Retread of a good movie

[rusmeister]

It’s 8 years old, but a lot of you might have missed this one - an animated Orthodox flick that deals with Stalinism and faith on a children’s level, “The Unusual Adventures of Seraphima”, set in Stalinist Russia during the war, it follows the experience of the daughter of a priest whose family was suppressed, and father murdered, living in a Soviet orphanage for girls. The movie is fine for children to watch. It’s actually fairly sophisticated, and you can pick up interesting clues and Easter eggs if you understand what things are. only a couple of things aren’t translated, the dates on the calendar and they briefly show letters that a girl is using the blank backs of to draw pictures on, and if you can read the letters, you can see that they are denunciations of people, the sort that got people imprisoned or executed.

The subtitles are less than perfect, but you can generally make out what they mean. (One more obvious point is when they have the girl saying, “you missed me” when it’s obvious that she meant “I missed you”. The translator sometimes writes the stuff in what I call “Russlish”. But it’s totally watchable and worth it.

 

[prodromos]

Will definitely have a look.

 

[ArmyMatt]

thanks!

 

[Dewi Sant]

ooh looks good, I'll be sure to watch it in full when I get some downtime

 

[rusmeister]

I’ll be interested in commentary of people who take the time to watch it!

I note that it would definitely be harder to get this movie into theaters in Russia now, as the political direction has shifted to prefer to cover up and forget Soviet and Stalinist evils.

 

[Platina]

Saw in the theater when it came out! Excellent movie. My kiddos love it, too!

 

[Dorothea]

Awesome! I'll take a look when I get the chance. Thanks for posting it, Rus!

 

[rusmeister]

It’s ironic that many are convinced that Russia is becoming “more Orthodox”, and it can seem from external reports, such as of laws being passed banning the newer forms of sexual anarchy as if that were the case.

But I don’t think this movie will get another run in theaters there. You’d think it would, if the country as a whole were truly moving towards genuine Orthodox Faith. But the fact that the movie portrays truths about Stalinism and Soviet attitudes toward faith in a negative light pretty makes it unlikely, in my opinion, that it would get support for another one. The forces effectively running the Church and influencing the state have allied themselves too closely to the rehabilitation of Stalin and the USSR to make it likely to see in theaters.

 

[Dorothea]

That was the most beautiful, amazing, and touching animated movie I’ve ever seen. Glory to God!!

Thank you for sharing this, Rus! It's blessed me so very much!

 

[Dorothea]

Is there any place we can buy the DVD of this wonderful movie? I'd love to own a copy. It's one of the best movies I've seen in ...maybe forever. It's just what I needed spiritually.

 

[rusmeister]

Is there any place we can buy the DVD of this wonderful movie? I'd love to own a copy. It's one of the best movies I've seen in ...maybe forever. It's just what I needed spiritually.

The best I could do offhand

Amazon.com

 

[Dorothea]

The best I could do offhand

Amazon.com

Thank you. I'll keep an eye out for it to hopefully come onto DVD.

 

[The Liturgist]

It’s 8 years old, but a lot of you might have missed this one - an animated Orthodox flick that deals with Stalinism and faith on a children’s level, “The Unusual Adventures of Seraphima”, set in Stalinist Russia during the war, it follows the experience of the daughter of a priest whose family was suppressed, and father murdered, living in a Soviet orphanage for girls. The movie is fine for children to watch. It’s actually fairly sophisticated, and you can pick up interesting clues and Easter eggs if you understand what things are. only a couple of things aren’t translated, the dates on the calendar and they briefly show letters that a girl is using the blank backs of to draw pictures on, and if you can read the letters, you can see that they are denunciations of people, the sort that got people imprisoned or executed.

The subtitles are less than perfect, but you can generally make out what they mean. (One more obvious point is when they have the girl saying, “you missed me” when it’s obvious that she meant “I missed you”. The translator sometimes writes the stuff in what I call “Russlish”. But it’s totally watchable and worth it.

That reminds me of a beautiful BulgarIan Orthodox recording of Holy Week and Paschal hymns which translated the hymn commonly referred to as “Noble Joseph” as “Good-Looking Joseph.” Of course I am sure St. Joseph of Arimathea is a dashing gentleman, but I did find the “Slavoniclish” translation to be amusing.

 

[prodromos]

That was the most beautiful, amazing, and touching animated movie I’ve ever seen. Glory to God!!

Thank you for sharing this, Rus! It's blessed me so very much!

I had tears at the end.

 

[The Liturgist]

One blessing of computers i sthey have made good animation accessible to independent producers, since it no longer requires the resources that Disney once had in the form of the animation studio founded by Walt, and closed near the end of Michael Eisner’s tenure, and replaced by Pixar established by Steve Jobs, but one does not need to be Pixar to produce good animation, indeed I would argue that these days it probably helps to not be Pixar, because even though things still must be done within budgetary constraints, it is possible for the independent voice that is the persecuted Holy Orthodox Church to make these films.

Of course this might have benefitted from the very talented Russian film industry as well, which in the 1970s gave us two of my favorite science fiction films, Solaris and Stalker, both directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, who also made a film that introduced me to the fascinating and important Orthodox iconographer St. Andrei Rublev, which was banned for years after its production in the Soviet Union under the Brezhnev era. More recently, they made a rather thrilling disaster movie in which a tunnel on the Moscow Metro is breached resulting in flooding, which alluded to a disaster that actually happened on the metro in St. Petersburg in the 1970s which the Leningrad authorities responded to by using liquid nitrogen to freeze the soil and contain the damage (the metro in St. Petersburg features beautiful stations in the Stalinist Gothic style like its more famous Muscovite counterpart; one will also find these on line 1 in Kiev). As a railfan and in particular an enthusiast of metros I really enjoyed that film, which featured some delightful footage of the yards where the Moscow Metro trains are kept, and the designated areas where the motormen and presumably the conductors and any other trainmen climb aboard the trains, and which featured some not altogether unrealistic banter among the trainmen, and if I recall a junior motorman who had just completed training was one of the heroes of the film, since he was familiar with the incident in St. Petersburg, being a railfan like myself. Alas I have not been to the former Soviet union, but I have been on similiar metros in Budapest and Prague, which used the same rolling stock, which was actually modelled after 1920s American metro rolling stock (if I recall, it was the Standard Cars on the BMT or the R1-R9 cars on the IND systems in New York which provided the inspiration; I would also note that Philadelphia’s Broad Street Line for many years operated cars similiar in appearance to those built for the Moscow Metro and other Eastern European systems since the 1930s. The manufacturer is I believe called Migoyan, and along with Tatra, Riga and Skoda, was one of the largest manufacturers of transit vehicles in Eastern Europe during the Cold War era.

 

[Dorothea]

I had tears at the end.

Yes! I had tears several times.