Pros: Intensely moving coming of age story in a setting of stark beauty
Cons: Requires tolerance for black-and-white, subtitles, and (non-gratuitous) violence.
The Bottom Line: Highly recommended for emotional impact and the skillful integration of the rough beauty of the Soviet orient. Not for viewers who need Hollywood glitz and polish.
Plot Details: This opinion reveals minor details about the movie's plot.
Freeze Die (Come to Life) is a dramatic Russian-language film directed by Vitaly Kanevski that is powerful and absorbing. It is a low-budget film treasure that only a few film-lovers will have the good fortune of discovering. It is set in far eastern Russia in what is called the Soviet Orient, near the end of World War II. The cinematography is sensational, successfully transporting the viewer to a world that few will ever experience first-hand. Freeze Die was filmed in black-and-white, which serves this particular film well in portraying the hauntingly stark and frozen landscape. The locale is a bleak, northern mining town that also serves as a POW camp for captured Japanese soldiers.
The story focuses on two children living where food, warmth, and love are all scarce commodities. The boy, Valerka (played by Pavel Nazarov), and girl, Galiya (Dinara Drukarova), at first competitors at selling tea to the miners, gradually develop a cautious friendship. Valerka's lot is especially difficult because his mother ekes out a meager existence as a prostitute in their small apartment, forcing Valerka to wander about when a "customer" comes around. Valerka is also hassled by town bullies, who steal his ice skates, but he achieves a measure of revenge with Galiya's encouragement and strategic help. Valerka acts out his frustrations through pranks, such as pouring yeast into the school toilet, causing the sewer system to back up and create a distinctly unpleasant mess. Later, his misbehavior escalates into derailing a train. All the while, Valerka and Galiya's friendship is blossoming, though Valerka, in particular, hardly recognizes it as such. Ultimately, Valerka's mischief necessitates his running away from the town. To survive, he joins a band of criminals and participates in an armed robbery. Galiya, still devoted to their friendship, comes after him to induce him to return home, but now they must evade the criminals, who are determined that Valerka not be allowed to leave, given his knowledge of their activities. The ending is something that each viewer deserves to discover on his or her own, but suffice it to say that it is dramatic and moving.
Freeze Die won the 1990 Cannes Film Festival award for "Best First Feature" for its director. It is often compared favorably with another great coming of age film, "The 400 Blows", by Francois Truffaut. Though Freeze Die has neither the polish nor the reputation of the Truffaut masterpiece, I personally find it the more rewarding of the two films, both for its emotional impact and the extent to which it successfully exploits the atmosphere of the barren landscape. Freeze Die is included in one of the film courses taught at our University and is always one of the films that students find most moving.
The film includes a limited amount of nudity and a considerable amount of violence, making it suitable for adults only.
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You might want to check out these other excellent films from Russia and the U.S.S.R.:
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