Oleksandr Dovzhenko

(Criterion Streaming, December 2022) I should know better than to watch two Soviet-era films on successive days, because my reservoir of goodwill was exhausted by Strike, and all I have left for Earth is vague sarcasm. (Or, alternately, Strike is so good that Earth doesn’t measure up.)  It’s not, strictly speaking, a bad movie. But it does drop us in a singularly forlorn era in history—rural Ukraine after the formation of the Soviet Union, and the collectivization process that had such an impact on everyone. Much of the film thus turns around a tractor. Yes, a tractor. This is a tractor-centric film. A film that falls apart if you take away the tractor. Look, I probably logged more tractor-driving hours than anyone else reading these lines, but a tractor is a tractor and there’s not a whole lot you can do with that. Sure, the tractor is a metaphor, symbol and distillation of the autobiographical material that writer-director Oleksandr Dovzhenko wants to present here. And it’s important to note at this point in history that the pro-Ukranian viewpoint espoused by the film led to a decidedly chilly reception of the film back in Soviet Russia. But you’ll have to steel yourself for a whole lot of tractors to make it to the end.