What struck me most about Freeze, Die, Come to Life was the beauty of the Siberian landscape in its severity and starkness and the way it provided a backdrop for the story. Because the landscape was so harsh, the film had to rely on the child actors and the story to make the film "come to life". Aesthetically, Freeze, Die, Come to Life is filmed in a documentary style, giving the story a honest and realistic tone that is unusual for a semi autobiography. Yet at the same time, the use of light and shadows often gives way to a surrealist, almost dreamlike depiction of life such as in the misty forest sequence. Another key stylistic device used was the "framing" of scenes, where there was be a frame within a frame composition - through a window in a train, under a bridge - that hinted at the director's position of looking back on his childhood through a lens or a filter. Often these scenes would take place in the interior of the buildings in which the characters lived in, the communal apartments or the dilapidated buildings in the city that the thugs hide out in. These buildings represent the squalor in which people lived and the normalcy of that life to them. In many ways the home has an importance in Freeze, Die, Come to Life that seems to indicate that no matter how bad life is, home is still home.
+ The Complex Use of Settings in Vitali Kavenski's films
+ New York Times Film Review
+ Michael Talbott and the Wolfkings 'Freeze, Die, Come to Life'
Seems like a very interesting and poignant film from what I read in the link.
ReplyDeleteBleak and introspective.
I saw this, as I'm sure is typical in the west, at a university cinema. What I like about "foreign" film is that you have no idea what will happen next. Western cinema is almost universally genre. You know the end - just not exactly how that known end will happen.
ReplyDeleteI watched this movie, the way you have to listen to a heavily accented person, or poetry - you have to concentrate or you won't understand.
Why I remember this film, some 16 years after I saw it was this: I didn't get it. I walked out at the end and thought "what the...?!" This result isn't especially unusual for me after a foreign movie. What was unusual was about 24 hours later it hit me, with clarity and force, I understood what had happened and why at the end of the movie, and I have never forgotten it.