Review of How I Ended This Summer (2010) by Dave C — 09 May 2011

"One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it," says one variant of Chekhov's maxim. Director Popogrebsky seems to have made this foundational in his approach to filmmaking.

Much is made in the first act of rifles, radiation, and radios, and these elements all become more central and more sinister as the film progresses. And what a film it is! It was shot on location in a Soviet-era meteorological station on an island in the Arctic Ocean, and the narrow color palate of the natural environment is starkly contrasted with the bright blue building used by the two men around whom the movie revolves.

There is older, experienced Sergei and twenty-something Pasha, a recent college graduate on this job for the first time. Their relationship is uneasy and ultimately mysterious. Sergei is something of a domineering, nitpicking bully, while Pasha is somewhat careless, and too cool for it all.

We don't know much about these men but we know that Sergei has a wife and very young son he loves and craves returning to when the weather forces him back to the world. While he's out fishing for Arctic trout for a day or two, Pasha is cornered into taking a terrible "radiogram" message for him: his wife and son are dead.

But Pasha fails to deliver the message, in a combination of genuine fear and rank cowardice. Thus he sets in motion the conflict that dominates the remainder of the film. It's a long film at two hours and nine minutes, and it takes its time telling its story.

The emotional territory it covers had me so squirming at the halfway point that I nearly turned it off. The ending is odd and surprising and I won't say more.