Finally caught up with Comrades: Almost a Love Story. I really liked it, but think that the key strength is clearly in the first hour. There was this real symbiotic quality to their relationship, yet it didn’t come across as destructive in a way that such relationships are typically portrayed in film – it would be hard not to be charmed by these two wonderful characters bumbling their way through life full of flaws, but not movie-character flaws, just normal-people flaws. I won’t say it was less interesting, but I found the second half not as captivating as the first. The film turns from this small, intimate drama into something broad and sweeping - it kind of went through a sharpish change of perspective, going from looking closely at the little details to dot-pointing a big picture. I got this kind of feel that the film had been based on a novel, the second half of which needed to be compressed to fit with the feature film format. But nevertheless, it really was a wonderful film overall.
