The Postman's White Nights (2014)

directed by Andrey Konchalovskiy
Russia
90 minutes
4.5-star
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The Postman's White Nights is a calm mix of documentary and fiction about a rural town in Russia that can only be reached by boat. The director scored some big-time awards for it, as he should have, because this is, in my opinion, the best way to make docufiction that's authentic and doesn't exploit anybody.

All of the actors in the film are actual people who live in the village. Their characters are based off of their real lives, and none of them are professionals. The movie states this clearly at the beginning, so it doesn't attempt to deceive the audience by bringing them a scripted atmosphere and passing it off as everyday life (*cough* Moana *cough*), but it also incorporates the natural tone of village life into its semi-fictional narrative. It's roughly equal parts gorgeous nature shots, scenes with people going about their business, and scenes that are clearly from a "fixed" perspective that mark it as not quite all candid. Then later in the film there is a storyline about the main character- the postman- beginning to hallucinate a little grey cat whose metaphor, if any, I haven't been able to decipher.

The story does not get outwardly mournful or spend a large chunk of time dwelling on what tragedies may occur in the village, but early on in the film, an elderly woman dies, and her funeral procession is the moment that defines the attitude the film has towards the passage of time. It acknowledges her role as not only a member of the community but a tie back to the past. The postman himself is a significant character in defining this feeling of changing and moving on, as well, because with some of his time spent in the village and some spent on the mainland, he serves as a bridge between the old ways and the new. 

Another thing I thought was interesting that this movie brings up is the individual vs. the community. All throughout, there's things that show how the town generally stays the same but one individual can still influence people on many levels. A single man steals the postman's boat's engine, so now he can no longer service the town. The postman himself, though he's only one person, brings the villagers' pensions, their food, letters from relatives, basically the whole backbone of the town. I think in a lot of Western cultures, it gets away from us how important one person can be to a larger whole, but it's not entirely our fault, because I know that in America, at least, the majority of any contributions we might make as individuals are erased by corporations; hence why a single person taking shorter showers or reducing their food waste means next to nothing in the face of a multi-billion-dollar industry that literally plans to have massive amounts of waste.

The Postman's White Nights is a good and ultimately a bit somber reflection on an isolated way of life that's less and less common. It's not anything quaint or infantile, but it takes a good hard look at life outside the rat race, and I wish we could see more documentaries that do that.