burnt by the sun

In this film, being burnt by the sun seems to preclude or coincide with death. This is not always the case though. The burning sun seemed to linger around the dacha for awhile before Kotov is finally taken.

Another interesting theme in this film was the french language. It seemed to be the "cultured" language. Maybe even the capitalist language in a sense. It is used when they talk about how things were. It is used to talk about singing and art. Mitya is presented as not the typical comrade by having spent a long time in Paris and whatnot, and he seems to use French the most, even calling Nadya Nadine repeatedly.

I think this film was made mostly for an international audience. It seemed like it was crying out that there is culture in Russia even after the Soviet Union. That they too could make poignant films that confronted serious political issues. It also could have been directed at the general russian public as a kind of proclamation of these newfound freedoms. While this may have been started with Gorbachev's glasnost, this seems to be a russian comrade breaking free of the bonds of the Soviet regime.

I thought it was very interesting that just three years after the USSR fell, there was already a movie at least partially condemning the previous regime. When studying the Falange and Franco in Spain, we learned that the generation that experienced the oppressive regime of Franco ignored the massive amounts of murders committed by the regime. They still do not recognize the many that went missing or were outright killed during the time. The quick turnaround by the Russians is very interesting and I think it has a lot to do with glasnost and perestroika. this is because the country was already beginning to open up before the USSR fell. People were getting used to the idea and were slowly being able to express opinions contrary to the Party's opinion.