Audience Member
One of the final silent features from the Soviet Union, ultimately banned but rediscovered in the 1960s by SLON (Society for Launching New Work), a group of leftist filmmakers led by Chris Marker. In fact, Marker was so impressed by this film and by director Alexander Medvedkin that he ultimately made a striking essay film about him and his life (The Last Bolshevik, 1993). Judging by Happiness, Medvedkin did have a flair for the comic and surreal; the film is spiked with a few bizarre images (polka-dotted horse on a roof, a shack being stolen from within/underneath, long-bearded clergy wrestling for a lost wallet) inserted into a rollicking tale of a peasant and his journey into communism. Initially, he envies a neighbouring rich man, despairing his own predicament enough to want to commit suicide (comically), but, ultimately, he and his wife find that happiness lies in the collective farm (kolkhoz). I wouldn't say the plot is as straightforward as that sentence makes it sound. If there is a message here, selling the idea of the kolkhoz, it didn't come across; perhaps this experiment backfired, as did Medvedkin's "cine-train" which travelled around the USSR filming actual kolkhoz workers and showing them footage of themselves, apparently griping. But as a picaresque and comic oddity from a very different time and place, it succeeds.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
02/04/23
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walter m
In "Happiness," Khmyr(Pyotr Zinovyev) is a peasant who suffers through life. To make matters worse, he even has to watch his grandfather die in his attempt to steal some very tasty looking cake from a prosperous neighbor. So, he decides to hit the road, leaving behind his wife Anna(Yelena Yegorova), where even finding a merchant's wallet cannot alleviate his misery, as life goes on.
With its peasant protagonist and random shots at clergy, "Happiness" would rate as an average piece of Soviet propaganda if not for its innovative use of a camera in what defnitely look like crane shots and an influential use of surrealism. Plus, it helps that writer-director Aleksandr Medvedkin keeps things moving throughout this silent film, even with the fractured narrative.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
03/31/23
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Audience Member
Cartoonish in its exaggeration, to the point that the things it's satirizing lose all resonance.
Rated 2.5/5 Stars •
Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars
02/20/23
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Audience Member
Soviet slapstick? Who knew?
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
01/16/23
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Audience Member
A wonderful fable of rural life before and after communist revolution, collectivization, modernization.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
01/24/23
Full Review
Audience Member
A hapless farmer gets sick of religious hypocrisy, trying to keep up with bourgeois, and being taxed by the tsar, and so he learns to love the collective. Communist comedy? Socialist slapstick? Yes, it's a Soviet propaganda film with a Buster Keaton comic sensibility. The movie is often greatly exagerrated, part expressionist and part absurdist. It also has a dark edge to it, with not one but two gags about suicide. And it's even funny. It does get a little confusing at times, but according to one poster on IMDb, some scenes are missing. Bizarre and unexpected.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
01/17/23
Full Review
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