hair and costume design was historically inaccurate in some scenes

Rating: Null/10 (16 November 2002)

I haven't decided yet whether the heavy symbolism of this film weighed it down or served as a valuable foundation. Certainly the question is irrelevant for those w/o sufficient knowledge in Russian history to understand the true significance of events. Whatever the final answer, the imagery framed in the wide-screen edition of this video (althought at times a degree too fanciful for my taste (ice house, etc.) will stay impressed in your mind for a long time to come. The one, serious disappointment I had with it was that hair and costume design were often historically inaccurate, sometimes jarringly so. Bouffant hairstyles and bubblegum pink maribou were not bourgeois fashion trends of early twentieth-century Moscow.
And there absolutely should have been shots of the balaika being played!