A loving film tribute to Russian filmmaker Larisa Shepitko, who died tragically in a car accident in 1979 at the age of 40. This documentary by her husband, Elem Klimov, includes excerpts from all of Shepitko's films, and her own voice is heard talking about her life and art. Elem Klimov's grief-stricken elegy Larisa examines the life of his late wife—the film director Larisa Shepitko—through a series of direct-address interviews and photomontages, set against a mournful visual-musical backdrop. Typically, Klimov films his subjects (which include himself and several of Shepitko's collaborators) within a stark, snow-covered forest, its tangled web of trees standing in as metaphorical representation of a perhaps inexpressible suffering, the result of Shepitko's premature death while filming her adaptation of Valentin Rasputin's novella Farewell to Matyora. Interweaving home movie footage with sequences from Shepitko's work (Maya Bulgakova's pensive plane crash reminiscence from Wings takes on several new layers of resonance in this context), Larisa's most powerful passage is its first: accompanied by the grandiose final music cue from Shepitko's You and I, Klimov dissolves between a series of personal photographs that encompass Larisa's entire life, from birth to death. This brief symphony of sorrow anticipates the cathartic reverse-motion climax of Klimov's Come and See, though by placing the scene first within Larisa's chronology, Klimov seems to be working against catharsis. The pain is clearly fresh, the wound still festering, and Klimov wants—above all—to capture how deep misery's knife has cut.

这是一部很特殊的战争题材电影，它真实地描写了德占区人民的悲惨遭遇和场面，以及人们面对突如其来的灾难的恐惧，反映了战争的真实面目。它既不同于《斯大林格勒保卫战》、《攻占柏林》这些正面战场的血肉横飞、排山倒海、摧枯拉朽，也不同与《这里的黎明静悄悄》、《星》所描写的局部战斗中体现的平凡悲壮，更不是战地浪漫曲，而是降临在平民百姓头上血淋淋的残酷。影片的事件和恐怖场面远超过任何一部描写德军集中营的电影，令人毛骨悚然，提醒胆小和心软者慎看。

This is story about a dentist with the talent of painlessly extracting teeth, and what happens to him as a result of being naturally good at his job. It is told with humour (much of it quite subtle, almost surreal, and in the background - imagine a street scene where everyone on the sidewalk on one side of the road walks in just one direction, and on the other side in the other), poignancy, and a frequent breaking of the 4th wall between the movie and the audience (think of what happens in Shakespeare's plays, and you'll be close). It also features some songs by Novella Matveyeva, a famous Russian singer-songwriter (her songs are sung by the leading actress).