Evenings on a Farm near Dykanka (1961)

directed by Aleksandr Rou
former Soviet Union production; Ukraine
69 minutes
4 stars out of 5
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Now that it is December, it's time for seasonally-appropriate films. Evenings on a Farm near Dykanka isn't terribly Christmasy, but those are my favorite kinds of Christmas movies, and I'd imagine a lot of people who are sick of the commercialism and ubiquitousness of modern Christmas celebrations would enjoy things like this as well.

All of Aleksandr Rou's movies have some magic in them, but sometimes they can get stale, running along the same typical folksy track with little variation. This, however, is one of his better ones, even though it still uses character tropes that practically every other Russian Fantastika movie uses: the vain but beautiful girl; the hearty, honest blacksmith; a couple of drunk old Cossacks; a witch; you know the drill. I like the guy who uses his magic powers to be able to eat dumplings without moving off of his chair. The majority of humor in this comes from people like that- big fat drunken old men, cavorting around the snow, occasionally getting themselves mixed up with a monkey-like little devil. All I could think about whenever the devil was onscreen was how uncomfortable his costume had to be.

There's a really funny sequence where one man comes to visit the witch, and is interrupted by another man he's trying to avoid, so the witch bundles him up in a sack, and then the man who the first man was avoiding is interrupted by a man he wanted to avoid, so the witch bundles him up in a sack, and this goes on and on several times until multiple people are hiding from other people in sacks. I love this innocent humor, this stuff that's a little corny but really pure-hearted and not seeking to make fun of anybody.

The production design on this one is also great. There are a lot of scenes where people fly through the sky doing stuff like plucking down stars and/or the moon, or ferrying other people to St. Petersburg (as you do). I love the way the sky is constructed in this, how it's a solid backdrop that you can reach by levitating for a couple of seconds, as if the whole village is just surrounded by sky to fly in, like islands are surrounded by water to swim in. I love the way people fly in this, too- it literally looks exactly like how it feels when I have dreams about flying, right down to the swimming motions that you need to do to stay in the air. This is such a simplistic but really wonderful film and I like it so much more than films about Santa Claus and elves and etc.