Blog

ALBUM PURVIEW by Andrew C. Kidd

Greg Nieuwsma and Antonello Perfetto ‘Earth’
(Submarine Broadcasting Co.)

Although Oleksandr Dovzhenko’s Earth aligned with many of the Soviet ideologies of its day, the film stands irresolute in this regard. This is perhaps because it is viewed through the retrospectoscopic lens of the present-day. Even so, its poetic symbols must have seemed somewhat removed from the usual plainsong of socialist realism of its day. I detect agitation. Take the crushed chaff of the wheat that billows into the air, referencing the yellow-blue bicolour of the Ukrainian flag that was banned at the time. In the same breath, Earth promotes atheism and contains split-screen shots of humans and plant life (depicting the ‘community of life’), which are more in keeping with the Soviet aesthetic. These opposing philosophies are not co- equal; rather, Earth is predominantly realist, somewhat beset by moments of idealism. In newspeak:…