Burnt By The Sun

A return to color to illustrate the time period of the films we just departed from. Burt by the Sun is an excellent representation and portarait of the beginning of stalin's Great Purge, brought on not only by his onw paranoia, but by his distrust of himself and thos surounding him. The Great Purge was a time when Stalin began to order the, often unjustified, execurtion of not only political dissenters but also of those who had helped Lennin and subsequently, himself succeed. The subject of the purge in this film is the man who strangely reminds us of Chapaev, heroic in his nature and a piqturesque version of the Soviet ideal. However, Stalin wanted to rid himself of those who were around him when he rose to power, and has the Lt. killed, along with his wife. The conflict comes, however, from the member of the NKVD that does the secret arresting. This is the man who was once engaged to the Lt.'s now wife, so the conflict comesin wondering whetehr this is a personal vendetta against him, or really a direct order from Stalin, which we later find it was. It seems as though this film was made, not only to show russians what tyranny that had emerged from under, but also to show people of the Western World the injustices and fear the russian's had been forced to live under.