Claysaba Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Crwthod A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Juana what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Turin_Horse This is one of the films I most regret having set my interest on to decide to watch it. Four and a half hours of a story running through several generations of a small Siberian village, which just can't be less interesting, moving and appealing no matter the point of view you want to look at it: epic, sentimental, historical, or all at once, which seems to have been the pretension of the director, failing completely and pitifully in his vain attempt. A loose thread of familiar and personal stories intermingled with historical events which are unable during more than four painful hours to drag your attention into them just for five minutes. Not a single character is developed in a way that you can feel any emotion or at least some interest in his/her whereabouts. But there is some epic in the film: the number of senseless, histrionic scenes which make you plead "please stop this once and for all!!!". The reason why I watched this film was that other film by director Konchalovsky is actually among my all time favorites: Runaway Train. After having watched Sibiriada now I wonder if they are the same person or I mixed up names or something.

jessicacoco2005 Siberiade, is considered by many to be Konchalovsky's masterpiece. A truly epic, grandiose, and colorful film, which follows 3 generations of two rival families in the remote Siberian logging village of Elan. The Solomins are the wealthy masters of this place, while the Ustyuzhanins are the poor unappreciated workers with no future, nothing to look forward to except hard work and an early death...That is, until the Bolshevik revolution comes and alters the power structure. While the young Nikolai Ustyuzhanin looks towards the future with dreams of a socialist paradise brought about by the glorious revolution going underway, the Solomins feel their own world dying and look towards the past, trying to hold on to what they have. Oil-rich Siberia will take on a new importance for the fledgling Soviet Union. Unchecked hope and progress collides with despair and reactive conservatism. In life, what we hope for is not what we get. Life comes with compromise. Trees fall to the ground stirring sadness in the soul for the woods that will be sacrificed for progress. Bombs explode and kill people stirring despair for we know the West will not allow a workers' socialist paradise to be created, because profits are what's important in a capitalist system. Revolution, war, famine, love and romance all combine here and are interwoven like the fibers of a fine tapestry. It's a spectacular, sweeping epic film not to be missed.

tedg Inexplicably this is compared to "Doctor Zhivago," I suppose because there are Russian revolutionaries. Egad. The films couldn't be more different.This is inspired by "2001." Equally inexplicably, "Solaris" is called the Russian 2001 because. Heck, because it has space hardware. Jees.The structure of "2001" is its reason to be, a fight among three narrative perspectives. We never know who wins: the human, machine or divine. Each is presented in a way that could be interpreted to subsume the others, and we are never grounded. Its sublime, each level above the other in a sort of Escher narrative.This is the same, very deliberately so. We have the same three: we have the human story of sex, love community and how that embraces everything, Miss Marplewise. We have the "machine" or the revolution and its apparatus, some figurative and some literal. And we have the mystical energy and laws of nature, which are deliberate, clear, pervasive here. (If there is something particularly skillful in this project cinematically, it is how this mystical mist pervades.)Its not at all as deft in the balance as Kubric's masterpiece. But you can see the three climbing over each other, and the standoff presented at the end.Its a long slog, and you'll have to wade through overly optimistic celebrations of revolutionary purpose. But its rewarding in a sort of Polish (meaning dreamy) way.On a second viewing, I have to remark on how the fundamental nature of this is different from most else that I watch. I'm particularly sensitive to the fact that most every element that I see in every film project is a matter of market forces. An artist can modulate within that pull, but never really escape the sender-receiver dynamic. This film differs in the way that some monumental architecture does from what surrounds it. In the soviet system, you pay your dues and prove that you are a worthy artist. That means of course that you have to satisfy the artistic bureaucracy, the nature of which one can only imagine. But once you achieve some level of power, you become a dilettante, with amazing reach. Everything we see here is because it was envisioned to be so, quite apart from what we normally have to deal with in the "free" world. Its the inversion that is striking. This film really is perfect in many ways. You can see that every frame and nuance is the way the filmmaker wants it regardless of whether he thinks people care. I didn't care much, because the thing is as soulless as most other Soviet art. But its very clean, and big and sentimental. And its different, and that's a welcome shower.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

krz_bak It is a story of Siberian village people from the beginning of 20th century till the 60ties. It is about passion and feelings, about Russian soul, and very romantic. This movie IS NOT action packed, it flowes slowely. In second part one can find great songs - Russian romances. It is much more better than Doctor Zhivago. The director of this movie moved to America and made Runaway Train for example.