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Drama

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Nobody made films like Kira Muratova. Uncompromising and uncategorizable, the Ukrainian iconoclast withstood decades of censorship to realize her singular vision in hypnotically beautiful, expressionistically heightened films that remain unique in their ability to evoke complex interior worlds. Her first two solo features, Brief Encounters and The Long Farewell, are fascinatingly fragmented portraits of women navigating work, romance, and family life with a mix of deep yearning and playful pragmatism. Long suppressed by Soviet authorities, these films became legendary—along with their maker—and they now make for a revelatory introduction to this most fearlessly original of artists. TWO-BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES New 4K digital restorations, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks Interviews with scholars Elena Gorfinkel and Isabel Jacobs Archival interview with director Kira Muratova PLUS: An essay by film critic Jessica Kiang BRIEF ENCOUNTERS Kira Muratova’s first solo feature already displays her sui generis approach to cinema, in an impressionistic portrait of women at work and in love. Through an intricate play of flashbacks and shifting perspectives, Brief Encounters reveals the tangled romantic triangle that connects a hard-nosed city planner (played by Muratova herself), her free-spirited geologist husband (legendary Soviet protest singer Vladimir Vysotskiy), and the young woman from the countryside (Nina Ruslanova) whom she hires as her housekeeper. Blending observational realism with striking New Wave–style experimentation, Muratova crafts a wryly perceptive study of two very different women bound by chance and each navigating her own career, dreams, and disappointments. THE LONG FAREWELL With its daring formalist freedom, Kira Muratova’s pointillist family portrait so perplexed and unnerved Soviet censors that it effectively halted her career for years afterward. A kind of psychological breakup movie, The Long Farewell traces the growing rift that develops between an emotionally impulsive single mother (stage legend Zinaida Sharko, transcendent in one of her first film roles) and her increasingly resentful teenage son (Oleg Vladimirsky), who upends her world when he announces that he wishes to live with his faraway father. The seemingly simple premise is rendered anything but by Muratova’s dreamy, drifting style, with off-kilter framing, editing, and dialogue continually pushing cinema’s aesthetic and expressive boundaries outward. Top About this item Similar From the Brand Reviews Brief Encounters / The Long Farewell: Two Films by Kira Muratova (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]

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Set in 1982 in small town Virginia, PERMANENT centers around the newly relocated Dickson family, Jeanne and Jim (Patricia Arquette and Rainn Wilson) and their 13-year-old daughter Aurelie (Kira McLean). In this hilariously awkward and unique story full of wit and wisdom of a hairstyle gone wrong, the Dicksons are struggling through major life changes together all the while trying desperately to emerge intact on the other side.

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Season One: Legends speak of the Shepherd, a savior who will bring peace to the seraphim and human worlds. Sorey has spent his life studying ancient books and exploring ruins to learn more about the legendary savior. When he and his seraphim companion Mikleo encounter a mysterious girl in the ruins, the stories of the Shepherd become Sorey's reality. Is he strong enough to take on the evil Lord of Calamity? Season Two: Sorey continues on his path of peace while his abilities as the Shepherd grow stronger. But, unbeknownst to him, his ally Rose leads the Scattered Bones on missions of vengeance. When she plans to exact revenge with the wind Seraph Dezel, can Sorey stop them from shedding more blood? Or are they and everyone else doomed to fall to malevolence? The final battle against the Lord of Calamity begins!

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Season One: Legends speak of the Shepherd, a savior who will bring peace to the seraphim and human worlds. Sorey has spent his life studying ancient books and exploring ruins to learn more about the legendary savior. When he and his seraphim companion Mikleo encounter a mysterious girl in the ruins, the stories of the Shepherd become Sorey's reality. Is he strong enough to take on the evil Lord of Calamity? Season Two: Sorey continues on his path of peace while his abilities as the Shepherd grow stronger. But, unbeknownst to him, his ally Rose leads the Scattered Bones on missions of vengeance. When she plans to exact revenge with the wind Seraph Dezel, can Sorey stop them from shedding more blood? Or are they and everyone else doomed to fall to malevolence? The final battle against the Lord of Calamity begins!

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Season One: Legends speak of the Shepherd, a savior who will bring peace to the seraphim and human worlds. Sorey has spent his life studying ancient books and exploring ruins to learn more about the legendary savior. When he and his seraphim companion Mikleo encounter a mysterious girl in the ruins, the stories of the Shepherd become Sorey's reality. Is he strong enough to take on the evil Lord of Calamity? Season Two: Sorey continues on his path of peace while his abilities as the Shepherd grow stronger. But, unbeknownst to him, his ally Rose leads the Scattered Bones on missions of vengeance. When she plans to exact revenge with the wind Seraph Dezel, can Sorey stop them from shedding more blood? Or are they and everyone else doomed to fall to malevolence? The final battle against the Lord of Calamity begins!

