#1229: MURATOVA, Kira: Brief Encounters/The Long Farewell: Two Films by Kira Muratova (1967/1971)
MURATOVA, Kira (Soviet Union/Ukraine)
Brief Encounters/The Long Farewell [1967/1971]
Spine #1229
Nobody made films like Kira Muratova. Uncompromising and uncategorizable, the Ukrainian iconoclast withstood decades of censorship to realize her singular vision in hypnotically beautiful, expressionistically heightened films that remain unique in their ability to evoke complex interior worlds. Her first two solo features, Brief Encounters and The Long Farewell, are fascinatingly fragmented portraits of women navigating work, romance, and family life with a mix of deep yearning and playful pragmatism. Long suppressed by Soviet authorities, these films became legendary—along with their maker—and they now make for a revelatory introduction to this most fearlessly original of artists.
Kira Muratova’s first solo feature already displays her sui generis approach to cinema, in an impressionistic portrait of women at work and in love. Through an intricate play of flashbacks and shifting perspectives, Brief Encounters reveals the tangled romantic triangle that connects a hard-nosed city planner (played by Muratova herself), her free-spirited geologist husband (legendary Soviet protest singer Vladimir Vysotskiy), and the young woman from the countryside (Nina Ruslanova) whom she hires as her housekeeper. Blending observational realism with striking New Wave–style experimentation, Muratova crafts a wryly perceptive study of two very different women bound by chance and each navigating her own career, dreams, and disappointments.
96 minutes
By Spine #
Brief Encounters/The Long Farewell [1967/1971]
Spine #1229
Blu-ray
Nobody made films like Kira Muratova. Uncompromising and uncategorizable, the Ukrainian iconoclast withstood decades of censorship to realize her singular vision in hypnotically beautiful, expressionistically heightened films that remain unique in their ability to evoke complex interior worlds. Her first two solo features, Brief Encounters and The Long Farewell, are fascinatingly fragmented portraits of women navigating work, romance, and family life with a mix of deep yearning and playful pragmatism. Long suppressed by Soviet authorities, these films became legendary—along with their maker—and they now make for a revelatory introduction to this most fearlessly original of artists.
Kira Muratova’s first solo feature already displays her sui generis approach to cinema, in an impressionistic portrait of women at work and in love. Through an intricate play of flashbacks and shifting perspectives, Brief Encounters reveals the tangled romantic triangle that connects a hard-nosed city planner (played by Muratova herself), her free-spirited geologist husband (legendary Soviet protest singer Vladimir Vysotskiy), and the young woman from the countryside (Nina Ruslanova) whom she hires as her housekeeper. Blending observational realism with striking New Wave–style experimentation, Muratova crafts a wryly perceptive study of two very different women bound by chance and each navigating her own career, dreams, and disappointments.
96 minutes
Monaural
Black and White
in Russian
1:37:1
Criterion Release 2024
Black and White
in Russian
1:37:1
Criterion Release 2024
With its daring formalist freedom, Kira Muratova’s pointillist family portrait so perplexed and unnerved Soviet censors that it effectively halted her career for years afterward. A kind of psychological breakup movie, The Long Farewell traces the growing rift that develops between an emotionally impulsive single mother (stage legend Zinaida Sharko, transcendent in one of her first film roles) and her increasingly resentful teenage son (Oleg Vladimirsky), who upends her world when he announces that he wishes to live with his faraway father. The seemingly simple premise is rendered anything but by Muratova’s dreamy, drifting style, with off-kilter framing, editing, and dialogue continually pushing cinema’s aesthetic and expressive boundaries outward.
94 minutes
Monaural
Black and White
in Russian
1:37:1
Criterion Release 2024
Black and White
in Russian
1:37:1
Criterion Release 2024
Kira Muratova was 33 when she directed Brief Encounters and 37 when she directed The Long Farewell.
The Film
a
Film Rating (0-60):
The Booklet
Commentary
Video tribute
Documentary 1
Documentary 2
Documentary 3
Controversial altered ending
Theatrical trailer
Extras Rating (0-40):
60
The ExtrasThe Booklet
Commentary
Video tribute
Documentary 1
Documentary 2
Documentary 3
Controversial altered ending
Theatrical trailer
Extras Rating (0-40):
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