being more notorious. I was at least able to understand the historical statements.He mentions Rome fell twice, referring to the Western Roman Empire, destroyed in 476 and the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantine Empire, which fell in 1453. Come on, I've just been waiting to find a movie where I could mention historical tidbits like that. Notice how he's never referred to as "The Terrible" in this movie? It makes sense. Subjects would never call their actual leader terrible to his face. He'd like a title like "The Great" more. The pacing is great in this movie and it's of perfect length. I truly am glad it was released in separate parts. Then again, that was Stalin's orders and it's hard to support him.It's amazing to see a piece of history in every sense of the word. The costumes in this film are wonderful and creative. It's great how someone like Eisenstein received equal success in silent and talking movies. I honestly think he might have a better track record than even Hayao Miyazaki. Those foreign language countries get the best directors! Miyazaki did create great films in terms of sheer number. It's always great to see the greatest narratives that the world has to offer. Ivan isn't portrayed as being evil or really even that demanding. He does appear more or less an average person who deals with his environment. Thank you, Eisenstein, for existing! ****.

threepines It's a stupid propaganda flick. The characters are absurd and disappointingly cartoonish. They skulk, they glower, they orate, they stare off into the far distance with madly lit faces in heroic or sinister half-profile, they faint -- an amazing amount -- or just collapse in a heap, or fling themselves around the room, and generally overact in a forced and completely unbelievable way at all times. It doesn't help that the subtitles are continually drawing your eye down to the bottom of the screen (only to find yourself reading script lines even more retarded than the acting and the pacing and the bizarre settings). It is in fact a ridiculous, contemptible film & almost unbearable to watch, except in a so-bad-its-good kind of a way. You have to sneer, scoff, make up your own sappy dialogue, etc. But you keep watching.By the end of part two (which is even stranger, what with Ivan's beard and the demented, totally gay colour sequence) it is clear that the only thing left to do is to watch the whole thing again from the beginning, which is a weird response. This time around though, everything has changed -- or else you have -- because it is now spellbinding, moving, way better than good. It is in fact one of the most remarkably satisfying movies ever made, even without Part III, and pretty much everything that was crap about it turns out to have been your fault, a result of your own blinkered inability to see what was in front of you all the time.I don't get it, but wow . . . not half impressive. And as a bonus, the extras on the Criterion DVD (especially the second disc) will even help you start to understand what the hell just happened.

OldAle1 Eisenstein's devotees seem to be split into two camps: those who prefer his earlier, silent, more formalistic exercises like Potemkin and those who are more partial to the later sound films. Though I haven't yet seen Alexander Nevsky, my recent first viewing of the wartime Ivan will probably put me firmly in the second category. Much as I admire and respect his early works, no Eisenstein viewing up until now has hit me with the sheer joy of the form, storytelling and acting like this 2-part masterpiece made amazingly enough in the latter part of World War II. It's really quite astonishing that a large budget spectacle like this could have been conceived and executed so well in a country besieged....as the French Children of Paradise is in some ways a national epic given more gravity by the circumstances of its birth, so too we cannot help but look at Ivan as an exercise in the national will -- or at least Stalin's.And certainly in Part I there is much to make the mad leader proud. Ivan is willful, prone to snap decisions, but cunning and charismatic, a born ruler it seems. This first film mostly deals with Ivan's consolidation of power, with the courting of allies -- and his wife-to-be Alexandra and the crushing of enemies, most notably in the exciting siege of Kazan, where Ivan himself comes up with the idea to fill tunnels under the city with gunpowder, and where he shows a compassionate side -- not to be seen often, though not insignificant -- in reprimanding his commander Kurbsky for unnecessary brutality. We also see the power wielded by the Tsar's aunt Efrosina who is in most respects the central antagonist of both films, as she plots to have her own son on the throne while Ivan lies sick. At the end, Ivan loses both his wife and his power, leaving Moscow and vowing only to return when the people want him to.The storytelling is fluid and exciting and I had little trouble following the many plot strands despite a limited knowledge of 16th century Russian history; a big part of Eisenstein's genius in these films is in his (as always) extraordinary rhythmic editing and in an obsessive attention to detail that rivals anything seen in the cinema before or since. Every shot is suffused with poetry and meaning...the religious imagery everywhere, the animalistic symbolism embodied in Ivan (the hawk), Efrosina (the snake) and other characters, the regular movement from claustrophobia both physical and of the mind to open and huge spaces....this is both one of the most beautiful and overstuffed, sumptuous films ever made. My poor description isn't going to be up to the task; and I haven't yet even mentioned the acting, which is certainly theatrical and over-the-top in some ways, but in the best Orson Welles sense of that phrase. Indeed, of all actors only Welles to my mind could have competed with Nikolia Cherkassov in the central role of Ivan; and of all directors beside Eisenstein perhaps only Welles could have managed to weld the artifices of film, theater, pantomime and music together so organically. That music -- by then-rehabilitated Dmitri Shostakovich -- is powerful as well, though to my mind not as memorable as Prokofiev's work on Nevsky though I usually valued the former composer more highly; it's great music but it rarely comes to the forefront -- perhaps it just doesn't need to, with so many other elements competing with it in the vast filled-up canvas of the film.The Criterion DVD showcases an absolutely superb print of the film, indeed it is one of the best-looking, best-preserved films of the period I have ever seen, razor sharp and crystal clear and clean. I didn't have time to go through all of the extras as I was just renting it but rest assured I will when I eventually buy it. This is one of half-dozen most powerful experiences I've had watching something at home, a classic that more than lives up to its high reputation.

llareggub The combination of Russian adventurism in the Near East and Russian Orthodox Christianity, juxtaposed with the terrible fight for survival against the Nazis, produced this masterpiece. Never mind that such understatements as "In Which We Serve" reduce this to it's rightful place in propaganda- that just moves IWWS up towards it's rightful place amongst the Greatest Films Ever Made. This is more along the lines of the wartime production of Harry V- great propaganda, but stuff that tells more about the producers than their erstwhile enemies.Harry lauded the British qualities of beggar thy master, a British Longbowman is as good, and sometimes more worthwhile, than his lord; Ivan says that Comrade Stalin is worth ten divisions, especially if he looks like Jesus Christ (a bird- I am stuffed if I can figure that one out; maybe some people have been reading too much Derrida inspired, Post Structuralist Bovine Excrement). As an ex-seminarian, Comrade Stalin almost certainly had a Messiah Complex; as a Russian, he definitely had no time for any democratic drivel. A Makarov bullet to the back of the brain inspired him, Putin, and every nasty Russian Dictator in between.Americans and Russians have two things in common- they were the last people on earth to outlaw slavery in the 19th Century, and they were the last people on earth to recognise, and fight, the horror of Fascism in the 20th. As propaganda, this is great; as history, it is frightening.