Screening
Wild Field
2 Dec 2009
Event times
at 7.15pm
Cost of entry
£7.00, conc. £5.00, FREE for Friends of Pushkin House
Address
- 5a Bloomsbury Square
- London
- WC1A 2TA
- United Kingdom
Travel Information
- Tube: Holborn, Tottenham Court Road and Russell Square
Wild Field
About
In association with Kino Kino!Language: In Russian with English subtitles
Forsaken people and strange goings-on populate the barren Kazakh steppe in Mikhail Kalatozishvili's acclaimed new film. Mitya, a thoughtful and handsome young doctor, works from a remote outpost amid beautiful desolation, tending to the locals by improvising with rocks, herbs, and whatever else handily augments his meager medical supplies. Through Mitya¹s detached perspective, we come to know a crude, hardscrabble community beset by simmering feuds, hobbled dreams, and spiritual despondence.
Kalatozishvili - grandson of master filmmaker Mikhail Kalatozov, the only Russian director to ever win at the Cannes Film Festival - succeeds in depicting a barely habitable and brutally isolated world, pockmarked by absurdity and ameliorated only by companionship. For Mitya, the wilderness of the steppe holds a lurking sense of existential dread that gradually emerges as a palpable force that he must face. Brilliant cinematography captures the harsh beauty of the landscape, while a host of outstanding performances build a complex picture of the post-Soviet psyche. Wild Field is one of the most important and absorbing releases from contemporary Russian cinema and should not be missed.