white sun of the desert

russian literature and cinema can be depressing. a few wintry minesottan days will tell you why. and of course pg wodehouse and woody allen have joked about it often.

white sun of the desert is a genre bending 1969 movie from the USSR at the height of the cold war that combines humour, adventure, and gunfights with a few drops of good old soviet ideology and apparently made following an order that came from the top bosses and the "movie committee" to make a western that will outdo the americans. it is most appropriately an "eastern", USSR's reply to sergio leone, as one of the script writer yezhov says in an interview. shot in the desert region of turkmenstan, it chronicles the adventures of comrade sukhov, a character right out of the mir-publisher folk tales we read growing up in indira's india. comrade sukhov, dressed in his dirty army jacket, is returning back to his village through a desert landscape after fighting for the red army in far flung corners of the soviet empire, his thoughts dwelling on his rather matronly sweetheart katerina matveyevna when his attention is drawn to a head looming in the sand. it turns out to be a peasant who has been punished by a local bandit. he frees him and is on his way when greatness is thrust upon him in the form of protecting the harem of a local warrior adbudllah to safety. abullah himself is fleeing the red army and has abandoned the harem as they hinder his movement. as yezhov recounts, this is the crux of the movie around which other threads are woven and is apparently based on a real incident recounted to him by one of the red army commanders in a bar. the movie is about sukhov's often hilarious attempts to protect the harem who now considers him to be their husband and master (despite his day dreaming about katerina, who is depicted in a red skirt and pastoral backdrop) and ends in an inevitable climactic gun battle with comrade sukhov firing a few seconds earlier than his adversary. he is helped by the peasant he rescues earlier and a hilarious, inebriated former customs inspector vereschagin who also sings the theme song your excellency lady luck. there are wonderful red oneliners like 'the east is a delicate matter', 'customs has given approval' but not much of ideology per se which is one of the reasons why it had trouble getting the thumbs-up from the party bosses, according to yezhov again who says they approved it as it had cost quite a packet of rubles to make.

this cult film is traditionally watched by cosmonauts prior to space launches. it is easy to see why and was a different experience than watching tarkovsky or sokurov.