Burnt by the Sun - Film Crtitique essays

Burnt by the Sun - Film Crtitique essays In analyzing the two main characters-Kotov and Mitia-there are many distinctions and similarities between the two, insomuch that they were both burnt by the sun. The film takes place in 1936 Russia, nineteen years after the Communist Revolution and well into Stalins purges. The film centers on Colonel Kotov, a revolutionary in the Bolshevik uprising and Mitia, a member of Stalins secret political police who was sent to retrieve Kotov for his execution. In analyzing Kotov, one can understand why Stalin would consider him a threat to his desire to be dictator of Russia. The Colonel was a strong and powerful man, and very charismatic. He rose from meager rural beginnings to be transformed by Socialism into the man Stalin wanted as men of Russia-a good soldier who loves his people, his revolution, and his Motherland. Respected and glorified by all, nothing seems to be able to get in his way as demonstrated in the opening scenes of the movies as he orders a battalion of tanks and airplanes to withdraw their maneuvers in a rural area. The film therefore illustrates the age-old injustices inherent in absolute power and how easily past loyalties is betrayed, or in other words, how he (and later Mitia) were burnt by the sun. Kotov, does not exude the image of one who could be accused of treason. Accounts of amazing confessions aired on the radio of trials and executions of other leading Communists didnt perturb him. When Stalin's political police force, comes to arrest him, Kotov remains very calm, expecting to resolve everything with a simple phone call to the Kremlin, but when the arresting officers turn violent, Kotov understands. Therefore his tragedy is not that of a guilty man, but the tragedy of a man blinded by the precepts and principles of the all-powerful regime he fought to establish. The most obscure and probably the most important point of the movie was the ominous fireballs that appeared throughout the fil...