"Bitter Harvest" aspires to be a historical film on the scale of "Doctor Zhivago." The focus is on a fateful love relationship placed in the context of the early years of the Soviet Union.
The film examines peasants and kulaks in the Ukraine following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. We are introduced to three generations of a proud, freedom-loving family of farmers. The grandson is a young artist named Yuri, who has great respect for his family tradition and the icons that are at the heart of Eastern Orthodoxy. As Yuri is an artist, the icons will figure prominent in the film's narrative.
Yuri and his friends have an idealistic spirit for the new government in Russia. Even the announcement of the brutal killing of the tsar does not seem to affect the community in the Ukraine. But following the death of Lenin and the rise of Stalin ("Koba"), the era of repression and collectivism suddenly impacts Yuri and his beloved Natalka.
"Koba" Stalin whispers to an associate, "You must be taught to bow to our will," and that is the course of action that Stalin pursues against the kulaks. These decent, hard-working landowners were called "blood-suckers" by Stalin and were stripped of their properties, exiled, or killed.
Beyond the atrocities, an even more catastrophic ploy of Stalin was a carefully manufactured famine that eventually led to the deaths of seven to ten million innocent people. This was known as the Holodomor ("death by starvation") in the years 1932-33.
The film graphically portrays the violence and develops an especially nefarious creature in the character of the Commissar, who holds Natalka hostage and attempts to make her his mistress. She outfoxes him with a poisoned stew, which, though not fatal, allows her to escape his clutches.
The film becomes overly melodramatic when Natalka loses the child sired by Yuri, yet receives a miracle from heaven in the form of the orphan boy named Lubko, whom the couple adopts. It seems inevitable that Yuri, Natalka, and little Lubko will escape to Poland and eventually find their way to Manitoba, Canada, which was the dream of Yuri's father.
At one point, the megalomaniac Stalin gives instructions to an associate to force the peasants into a situation of death by starvation, then asks, "Who is the world will know?" It turns out that with the release of records in Russia following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, everyone will know the truth about this malevolent dictator, as apparent in this fine film.
The film examines peasants and kulaks in the Ukraine following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. We are introduced to three generations of a proud, freedom-loving family of farmers. The grandson is a young artist named Yuri, who has great respect for his family tradition and the icons that are at the heart of Eastern Orthodoxy. As Yuri is an artist, the icons will figure prominent in the film's narrative.
Yuri and his friends have an idealistic spirit for the new government in Russia. Even the announcement of the brutal killing of the tsar does not seem to affect the community in the Ukraine. But following the death of Lenin and the rise of Stalin ("Koba"), the era of repression and collectivism suddenly impacts Yuri and his beloved Natalka.
"Koba" Stalin whispers to an associate, "You must be taught to bow to our will," and that is the course of action that Stalin pursues against the kulaks. These decent, hard-working landowners were called "blood-suckers" by Stalin and were stripped of their properties, exiled, or killed.
Beyond the atrocities, an even more catastrophic ploy of Stalin was a carefully manufactured famine that eventually led to the deaths of seven to ten million innocent people. This was known as the Holodomor ("death by starvation") in the years 1932-33.
The film graphically portrays the violence and develops an especially nefarious creature in the character of the Commissar, who holds Natalka hostage and attempts to make her his mistress. She outfoxes him with a poisoned stew, which, though not fatal, allows her to escape his clutches.
The film becomes overly melodramatic when Natalka loses the child sired by Yuri, yet receives a miracle from heaven in the form of the orphan boy named Lubko, whom the couple adopts. It seems inevitable that Yuri, Natalka, and little Lubko will escape to Poland and eventually find their way to Manitoba, Canada, which was the dream of Yuri's father.
At one point, the megalomaniac Stalin gives instructions to an associate to force the peasants into a situation of death by starvation, then asks, "Who is the world will know?" It turns out that with the release of records in Russia following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, everyone will know the truth about this malevolent dictator, as apparent in this fine film.