Sibirskiy tsiryulnik (1998)

I hear Mihalkov's Сибирский цирюльник (The Barber of Siberia) met a raging critic audience on the account that he gave in to Hollywoodean taste. The Barber of Siberia may not be Oci ciornie [Dark eyes] (1987) or Neokonchennaya pyesa dlya mekhanicheskogo pianino [An Unfinished Piece for a Mechanical Piano] (1977). But it has more in common with what Mihalkov did before than with any Hollywood movie I can think of. There are some tensions, some way of using time and space that one can never find in Hollywood. I liked every minute of the 180 of Mihalkov 1998 film even if it has not a Stalker's deep and dense fabric of signs; it just a nice serious, a bit fairy-like account of Russian life in contact with some western feeling -which really says nothing about what the movie is. I liked it.