
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, November 4, 1995                   TAG: 9511070010
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 12   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: KATHERINE REED STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

A BEAUTIFUL, POWERFUL FILM

"Burnt By The Sun," the winner of this year's Academy Award for best foreign film, wouldn't have half the power it does if it attempted to suggest that we are all guilty as players on history's stage.

There is no such ideological copout in this beautiful, powerful film about a single day during Stalin's reign of terror in the former Soviet Union. This film's greatness lies in its ability to convey the subtleties of the human struggle to make the right choices when circumstances it virtually impossible. What if all the choices are bad? Are they still choices?

And are we still constrained to live with the consequences?

The answer is yes. And no. To everything. We are deceived if we think there are simple answers, but lost if we give up on trying to live by simple truths.

Director-writer Nikita Mikhalkov, who also stars as the aging Bolshevik hero Serguei Kotov, picked a perfect setting for his tale. It is Kotov's summer home, where he is enjoying an idyllic life with his young wife, Marussya (Ingeborga Dapkounaite), and 6-year-old daughter, Nadia (the director's real life daughter by the same name). The year is 1936, and while the terrible events of the time are within reach in the morning's newspaper, Kotov, his family and friends seem to be reveling in as good a life as anyone could have anywhere on earth.

Tension arrives in the disguised person of Dimitri (Oleg Menchikov), who enters the dacha, needles everyone with bits of personal information that only a friend (or enemy) could know, then reveals himself. He is Marussya's old lover, who disappeared years before under mysterious circumstances.

Dimitri's power over Marussya is still enormous, but she isn't the entire point of his visit: Dimitri is now a member of Stalin's secret police, and he's on official business.

None of this is entirely obvious from the start. But if one were to look, one would notice such things as a moment at the river when Dimitri sees the jagged edge of a broken bottle jutting up from the soft, green grass next to where Sergeui is removing his shoes to go swimming. Edges are just barely concealed everywhere in the beautiful softness of this single, summer day - all far more ominous than the absurd gas-attack drill of the civilian corps along the river or the shenanigans of the tanks in the wheat fields.

``Burnt By The Sun'' is a perfect memorial to ``those who were burned by the sun of revolution.'' But it first wisely tallies up the importance of who was taken and what was taken so the lesson will be lost on no one.

Burnt by the Sun ****

A Sony Classics release showing at The Grandin Theatre. 135 min. Rated R for profanity, semi-nudity and adult themes.

by CNB