Today I tried out Russian cinema for the first time. Still deciding.

My sister introduced me to a movie a while ago that was…well, okay. Having read the book, I was fully expecting the male protagonist to have a Russian accent. He did, but I was curious to see if he was actually of Russian decent or if he was just a good actor. So I turned to my old standby, IMDb, to look him up. I love IMDb. It is such a wealth of information. (and no longer do I have sit there going “Ah! What else is that person in?) But I digress…

Turns out this actor has only ever been in one American Hollywood movie. Everything else he has ever acted in has been Russian. So I decided to check some of it out. I thought he was a good actor and he has won awards for some of his Russian films. So today, I watched My Iz Budushchego. I watched it in Russian with the English subtitles.

So, as far as my one, brief foray into Russian movie watching, I noticed there was not much in the way of an exposition. Within the first seven minutes, there had been two fights I did not fully understand even though I was reading along. I eventually caught up. Kind of.

Once the main problem occurred, I really enjoyed most of the war scenes. Which is saying something since I don’t really like them in any movie. The rising and falling action kept me intrigued and there were even moments of good humor. The denouement – and I use that term loosely – was…weird. Obviously the movie ended but it was after an overly dramatic scene in/at a lake and a strange scene in a square the just felt awkward and I wasn’t really sure how they were supposed to wrap up the movie.

Overall, I enjoyed the movie and look forward to trying out some more Russian cinema to get a better view of it. I’ll probably stick to the same main actor though since I don’t really know anything about any other actors or directors in order to look up their stuff.