A boy and his mother try to get by in the Soviet Union of the 1950s in this tragedy written and directed by Pavel Chukrai. The joint Russian-French production opens with a woman falling down in the snow and mud to give birth to a child in 1946. The boy's father is a soldier who died in the war. Katya (Yekaterina Rednikova) and her son Sanya (Misha Philipchuk) are next seen six years later on a train. Poor and desperate, she falls in love with a rakish soldier, Tolyan (Vladimir Mashkov). Tolyan
pretends to be Katya's husband and uses his credentials as a war veteran to get an apartment without paying money in advance -- he turns out to be a brutal and abusive man. He teaches Sanya his ruthless code of manhood while rolling razor blades in his mouth with his tongue. Tolyan also brags to the boy that he is a secret son of Stalin. After several weeks of mooching off and seducing the other tenants, Tolyan buys them all dinner and tickets to a circus. During the performance he sneaks back to the building and robs everyone. Katya is suspicious that he is carrying on with a female tenant he has been flirting with, and she returns to catch him in his burglary. He tells her she can escape with him or stay behind, but she has no skills and no prospect of work, so she takes Sanya and follows him. Katya becomes a part of his con game as they move from city to city, working the same schemes. Tolyan also teaches Sanya his thieving ways. ~ Michael Betzold, Rovi
It's a superb film in the classic style of screen storytelling, at once intimate and epic, possessed of lyrical beauty and suffused with that mixture of warmth, suffering and rueful humor so characteristic of Russian films.
It is clear fairly early in The Thief that the title character represents Stalin, and it's one of the strengths of the film that the symbolism never gets in the way of a convincing, heartbreaking story.
I beautifully told story of a boy growing up in Stalin era Russia.
Beautifully filmed and at times really touching, with a pretty amazing cast.
While the early years of Sanya's life (which thankfully is the bulk of the film) are really moving and wonderfully acted by the young Misha Philipchuk, the last twenty minutes
are a bit of a let down as the actors playing "teenage" Sanya "mature" Sanya just werent as good or engaging. Which sadly took a lot of the emotional "wind" from the sails of this story.
But all in all a good solid film.
March 18, 2011
Robert C
Super Reviewer
Vor, The Thief was an example of excellent Russian drama. It was great done with excellent scenes, cinematography, and acting,.It showed an inside view of life in Russia during the Stalin regime, where people were forced to live in bad circumstances and struggle to survive. A single mother with a young son became
involved with a man they met on a train, and they believed he was a soldier, but he turned out to be a thief preying on people. The story was narrated by the little boy, who saw him as a father figure and loved him but then felt betrayed by his actions. This was an emotional movie, with no stereotypes characters but real human feelings who draw you into their fear and pain. It was an unforgettable movie.
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