The Thief
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Movie Reviews of The Thief
Movie Review: a delight
Summary: 5 Stars
What a great performance by such a young actor!Movie Review: I Remember Papa (or do I)?
Summary: 4 Stars
I noticed this movie from its' nomination for an Oscar in the Best Foreign Language Film category. That's usually a solid category in which to find quality movies and "The Thief" is no exception. The title keeps no secrets but I had no idea of the direction that the plot would carry us. It is the story of a boy who searches for something to hold on to in the years after WWII in Soviet Russia. The various stages in his life (and most of this film takes place with him about 4 years old) present challenges that most of us could not fathom. The lessons in life that he absorbs leads to a strange climax which is followed by an equally pondersome post-script. My take is that "The Thief" suggests that life repeats itself no matter how offbeat the circumstances of our youth.
As an aside, this film is rather crude at times. Check out the (to date) lone one-star review for a somewhat over-reaction to the crudeness. Nonetheless, there's a youthful example of how European cinema standards cross a line that, to my knowledge, US films still (thank goodness) consider taboo. There actually is a cultural context for the scene that comes to mind but it could have been filmed differently. I was impressed by the Russian life style that "The Thief" depicted so well. It is certainly worth watching (even if you might want to avoid watching every scene).
Movie Review: One of my all-time favorites
Summary: 4 Stars
This movie is one of my all-time favorites. However, I must say that the last very important scene was deleted in this version of the movie compared to the original Russian version. It is unfortunate since that scene changes the whole moral of the story.Movie Review: Another rites-of-passage in historical times story.
Summary: 3 Stars
We are so used to the idea of Stalinist Russia as a grim, grey place of totalitarian terror, with spies lurking and soldiers intruding on all aspects of life, with citizens cowering in their beds awaiting a midnight knock on their door, their every movement restricted and questioned, that 'The Thief' comes as a bit of a surprise. The central characters, a petty thief, his lover and her son, have a remarkable ease of mobility, as they travel throughout Russia, renting collective apartments, robbing their neighbours, and catching the train for the next town. The police and soldiers are sparse and rather bumblingly comic; there is little sense of an oppressive, unseen eye hampering activity. There are even glimpses of collective happiness, through meals, singalongs, the circus etc. 'Thief' doesn't purport to be a realistic recreation of the USSR in the early 1950s, but a story filtered through the memories of a middle-aged man. This accounts for the flatness of the mise-en-scene, the suspended weightlessness of the camera movements, the somewhat unreal filming of the realistic (grotty lavatories, backstreet punch-ups etc.). The film is, in a sense, a rite-of-passage, with the son, whose father died in the war, being initiated into theft and life by a dashingly handsome young man, whose very presence in an environment devoid of men his age mark him out as himself unreal, as much a phantom as the visions the boy has of his father.
This being a modern Russian film, however, 'Thief' cannot leave it at that, and has to be an allegoy for the past - Tolyan, who calls himself the secret illegitimate son of Stalin, is in some way a figure for the dictator, a surrogate father full of false promises and broken dreams, robbing the poor; whose advice for survival is a relentless pummelling of the enemy until you get what you want. He is not always a monster, though, bringing momentary joy to lives drained of it; in his very a-social activity, in his a-socialistness, if you like, he achieves a delusive freedom unavailable in a society designed to murder freedom. In some ways, far from representing Stalin, he seems to embody the potential of his maimed, forgotten victims.
This historical focus underlying the character drama justifies the various contrivances and cliches in the film, doomed attempts by the narrator to make sense of the senseless. Watchable enough for most of its running time, 'Thief' can't help seeming unadventurous and banal.
Movie Review: One of my favorites, but not without the original ending
Summary: 3 Stars
"The Thief" is one of my favorite Russian films, but this version, apparently one for export, deletes the final scene from the film I saw several times in Russia. Although it was only the final 3 minutes of a wonderful film, it changes the story rather dramatically. Many critics interpreted the relationship between stepfather and stepson in this film as an allegory for Russians' relationship with Stalin (the stepfather has a tatoo of Stalin on his chest, among other subtle hints). The deleted final scene adds another dimension to this relationship. It takes place in either Chechnya or Afghanistan, at a train station where refugees are trying to escape fighting in nearby streets (including scenes of Russian soldiers executing prisoners by firing squad, which may explain why this was part was deleted from the version for foreigners). A tough Russian officer sees a grimy old man on a stretcher. He calls out to him in a very emotional voice, rushes to him, and rips open his shirt, only to discover he has no tatoo. The officer then boards the train, takes off his shirt, and you see the boy as a man, with exactly the same tatoos as his stepfather had, and its clear he is still looking for him, even though he wanted him dead (as many Russians still think of Stalin). The train pulls out of the station as he stares out the window.
I think the deleted last scene is worth two stars, so I rank this version as a 3 out of 5.