Dead Man’s Letters (1986)

 

100 Best Science Fiction Movies from Slant Magazine

#83. Dead Man’s Letters (1986)

 

During the 1980s, it looked like the End of the World.

 

We were closer to Global Nuclear conflict then anytime since 1962 (the Cuban Missile Crisis) and the advancement of technology made survival that much more improbable. At that moment when we were closest to stepping, maybe permanently, over the brink, it was impossible for anyone to see that we were actually stepping back, at least until after it actually happened.

 

There were two issues driving the public perception. US President Ronald Reagan’s rhetoric was flat-out insane and Russia was falling apart. Which would kill us first? There was also much we couldn’t see, like Reagan negotiating quite effectively with Russia’s General Sectary Mikhail Gorbachev towards the goal of lasting World-Peace-ish-ness, so no one could be blamed for that bit of blind-sightedness.

 

Regarding Reagan, Director Nicolas Meyer made the very dark USA TV movie, “The Day After” (1983) and in interviews he put the situation bluntly, “The movie tells you that civil defense is useless", and that ABC gave him "millions of dollars to go on prime-time television and call Ronald Reagan a liar." As far as that statement goes, he’s correct. Reagan should’ve never tried to sell the idea of “Winnability” or recycle the “Duck-and-Cover” myths, but he did.

 

Regarding Russia’s increasing desperation, another, slightly earlier, USA TV production, the miniseries “WWIII” (1982), nicely outlining our fears that a reform-minded Soviet General Sectary (clearly based on newly-ascended Yuri Andropov and played by Brain Keith), could never control the rising chaos and Doomsday was inevitable.

 

And nothing for nothing, that was 1982-1983. Things would get a lot scarier in the Real-World after that those TV shows were aired.

 

As it happens, Doomsday wasn’t inevitable, but Russian chaos was. After the Cold War ended, Gorbachev faced, and survived, a violent coupe in 1991. Move the chronology around a little, make somethings happen earlier and somethings later, and maybe the scenario of “WWIII” would’ve really gone down.

 

There’s no escaping that Cold War was ended by these two men, Reagan and Gorbachev. Reagan is mostly held in high esteem in the USA, while Gorbachev is mostly disdained in Russia. Such are the rewards for saving the World.

 

A quick outline of how bad it was in the Russia/USSR Leadership would be helpful here. Soviet General Sectary Leonid Brezhnev left the USSR in an ugly mess when he died in 1982. His successor, Andropov, was desperate to reform and revitalize, but he also was dead in less than 1½ years. The next guy, Konstantin Chernenko, proved to be another Brezhnev, but died with an even shorter period in Office than Andropov. That’s three Soviet Leaders in less-than three-years. Reportedly Reagan said, "How am I supposed to get anyplace with the Russians if they keep dying on me?"

 

Gorbachev, younger and more virile than the last three, and cut from the same cloth as Andropov, ascended in 1985, while we were all losing our minds with terror. Gorbachev immediately started a series of policy reforms called “Perestroika,” and part of that, unveiled in 1986, was “Glasnost,” which radically eased the USSR’s notorious Censorship.

 

This is among the earliest Glasnost films; it would’ve been impossible to release even a year before. It pulled no punches about the Horrors of Nuclear War (it was even grimmer than “The Day After”) and even seemed anti-Communist, but probably was not-quite-that. I saw it was speaking bluntly of fears that if the current reforms failed, Stalinism would return. Former-General Sectary Joseph Stalin was an Evil probably greater than Adolf Hitler, but unlike Hitler he died victoriously and in bed in 1953. Over the next decades, in dribs and drabs, the USSR acknowledged his monstrousness, and every attack on the Soviet in this film (there are many) were explicit references to Stalin. I should say that the film was released just barely after the Chernobyl disaster, the first great test of Glasnost, and I’m thinking, Gorbachev’s reaction to that disaster had the Censors re-thinking everything.

 

While this was unfolding, there were some in the West who suspected that the Nuclear Freeze movement was being influenced by Russian Intelligence. On some level, I have no doubt that’s true, it was part of the KGB’s job after all, but I doubt their efforts were meaningful, just like Russian Intelligence’s role in the America First movement of the 1930s was not especially meaningful. In the USSR there was also a Peace Movement, but there the Government carefully controlled and limited it. This film seems to indicate most of those limits were being dropped. Can I say that this film was both anti-Communist and pro-Gorbachev (who was a devoted Communist)? Maybe, Art is like that, it encourages mutable interpretations.

 

One of the distinguishing elements of Communism is the Centralization of Authority, and it is a plot-point is that in their panic, the weakening Central Government becomes increasingly Authoritarian, stripping the Local Authorities of all decision-making power, well-beyond that of the then-current Soviet system. All acts of Government prove panic-driven: Because of limited safe space of the Central Bunker, Triage was required. But that Triage starts looking like Eugenics, with young, traumatized, but uninjured Orphans being rejected; older people threatened with exclusion, and the only Black character in the film is one of those Orphan’s, so his exclusion was most-likely Race-based.

