The passionate, atmospheric Asya’s Happiness is the greatest of Andrei Konchalovsky’s early films, but it was banned by the Soviet authorities and barely seen for 20 years. Otherwise it would surely have stood as a landmark of 60s Soviet cinema. Asya is a lame young woman who works as a cook in a remote Russian village. She has a fling during the harvest celebrations and becomes a single mother in difficult circumstances. A wonderful non-professional cast and fluid camerawork vividly capture the joy and tribulations of rural life.
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When I started working on Asya’s Happiness I thought to myself, what if I make a surreal tale in the form of a newsreel? And that’s exactly what it ended up being. As I now realise, my subconscious desire to portray the truth of human existence in Asya’s Happiness was a direct condemnation of a society long used to lies. At the time, the truth was not allowed to form part of everyday art, even documentaries, which is why the film was regarded as revolutionary. That’s why at the premiere Smoktunovsky kneeled down before me on the stage of the House of Cinema in Leningrad and why Shklovsky had a heart attack during the scene of the old man’s funeral. And that is why the film was banned…
I think the impact Asya had on the public was shocking for one simple reason: they were seeing that life in its simplest form was shrouded in pain, poverty and stagnation. At that time people in Soviet Russia weren’t allowed to be unhappy, it was forbidden. Everybody had to be happy. But blood was being shed….and the cries could not be abated…
Andrei Konchalovsky, Director
Recommended Cert PG.
