A loving film tribute to Russian filmmaker Larisa Shepitko, who died tragically in a car accident in 1979 at the age of 40. This documentary by her husband, Elem Klimov, includes excerpts from all of Shepitko's films, and her own voice is heard talking about her life and art. Elem Klimov's grief-stricken elegy Larisa examines the life of his late wife—the film director Larisa Shepitko—through a series of direct-address interviews and photomontages, set against a mournful visual-musical backdrop. Typically, Klimov films his subjects (which include himself and several of Shepitko's collaborators) within a stark, snow-covered forest, its tangled web of trees standing in as metaphorical representation of a perhaps inexpressible suffering, the result of Shepitko's premature death while filming her adaptation of Valentin Rasputin's novella Farewell to Matyora. Interweaving home movie footage with sequences from Shepitko's work (Maya Bulgakova's pensive plane crash reminiscence from Wings takes on several new layers of resonance in this context), Larisa's most powerful passage is its first: accompani
ed by the gran
diose fin
al music
cue from Shepi
tko'
s You and I,
Klimov
dissol
ves betwe
en a se
ries of p
ersonal photo
graphs
that enc
ompass
Larisa'
s entire l
ife, from
birth to death.
This brief
symphony of sor
row anticip
ates the cath
artic revers
e-motio
n climax o
f Klimov&#3
9;s Come an
d See, th
ough by plac
ing the scene
first within
Larisa&
#39;s c
hronolo
gy, Klimov se
ems to be work
ing agains
t catharsis. Th
e pain is clear
ly fres
h, the
wound sti
ll fester
ing, and
Klimov wants—
above all—to c
apture how
deep misery
'
s knife ha
s cut.　　A
loving film
tribute to Ru
ssian fil
mmaker L
arisa Shepitko,
who died
tragical
ly in a car ac
cident