The acting is good, the chemistry between the leads is effective, the evocations of village life are beautiful, the panoramic views of Ukraine are splendid, the music is beautiful, the subject is important—and yet, Bitter Harvest does heart-breaking disservice to those who perished in the Holodomor. Trying to cover political history from the death of the Tsar announced in one scene (evidently in 1918) to the famine itself (1932-3), while the romantic drama seems to take only a couple of years, blurs and trivializes history. The Hollywood hijinks and impossible escapes caricature the real conditions from which there was no escape. A few peasants standing in the fog with make-up circles under their eyes belittles the piles of skeletal corpses and bloated bodies of children that even one photograph of the real Holodomor bears witness to. Showing a fleeting screen shot of an article from the New York Times about the famine without clarifying that it was written by the notorious Soviet falsifier Walter Duranty (whom Malcolm Muggeridge called "the most dishonest journalist I have ever encountered in my fifty years of journalism") – Duranty, a famine-denier who stands as one of the reasons that the Holodomor is not better known in the west – simply sickens. For all the money spent on special effects (well done, by the way), the scope of the Holodomor is utterly lost. And what would it have cost to hire a decent screenwriter who could have reined in a plot that tries to do too much, and who instead could have focused on some serious moral dilemma that those impossible conditions spawned on the level of the individual?
Yes, see the movie – there is worse Hollywood silliness out there, and the good things listed at the top are worth seeing. But then, for history's sake, go out and BUY A COPY of Harvest of Sorrow, by Robert Conquest (who passed away recently, alas). It is the definitive history of the Holodomor, and – in this time of 'alternative facts'—the facts needs to be set straight. https://www.amazon.com/Harvest-Sorrow- Soviet-Collectivization-Terror-Famine/dp/0195051807
Yes, see the movie – there is worse Hollywood silliness out there, and the good things listed at the top are worth seeing. But then, for history's sake, go out and BUY A COPY of Harvest of Sorrow, by Robert Conquest (who passed away recently, alas). It is the definitive history of the Holodomor, and – in this time of 'alternative facts'—the facts needs to be set straight. https://www.amazon.com/Harvest-Sorrow- Soviet-Collectivization-Terror-Famine/dp/0195051807