 

Another Stalinist reference is an un-named Character (Nora Gryakalova) who insists on running around naked. She seems not to be trying to attract men, but trying to prove she can spontaneously Evolve to live with Radiation. The refers to the crack-pot programs of Trofim Lysenko, Stalin’s favorite Evolutionary Theorist. Back-in-the-day, anyone who challenged Lysenko was fired, hundreds were Imprisoned or Executed, and adherence to his nonsense caused famines that are estimated to had led to the deaths of many millions.

 

The film takes place after WWIII is over. There’s little interest in who started it and it’s clear everybody lost. Nobel-Prize Winning Scientist, Professor Larsen (Rolan Bykov), and his wife Anna (Vera Mayorova) are trapped in an inadequate Bunker beneath a Museum with several others, mostly the Museum employees; they share meager meals together which encourages Philosophical talks. The statues are wrapped in clear plastic for preservation, making them look corpses in a Morgue, and the human dead are buried in shallow graves in the floor.

 

Anna is quickly succumbing to Radiation Sickness and another, Khyummel-otets (Iosif Ryklin), embraces Suicide. Khyummel-otets insists one speaking his own eulogy first, right in front of his own adult son (Viktor Mikhaylov), proclaiming that Humankind ''was a tragic species doomed perhaps from the very beginning'' because of its ''drive to be better than nature intended ... I love mankind; I love it even better now that it no longer exists.''

 

The outside is remarkably Nightmarish, and we see while watching Larson in a gas-mask trudging back-and-forth from the Central Bunker or Black Market. The not-quite-streets-anymore are half-flooded and littered with unburied corpses. The is one remarkable scene, an unbroken crane-shot wherein the camera recedes as Larsen exits the basement, crosses the riches of a Museum hall, exits the building through a hole in the wall, and further receding, demonstrates the building is so shattered it could barely be called as such anymore, while Larsen climbs down the rubble like an ant. Critic Mark Cole called it “This is a singularly ugly film, shot with incredible beauty.” (Cinematographer Nikolai Prokoptsev, Art Directors Yelena Amshinskaya and Viktor Ivanov.)

 

Larsen half-narrates the film through the letters he writes to his missing son, Eric, but letters that have no method of delivery and the person they are being written to is almost certainly dead. Larsen fills them with optimistic lies anyway. Larsen is working on a formula, a Mathematical Proof that the Human race will survive this Hell. This is likely only wishful-thinking, but it is the last crutch his morality can stand on, and as he proves the most decent person in the film, so who can anyone begrudge him that?

 

The film has been called, “a plea for rationality in a world filled with the capability for mass destruction,” and it probably is, though much of it is a cruel dissection of the failures of Rational Thinking. I’d argue that in this ultimate Death-scape, where Rationalities failed, we’re asked to remember that none of these lost Philosophers would’ve launched the Missiles in the first place. They were right, we didn’t listen, now they seem absurd because of our failure. Rationality has it limits and, once beyond them, we have little hope.

 

Director Konstantin Lopushansky was mentored by Director Andrei Trakovsky and displays many stylistics of the older Director: a love of long-takes, Philosophical dialogue, and an embrace of monochromatic color schemes, mostly sepia tones, to bring out surface textures so we can really see the decay. But his films are faster-paced, a bit more action, and most importantly, the dialogue is dynamic. His Philosophical debates often feel like bar-brawls. Lopushansky said of Trakovsky, “In fact his influence is spiritual, it is the understanding of art.”

 

And in the end, Larsen’s increasingly Irrational decency is the film’s only optimism. He takes under his wing the rejected Orphans and in doing so denies himself a place in the Central Bunker (which he learns is becoming increasingly un-livable anyway), sealing his own doom. After he dies, those children, all wearing gas masks, trudge out into the Radioactive mists towards an uncertain goal, but at least they live for the moment, perhaps with slightly more hope than everything they leave behind. In the last images, the children are following Larsen’s guidance, “As long as a man walks, he shall have hope.” The film is profoundly Humanist in its almost bottomless despair.

 

The Screenwriters were Lopushanskiy in collaboration with Vycheslav Rybakov and Boris Strugatsky. Strugatskiy seems of special importance, because for decades, in collaboration with his brother Arkady, he produced most of the leading SF prose in the USSR. One of their novels, “A Road Side Picnic” (1972) became one of the finest films of Lopushansky’s mentor Tarkovsky, “Stalker” (1979) and Lopushanskiy worked on that Production. Tarrkovsky’s pursuit of locations of vivid decay led him to film in an abandoned Hydroelectric Station, a polluted place that has since been linked to the deaths of several members of cast and crew. “Dead Man’s Letters” was set-bound, even more bleak, but apparently didn’t kill anyone. It has been described as “Stalker’s” spiritual sequel.

 

Lopushanskiy would later adapt another Strugatskiy brothers’ novel, “The Ugly Swans” (after a decade of being held up by Censors, it first published the same year as “Dead Man’s Letters” was released; the film version was 2007).

 

Trailer:

Dead Man's Letters (Soviet post-apocalyptic sci-fi) / 1986 / Письма мёртвого человека - YouTube