Obyknovennoe chudo

Watching this film may be difficult for many people. For starters, if you don't know Russian, don't bother watching it. A translation would kill this film. And even if you do, you need patience to finish this movie, which is long and doesn't have a lot of action in it. But if you do get to the end, I doubt it's possible not to like this movie. It's one of the best love stories I've ever seen. It's wildly original and at the same time very mesmerizing and sometimes even hypnotic.

The best things in this film are the actors, and everything hands on them. In 1964, there was no CGI, no fancy advanced cameras, certainly not in Russia. So the visual part of this film is not impressive, although it is amazing at conveying the quiet, soulful mode of the film. But the actors here are so brilliant that (assuming you have gotten through the first 5 minutes) they will hold your attention to the very end of the film. The dialogues, the half-glances, all the minute changes in their expressions speak volumes, and that is what the entire film is based on.

This film would be very difficult for anyone that doesn't understand Russian to watch. But in my opinion, it would be well worth learning the language simply to watch this movie, because it is one of the best Russian movies made, and one of the best I've ever seen.