How I Ended This Summer

I had a bit of trouble digging this one out in the cinema, what with it being a slow moving Russian subtitled film starring only two people. However, reviews suggested something good and I eventually managed to track it down. Where those reviews justified though? Hmm. How I Ended This Summer is the story of old hand Sergei (Sergei Puskepalis) and fresh faced Pavel (Grigory Dobrygin), two meteorologists working on checking weather and radioactivity levels on a remote Arctic island. We watch them go about their dull daily business for a while, before Pavel receives a radio message for Sergei telling of a personal tragedy in his family. Pavel neglects to tell him immediately and when he finally does the two have a sort of falling out and then spend the rest of the film half chasing / half stalking each other. Don’t be fooled into thinking this is some sort of survival of the fittest, highly intense thriller though. If there’s a slower film released this year I’ll eat my hat. It makes The Tree Of Life look like it’s directed by Tony Scott. This picked up plenty of awards on the European festival circuit and it will no doubt appeal to the art-house crowd. I can’t see an audience beyond that though. The premise of the film isn’t actually all that bad as writer / director Aleksei Popogrebsky skips the cheap option of drumming into the audience that the players have fallen out due to going stir crazy, with a more thoughtful, if somewhat bizarre, approach to the subject of the men’s deteriorating relationship. It’s a shame he didn’t put more thought into the editing process though. This is film is over 2 hours long and it definitely felt like it. There’s easily 20 minutes that could be cut from this which wouldn’t have made any negative impact on the story line. Having said that, it’s clear that Popogrebsky’s has a vision of how these men live and he does deliver it. His point being that a minute spent in such a remote place is longer than a standard minute. When your cinema seat begins to chafe after half an hour at least you will be able to agree that Popogrebsky has proved his point.

The OC Film Sting Final Verdict

Beautifully shot, Dobrygin is great, but this triumphs or fails dependent on whether or not you can survive Popogrebsky stretching his point out over 130 minutes. Rating: 5/10