The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

Unpopular opinion here but I'd like to think I have the basis for not liking or totally endorsing a film that could be a minor masterpiece of its era. "Letters from a Dead Man" could be interpreted as a response to the Chernobyl disaster, which took place a few months prior to the film's release. It could also be viewed as a response to the American/UK films about the frequent nuclear disaster and possible outcome of atomic bombs being dropped to a nation. Director Konstantin Lopushanskiy's first feature film obviously couldn't been an attack to the Soviets, their delay in spreading the news to the world and the way they dealt with the whole situation. Instead, he creates an apocalyptical world post-nuclear attack and how people survive in shelters and watered pits, trying to live with their best means they can while men, women and children keep on dying or having to face strict control by their own people - for instance, when the kids aren't allowed to enter a more safer place. Doctors keep on doing their job but it's all hopeless and no one can get out to the surface to see what's left after the blast, a world turned into a red dust, shattered and with some military forces telling us that people aren't allowed to go outside unless they have a pass. The film's point of view is from a scientist who reflects about not only his conflicts about a major part in creating the technology that caused the world's collapse and killed humanity, or reduced it to a future death sentence but he also ponders about (in letters) to his missing son - who is probably dead - and reminds of how their life used to be. Simple yet frank letters, yet they don't carry a higher sense of usefulness or, in this case, I deeply wanted a sort of sentimentality. To me, those letters were just a nostalgia that led to nowhere. I cared more for the character when he despertaly tried to get out of the pit and try to look for his son then just keep reminiscing about a life that is no longer there. The "Stalker" like visuals are cool but they're empty and void without the master's visual touch and sublime poetry. Konstantin makes a noble and valuable effort, a direct message to the Cold War world and its constant paranoia of bombing each other, with threats more real year went by but there's something missing: it's heartless, a snooze fest that fails to convince and to make us immersed in its calamity, the tragedy.1980's. In the wake of similar themed works such as "The Day After", "Special Report", "Testament", "When the Wind Blows" and "Threads" (yet to be seen by me, despite hearing about this one being the most horrific and realistic of them all the forementioned films), this artistic Soviet response was bureacratic just as was the treatment given to the Chernoby disaster - in fact, this film comes as reply to the events that shook Ukraine on the same year and that's why it's so important to at least get a glimpse to this film. But the director's presentation is faulty, beyond claustrophobic and hard to make your heart pulse. Sure, "The Day After" contained some of those depressive qualities and we wonder if the world was going to end or continue after a nuclear fallout. But I was confused with "Letters...": for what I gathered it was an human error that detonated a nuclear device that turned everything into dust and radiation was spread, and government still found ways to control people with curfews, passes and contained people underground - pretty much what USSR would actually do in such scenario. I disagree about the artist quote about art being useless/pointless - in the film context, it sort of works that way, but thinking a little deeper, art would probably be the only source of comfort for those in better shape/health. Imagination is what keeps us alive. Lopushanskiy had a few of it but not strong enough to create a shock to the senses, a catalyst for a deeper reflection despite the several thoughts shared by the characters about life and what's left of it after a disaster. I felt tired, depressed beyond my usual ways and didn't find any of those letters to Erick compelling, hearted or with some deep meaning.For the most of it, I think most people are seeing way too much about the film's message. It's there but it's too convoluted and almost inaccessible to most audiences. And I film like that should have been a little more down to audiences's earth. Like I said, it could be a minor masterpiece to make us reflect about mankind, the powers of be and how Chernobyl, though not being a nuclear attack of a nation against the other, made a whole shift in the gear when it comes to what nuclear energy was helpful in some ways but a disastrous and terrible thing for the environment and its people. In some brief moments, the story went quite well in dealing with such notion but it's just half way, doesn't go the extra mile needed for a higher discussion. 5/10

This is a post-apocalyptic movie where a group of Russian intellectuals, living in the airtight vaults of a museum, cling on in the twilight, going slowly mad according to their own pompous wonts.The movie is unremitting in its depressing depiction of a dead world. I was stuck between turning it off because it was almost sacrilegiously depressing, and remaining because of the sheer cataclysmic beauty. The images are mostly tinted yellow, although some shots are in tints of blue. There is no way this experience is going to allow you the respite of polychromatic images.There is a body of work that deals with the end of humankind in cinema, but any example I can think of seems completely notional in conception, this one actually felt like a recording of the end of days, as unflinchingly profane as a documentary of viaticums.I think it's also a tombstone for communism in Russia, suggested as a blind alley, and advocates a return to pre-revolutionary values regarding family and religion. But only in an intensely personal way, as if recounting the death of a close family member. It is more than a warning against nuclear war. In its parodying of ridiculous, pontificating, and obstructive authority, it's an emesis of authoritarian communism, a whole-hearted, wholesale rejection.As an endnote, there's a dolly-out in the first few minutes of the film that left my jaw on the floor, practically the best shot I've ever seen in cinema, my congratulations to Konstantin Lopushansky and his team.

The story takes place in an eastern European country(no reference is made to what country) after a nuclear war. A military regime has been imposed, there is no reference weather this is a local regime or an occupation. The soldiers tend to carry western weapons like AR pattern rifles and HK G3. The main character lives with coworkers under the university buildings where they once worked , all characters have a type of confession to tell relating to the catastrophe. Decay is everywhere but there is also irony in the decay and destruction, such as the scene in the library that is half covered in water with pages upon pages floating on this evil soup of corpses and texts that the main character ,as a true scholar, goes to a semi submerged desk to study a book. Just like "Threads" this is the only other movie that truly shows how final a nuclear apocalypse would be.

The movie is about fatal for the Mankind consequences of the nuclear war. It is not said explicitly, in which country the plot is set. But from some details you can easily derive, that it was in the USA, for example - the main character says: "...from Niels Bohr to our President..." (Soviet leaders were never called "presidents" in the Soviet Union in 1986). Meanwhile, the reason of the war is stated as accidental and no one seems to be guilty of it: as the main character remembers, an operator of the central control panel desperately cried, that there was a computer mistake and rocket launches should be canceled, but he was late by 7 seconds, because he choked by the coffee and could not shout immediately.The main character is a Nobel Prize laureate in Physics, who feels very confused that his science, either accidentally or not, led the Mankind to such a horror. There are also some other hopeless adults, all they are deeply shocked and desired. The main character try to give a little hope for a small group of children (all of them are shocked and never speak), and writes kind letters to his friend Eric (although there is no hope, that they will be read by someone). All people sit in a dark cellar under a (former) museum of history, some of them sometimes go out in gas-masks and special costumes to exchange canned meal for anesthetics. A strict police regime, the main policy of which being to try to save lives only for few healthy people, leaving ill ones alone and without any help, is established in the destroyed and burnt city. But even this "save lives" means "to hide themselves deeply under the surface of the Earth for more than 30 years". There is no any news, which could provide a hope, that in other parts of the Earth the situation is better.Although quite a few special effects were used, there are some scenes in the film, which are horrible up to such a degree, that I was not calm enough to look at them. In the end of the film I even weeped a bit. I think, that this film should be seen by each human on the Earth. THIS should never be forgotten...