Description

Season One: Legends speak of the Shepherd, a savior who will bring peace to the seraphim and human worlds. Sorey has spent his life studying ancient books and exploring ruins to learn more about the legendary savior. When he and his seraphim companion Mikleo encounter a mysterious girl in the ruins, the stories of the Shepherd become Sorey's reality. Is he strong enough to take on the evil Lord of Calamity? Season Two: Sorey continues on his path of peace while his abilities as the Shepherd grow stronger. But, unbeknownst to him, his ally Rose leads the Scattered Bones on missions of vengeance. When she plans to exact revenge with the wind Seraph Dezel, can Sorey stop them from shedding more blood? Or are they and everyone else doomed to fall to malevolence? The final battle against the Lord of Calamity begins!

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At the height of the Cold War, the Soviet film industry set out to prove it could outdo Hollywood with a production that would dazzle the world: a titanic, awe inspiring adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s classic tome in which the fates of three souls—the blundering, good hearted Pierre; the heroically tragic Prince Andrei; and the radiant, tempestuous Natasha—collide amid the tumult of the Napoleonic Wars. Employing a cast of thousands and an array of innovative camera techniques, director Sergei Bondarchuk conjures a sweeping vision of grand balls that glitter with rococo beauty and breathtaking battles that overwhelm with their expressionistic power. As a statement of Soviet cinema’s might, War and Peace succeeded wildly, garnering the Academy Award for best foreign language film and setting a new standard for epic moviemaking. TWO BLU RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES • New 2K digital restoration, with 5.1 surround DTS HD Master Audio soundtrack • New interviews with cinematographer Anatoly Petritsky and filmmaker Fedor Bondarchuk, son of Sergei Bondarchuk • Two 1966 documentaries about the making of the film • Television program from 1967 profiling actor Ludmila Savelyeva, and featuring Sergei Bondarchuk • New program with historian Denise J. Youngblood (Bondarchuk’s “War and Peace”: Literary Classic to Soviet Cinematic Epic) detailing the cultural and historical contexts for the film • Janus rerelease trailer • New English subtitle translation • PLUS: An essay by critic Ella Taylor

Description

At the height of the Cold War, the Soviet film industry set out to prove it could outdo Hollywood with a production that would dazzle the world: a titanic, awe inspiring adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s classic tome in which the fates of three souls—the blundering, good hearted Pierre; the heroically tragic Prince Andrei; and the radiant, tempestuous Natasha—collide amid the tumult of the Napoleonic Wars. Employing a cast of thousands and an array of innovative camera techniques, director Sergei Bondarchuk conjures a sweeping vision of grand balls that glitter with rococo beauty and breathtaking battles that overwhelm with their expressionistic power. As a statement of Soviet cinema’s might, War and Peace succeeded wildly, garnering the Academy Award for best foreign language film and setting a new standard for epic moviemaking. TWO BLU RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES • New 2K digital restoration, with 5.1 surround DTS HD Master Audio soundtrack • New interviews with cinematographer Anatoly Petritsky and filmmaker Fedor Bondarchuk, son of Sergei Bondarchuk • Two 1966 documentaries about the making of the film • Television program from 1967 profiling actor Ludmila Savelyeva, and featuring Sergei Bondarchuk • New program with historian Denise J. Youngblood (Bondarchuk’s “War and Peace”: Literary Classic to Soviet Cinematic Epic) detailing the cultural and historical contexts for the film • Janus rerelease trailer • New English subtitle translation • PLUS: An essay by critic Ella Taylor

Description

At the height of the Cold War, the Soviet film industry set out to prove it could outdo Hollywood with a production that would dazzle the world: a titanic, awe inspiring adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s classic tome in which the fates of three souls—the blundering, good hearted Pierre; the heroically tragic Prince Andrei; and the radiant, tempestuous Natasha—collide amid the tumult of the Napoleonic Wars. Employing a cast of thousands and an array of innovative camera techniques, director Sergei Bondarchuk conjures a sweeping vision of grand balls that glitter with rococo beauty and breathtaking battles that overwhelm with their expressionistic power. As a statement of Soviet cinema’s might, War and Peace succeeded wildly, garnering the Academy Award for best foreign language film and setting a new standard for epic moviemaking. TWO BLU RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES • New 2K digital restoration, with 5.1 surround DTS HD Master Audio soundtrack • New interviews with cinematographer Anatoly Petritsky and filmmaker Fedor Bondarchuk, son of Sergei Bondarchuk • Two 1966 documentaries about the making of the film • Television program from 1967 profiling actor Ludmila Savelyeva, and featuring Sergei Bondarchuk • New program with historian Denise J. Youngblood (Bondarchuk’s “War and Peace”: Literary Classic to Soviet Cinematic Epic) detailing the cultural and historical contexts for the film • Janus rerelease trailer • New English subtitle translation • PLUS: An essay by critic Ella Taylor