Another deeply touching movie that got the Kleenex box off the shelf. We seem to like them deep this season.

The funny thing… we hadn’t shown a Russian film for a long, long time (the last was Vozvrascenje, or The Return), and given the usually high turn-out of Ruskie folk to MovieNight, this seemed like it would be a crowd-pleaser. Would you like to guess how many Russians were here? None. I know that a few of them were a party that night, but still… I wonder, did I choose something that struck too clear a chord?

This irony reminds me of my mother making lunch for the crew of Italian bricklayers who were working on our house when I was little. Even though she was of German descent, she thought it fitting to serve them up some of her non-authentic spaghetti and meat balls. She meant well… so did I.