Shakhnazarov, who began his film career in the Soviet era and was about the age of his protagonists in '73, brings an authenticity to the material, as well as a certain wistfulness in his excellent re-creation of Brezhnev-era Moscow.
The Vanished Empire (2009)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:12
Fresh:9
Rotten:3
Average Rating:5.9/10
Rated: Not Rated
Genre: Dramas
Theatrical Release:Jul 10, 2009 Limited
Synopsis: The film events take place in Moscow in the 1970-s. The plot is based on the classical love triangle: two youths and a girl. They are students of the same institute of higher education, live in a... The film events take place in Moscow in the 1970-s. The plot is based on the classical love triangle: two youths and a girl. They are students of the same institute of higher education, live in a large country without suspecting that soon it will vanish from all the maps of our planet. This film narrates about love, youth, and the country named the Soviet Union. --© Kinoglaz [More]
Director: Karen Shakhnazarov
Director: Karen Shakhnazarov
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Reviews for The Vanished Empire
In the gray old days of Brezhnev and detente, Russian college students shimmy to "Sugar, Sugar" and shell out for black-market Levis, unaware that these are the best days of their lives
Evocative period details and persuasive performances lend a poignant sadness to Karen Shakhnazarov's familiar, but well-told, coming-of-age tale.
[Director] Shakhnazarov came of age during the Soviet Union's Communist days and brings firsthand experience to the Brezhnev-era The Vanished Empire.
Bland look at rebellious teens who experience the last days of the Soviet empire.
In The Vanished Empire, Mr. Shakhnazarov, a prolific and under-recognized Russian filmmaker with a surrealist touch, views the collapse of the Soviet Union as an inevitable conflation of the younger generation’s natural impulse to reject the past.
A Russian film about a self-absorbed youth who is driven by an insatiable yearning to have whatever he wants.
The moralistic finale feels tacked on to the vivid celebration of Commie teen lust.
The dead-end on-again, off-again courtship between Sergey and Lyuda bores, and their standard adolescent travails take up most of the screen time.
Unsentimental, almost antiheroic snapshot of a disaffected lost generation never billboards its end-of-a-civilization vibe, though that vibe does color its bittersweet nostalgia over youth wasted on the young.
The lost-world aura of the film's clumsy youths provides an inexorable dig into Brezhnev-era diffidence.
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July 19, 2009:
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