Molchaniye Doktora Ivensa |
Soviet Union • 1973 • 90m •
  • Directed by: Budimir Metalnikov. • Starring: Sergey Bondarchuk, Zhanna Bolotova, Irina Skobtseva, Leonid Obolensky, Ivan Kuznetsov, Boris Romanov, Olgert Kroders, Gunars Placens, Pranas Piaulokas, Valeri Khlevinsky, Vladimir Skomarovsky, Alyosha Kryukov, Sergey Artamonov. • Music by: Eduard Artemev.  Dr Evans, his wife and a few others are saved by alien visitors who are shocked by the human propensity for things such as war and income inequality.
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Review:
Despite the science fiction premise it is, as the title suggests, first and foremost a character piece about Dr Ivens, and in that sense it is a very effective one, assisted by the fact that Sergey Bondarchuk gives an excellent performance in the leading role. His initial "silence" comes at the beginning when he says nothing about a fire that he sees on the wing of his airplane, and his final silence comes at the end when this readiness for death has been fulfilled.
The fact that its essentially an unlikely human-alien love story is novel enough to allow it to explore the themes in novel ways, and while it is detectably pro-Soviet in its depiction of this story set somewhere in Western Europe, it is at heart a rather despairing message about humanity's lack of readiness to react to the coming of these creatures without Earth's characteristic flaws.
In all, a success of cerebral rather than action-oriented Soviet science fiction, through good dialog and good characterization
Review by hte-trasme from the Internet Movie Database.
Movie Database