Molchaniye doktora Ivensa (1973) Online

Dr Evans, his wife and a few other passengers are saved by alien visitors after a plane crash. One of the humanoid aliens develop a special relationship with Dr Evans, whose scientific work aspire to prolong the human life span. As a first encounter both sides experience somewhat of a disappointment about the other, albeit the aliens had less to correct. The emphasis is on the dialog. This is a film with limited action and special effects. The display of a well known scotch whisky, and brand of cigarettes intend to give the viewer the impression the events in this film take place somewhere in western Europe. Being the year 1973, it works for me, though we did have slightly more intense traffic. The performances are classic Russian drama acting, which works just fine in surreal situations such as alien encounters. The star Sergey Bondarchuk does a solid interpretation of his role. Does his name seem familiar? Well, yes, his daughter made a memorable and lasting impression as Hari in Tarkovsky's Solaris the year before this film. This is not a great movie, but it is neither a complete waste of time to watch it.

I was pleasantly surprised by "Dr. Ivens' Silence;" while in one sense it has a fairly conventional or even perhaps even stereotypical science fiction idea near its heart (aliens from a more developed planet are shocked at our human propensity for things like war and income inequality), it has a very intelligent script that does some very original things with it.

Despite the science fiction premise it is, as the title suggests, first and foremost a character piece about Dr Ivens, and in that sense it is a very effective one, assisted by the fact that Sergey Bondarchuk gives an excellent performance in the leading role. His initial "silence" comes at the beginning when he says nothing about a fire that he sees on the wing of his airplane, and his final silence comes at the end when this readiness for death has been fulfilled.

The fact that its essentially an unlikely human-alien love story is novel enough to allow it to explore the themes in novel ways, and while it is detectably pro-Soviet in its depiction of this story set somewhere in Western Europe, it is at heart a rather despairing message about humanity's lack of readiness to react to the coming of these creatures without Earth's characteristic flaws.

In all, a success of cerebral rather than action-oriented Soviet science fiction, through good dialog and good characterization.