Word: wargnier
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...EAST-WEST After World War II, a Russian-born doctor and his French wife accept an invitation to help rebuild the U.S.S.R.--and enter into decades of police-state agony. Director Regis Wargnier's film is a great, gray epic of despair and survival...
Characters in Wargnier's films are subservient to the plot. Like pictures in a textbook, they become concrete incarnations of the political and historical contexts where Wargnier puts them. In his latest film, East-West, Wargnier has chosen post-World War II Russia as the setting of another ambitious story of epic proportions. Events are presented in a more focused and coherent fashion than in Indochine, characters have more depth and credibility, but the film does not escape Wargnier's predilection for clichs and characters whose personal attributes are secondary to their role as symbols of his political and moral...
...trapped in a world she cannot accept. We sympathize, but can't help feeling she is responsible for her misfortunes. Marie stubbornly refuses to understand there is no easy solution to her predicament; the Soviet authorities will not permit her to return to France. Ultimately, the fault lies with Wargnier. He has created a character of heroic proportions, a woman who endures unimaginable hardships, years of exile in a forced labor camp, to escape Soviet Russia. In the process, he has deprived his protagonist of a more human face...
...Wargnier's film is unrelentingly grim and one-dimensional. Millions of Russians managed to lead interesting and productive lives and even find happiness under Stalin's regime. By portraying Alexei's submission to the Party as a sacrifice he secretly undergoes to help Marie escape, Wargnier offers little more than a commentary on the brutality and rigidity of the Soviet Union. But we can't help wondering about brighter moments in the lives of Wargnier's protagonists...
...Regis Wargnier...