To Love…” by Michail Kalik is one of the most enigmatic films I ever saw.
Filmed in 1968, it was immediately banned and even physically destroyed because of the young Alexander Men (orthodox priest of high renown) starring in it as a speaker.
In 1990 Kalik emigrated to Israel where he somehow managed to recompile the movie from what remained as draft filming.
The film consists of four novels where actors’ play mingles with real-life footage (revolutionary technique at that time). One of the video novels is after Yuri Kazakov‘s “Autumn in the Oak Groves”, who also had a strange and quite dramatic fate, although he is really refined as a writer and is strongly recommended for pleasure or didactic (foreign language) reading: simple and powerful prose.
The last scene (as if a “mini-novel number five”) is a story apart. The filmmakers asked the playwright’s wife to urgently come “to discuss one task”. She was waiting for them in a cafe not knowing that these devils were videorecording her for 1.5h hours from a car nearby.
This last scene of waiting for something or someone is accompanied by Michael Tariverdiev‘s fantastic and dramatic song “Too Late to Love You”, words by Jevgenij Jevtušenko.
All in all, all the best Soviet names of that time are there.
English titles:
Michail Kalik “To Love”
Yuri Kazakov “Autumn in the Oak Groves”
Michael Tariverdiev and Jevgenij Jevtušenko “Too Late to Love You”
Original titles (Russian):
Михаил Калик “Любить”, 1968
Юрий Казаков “Осень в дубовых лесах”
Микаэль Таривердиев, Евгений Евтушенко “Поздно”
First published in the Levinarium Telegram Channel (now closed and deleted)