Usamah Harvey The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Hattie I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

Deanna There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

mateoxx59 Finally KGB colonel Mihalkov shows his real face !In this awful movie, we see a good (!?!?) Bolshevik colonel, in... 1936 !Since 1933 till 1936, only in Ukraine, more than THREE MILLIONS died by starvation, because of these 'good' or bad Bolsheviks ! How many of the Russian elite died in the so called 'revolution' and the years that follows ? Ten millions ? 15 ? 20 millions ?How many Baltics, Moldavians, Caucasians or central Asia people died in Siberia camps, Ural or Arctic mines ? How many hundreds thousands of land workers, engineers, teachers, lawyers ?All the high Bolsheviks were bloody criminals, without exception, starting with Lenin, Trotski or Stalin.See also their children: Mao, Kim Ir Sen, Fidel, Ceausescu, Enver Hodja, Pol Pot etc etc.Try 2 serious movies about the reds: Soviet Story, 2008 or Katyn, 2007.

gizmomogwai Like the Italian film Life Is Beautiful which came three years later, Burnt by the Sun is an excellent foreign movie combining humour and colourful characters to depict tragedy in the first half of the twentieth century. Burnt focuses on Russia in 1936, just before the Great Purge. This movie isn't as funny as the beginning of Life Is Beautiful, but some whimsical discussion is heard of summer Santas and wizards; there's piano playing with a gas mask; there's a question about leaving the zoo. But this is a mostly serious movie. It shows a very close relationship between a Russian colonel, Kotov, and his young daughter Nadya. Then it bluntly shows Kotov being arrested, torn from her life. In this way, Burnt by the Sun reveals the human tragedy of Stalin's paranoia and purges.There's more- though Kotov is a man destroyed by the Soviet Union, the unfortunate irony is that he was actually a patriotic and loyal Soviet. The scene where he and his daughter are on a boat underlines that fact, and makes what happens later look tragically needless.I first saw this gem in a university class on the Soviet Union. It came with a disclaimer from the professor that sending people to summer homes of Stalin's victims was not the way the Purges were really done. Like Life Is Beautiful, we have to bend realism a bit, but it's worth it. I'm not sure if this movie needed the mysterious orb of light; when I saw it hovering over a field, I asked my professor if it was going to make a crop circle. Actually it was just symbolism. The ball of light and the sun mentioned in the title are the Russian Revolution, and this movie is about people burnt by it. Equating the Revolution to something warm and bright makes me wonder if the Revolution is seen in this movie as a mostly good thing; but this movie shows there were also negative consequences. Orb of light or no orb of light, this movie is still memorable and wonderful.

G K That rarity: Burnt By The Sun is a film that feels as if the people who made it lived through the period it describes. During an idyllic summer in the mid-1930s Russia, a flamboyant colonel's (Nikita Mikhalkov) household is thrown into turmoil by the arrival of a figure from the past.The ugly betrayals of the Stalin era are documented in as pretty and lulling as any picture to have emerged from Russia in recent times; an advanced degree of historical and political scholarship may be required to grasp all the film's resonances. Burnt By The Sun received the Grand Prize at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, among many other honours.

ssto i remember seeing this incredibly strong, heartbreaking movie three times in three consecutive days. i couldn't get enough of the pure beauty of the scenery, the warmth of the characters, the pain you feel when you know what doom awaits them around the corner. i understand that for political or other issues many Russians don't like this movie, but i think it is a very honest, revelation story by Nikita Mikhalkov, who after this movie I came to respect as a genius artist. probably forever in my mind will live so many beautiful scenes from this movie: the burning, yet mild sun by the lake, the forgotten secrets of two ex-lovers, the infinite 'ruskoe pole', the happy people at the beach, living happily unsuspecting of the terror machine of the dictatorship 'for the people'outstanding movie, one of my forever favorites20/10