Nikita Mikhalkov's Burnt by the Sun

Prompt: Analyze at least three different specific scenes that you found particularly important or revealing. Why are they significant and what do they reveal? Were there any aspects of those scenes or the film as a whole that you found confusing or unclear? If you had to rewrite the ending, how would you change it?

Burnt by the Sun takes place in Stalinist Russia in 1936. Colonel Kotov, his wife Maroussia, and his daughter Nadya live together relatively peacefully in the Russian countryside. Suddenly Mitya, Maroussia’s lover from her youth, appears, and everything changes.

Scene 1: Russian tanks roll into the wheat fields near Colonel Sergei Kotov’s dacha. They are to destroy the fields, and Kotov is disturbed during his morning steam bath to stop them, which he does. This is our first glimpse into the power he wields over his countrymen as a hero of the revolution, since everyone who sees him is awestruck and does everything he asks. This scene also gives us an idea of the crimes Stalin was willing to commit against the Russian people.

Scene 2: Mitya arrives dressed as a blind wizard. He fools everyone in the household by pretending to know things about them that no stranger should know, and he pokes fun at several of them. They are all shocked until he removes his disguise and they realize who he is. This is a foreshadowing of what will happen later, when Mitya reveals that he is not simply home to visit. He’s there to take Kotov away with the secret police to punish him for supposedly spying and being an enemy of the people.

Scene 3: Mitya tells Nadya a story about a young man that turns out to be him. This is where we first hear about how Mitya is connected to the family and how he and Kotov met. Kotov, it turns out, sent Mitya away with the military and then married Maroussia. Mitya and Kotov already acted strangely around each other, but this gives us an idea as to why Mitya may be back.

Scene 4: Mitya and Kotov are alone during a game of soccer. They have already discussed, before the game, that a car would soon be there to pick Kotov and Mitya up, but we still aren’t sure exactly why. Kotov doesn’t seem too upset, almost as if he’s expected this, but we don’t know why he is to be picked up. During the soccer scene, we finally learn that Mitya has worked for the government police and fingered several generals and others as traitors and spies. This is what he’s now done with Kotov, possibly because he wants Maroussia.

I was confused every time the fireballs showed up. Perhaps they represented the seemingly random killings and crimes perpetrated by Stalin’s police, but I was never clear on what they represented. Of course, there was the song “Burnt by the sun” that we heard several times, and the fireballs looked like suns, but the film did not make it clear what purpose the fireballs served. I’m sure they represented being “burned by the revolution,” but since the fireballs themselves didn’t burn much, that doesn’t seem to fit well.

If I had to rewrite the ending, I would have kept the events the same but showed a bit further into the future. After Mitya commits suicide, we are given written details as to what happened to the rest of the Kotov family, but I would have liked to see some of these events take place.