The Long Farewell (Kira Muratova, 1971)

Oleg Vladimirsky and Zinaida Sharko in The Long Farewell

Cast: Zinaida Sharko, Oleg Vladimirsky, Yuriy Kayurov, Svetlana Kabanova. Screenplay: Natalya Ryazantseva. Cinematography: Gennady Karyuk. Production design: Enrique Rodriguez. Film editing: Valentina Oleynik. Music: Oleg Karavaychuk. 

Sasha (Oleg Vladimirsky) has just returned home to his mother, Yevgeniya (Zinaida Sharko), from a visit to his father in Novosibirsk, a long way away from their home in Ukraine. His parents separated when he was very small, but now that he's a teenager, about to set out on his own, Sasha thinks he might just go live with his father. Yevgeniya, naturally, isn't very happy about this. That situation gives Kira Muratova's The Long Farewell its substance; there is no plot. It's a film that depends greatly on our empathy with the characters, and empathy was not valued very much by the Soviet ideologues who got Muratova into a bit of trouble. (The same attitude seems to be true of the right-wingers currently in charge in the U.S.) But Muratova and her two lead performers know exactly how to generate it in the audience, which makes the film such a quietly memorable one. Most of it deals with the fraying relationship between mother and son, as they get on each other's nerves, but there's a key scene that brings the movie's themes into focus. Yevgeniya is in the post office where she's asked by a man to write a letter to his family for her -- he has forgotten his glasses. As he dictates it to her, the things he says about being separated from them clearly resonate with her. Sharko, who was a celebrated stage actress in the Soviet Union, is marvelous. Vladimirsky, an actor whose career is otherwise undocumented on the internet, is equally good, with a presence reminiscent of the young Anthony Perkins. The Long Farewell is a slender but poignant film much enlivened by Muratova's sly finesse with the camera and in the editing room.  

Brief Encounters (Kira Muratova, 1967)

Vladimir Vysotskiy and Kira Muratova in Brief Encounters

Cast: Kira Muratova, Nina Ruslanova, Vladimir Vysotskiy, Lidiya Bazilskaya, Olga Viklandt, Aleksey Glazyrin, Valeri Isakov, Tatyana Midnaya, Kirill Marinchenko, Svetlana Nimolyaeva, Grigoriy Kogan. Screenplay: Kira Muratova, Leonid Zhukovitsky. Cinematography: Gennady Karyuk. Production design: Aleksandra Konardova, Oleg Perederiy. Film editing: O. Kharakova. Music: Oleg Karavaychuk. 

Kira Muratov's first feature, Brief Encounters, is a deftly handled romantic drama about a middle-aged woman, Valentina (Muratova), her not-so-faithful husband, Maksim (Vladimir Vysotskiy), and a pretty young woman, Nadya (Nina Ruslanova), whom Valentina hires as a housekeeper. What neither Valentina nor Nadya realizes when the hiring takes place is that Nadya and Maksim have already met. The process of discovering that fact and dealing with it constitutes the plot. In the meantime, we see the satire-tinged portrait of Valentina's life as a bureaucrat in the city of Odesa, dealing with contractors who cut corners and people anxious to occupy the apartment houses they're building. Muratova wittily fragments the narrative, with flashbacks to the on-the-road encounter of Nadya and Maksim, who is a geologist exploring the rural Ukraine that Nadya is eager to leave. It's the kind of movie whose narrative technique demands attention, but it's also engaging enough that you want to go back and watch it again once you've sorted out the relationships of the characters.