Barev, es em

The plot of the film is loosely based on the biography of Armenian-Soviet nuclear physicist Artyem Alikhanyan and is narrated as a series of flashbacks from then-present-day 1965. In 1942, when Artyem’s fiancée Lyusya and her division are suddenly deployed to the very front line of the war, he remains in Armenia to investigate cosmic radiation at a newly founded mountain research station. Full of wistful beauty, Artyem’s memories unfold as a flow of images akin to a dream that is accompanied by an imaginary dialogue he conducts with his close friend and colleague Oleg, who is already dead. This melancholy film is a reflection on memory itself and about the impossibility of escaping its thrall. The post-war optimism that characterized the youth of the 60s does also flash up in this film: Artyem’s faithfulness to his lover who dies in the war, allows young Tanya, who cannot forgive her mother’s betrayal of her father after he too is sent to the front, to believe in love again. (nf/gv)