City on the River (2020)

City on the River Storyline

The Sign Painter is a Latvian tragicomedy about a young artist who bears witness to the dramatic political upheavals of the WWII era. As brutal regimes come and go, his country, his village, his people, and even his heart are swept up in the inexorable currents of history.—Guntis Trekteris

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City on the River Movie Reviews

Misinterpreted source material

First of all, the great things about the movie:

• 3 lead actors did a good job, especially a male lead. Davis Suharevskis was great. His casting was a home run.
• Locations were perfect. Filmmakers were able to show beauty of Latvian/Latgalian nature.

And now not so great things:

• Movie was based on Gunars Janovskis novel of same name. Novel was very different in tone and ideas it wanted to tell. It was very down to earth, while movie was over the top, at one point turning into Quentin Tarantino movie. Viesturs Kairiss failed to tell someone else’s story. However, thats only a problem if you have read the book, otherwise, you can still enjoy this movie as an completely different tale.
• Director chose to make this movie about Latgale, however, the book’s events took place in Semigalian side of Jekabpils. Director also chose to make movie in Latgalian. It was his artistic right, however, a lot of actors couldn’t speak Latgalian. It was very obvious and distracting. Gundars Abolins was a great example of actor struggling with speaking Latgalian. Director should have had all latgalian cast or should have thought of different approach to spoken language of the movie.
• Tone of the movie was inconsistent, as it shifted from comedy to drama without any indications of doing so. Especially towards the end of the movie.
• Some shots were out of focus. It was distracting at times.
• And the ending. Ending was just dumb. So dumb. I know it is nitpicking, but a boat couldn’t make the trip it did. I don’t mean the sea, but Daugava. It just couldn’t get through hydroelectric station on river Daugava. Viesturs Kairiss added that nonsense ending, that was so disrespectful to source material.

Despite all, this movie is worth a watch, its far from being really bad. Especially, if you are not familiar with source material. However, if you have read the novel, then be prepared for something completely different.

Movie that tries to be too much at once, but unfortunatly fails in most departments

I’m Latvian, and I’m patriot, and I’ve even spent a lot of my childhood in the locations near our Eastern Russian border, where this movie’s plot was happening and where it was shot, so I had reasonably high expectations for this movie. Also in the last few years our local movie studios have started to make a really decent movies, especially historic ones, so I did expect that this one will keep rising the standards of our local moviemaking. Boy, I was wrong.

Unfortunatly this movie left a lot to be desired – plot was trying to be a romantic drama (and comedy) set on the top of politic/social/war stage, cinematography tried to follow the latest modern trends, and cast of mostly unknown actors was trying to give a fresh feel to this flick, but unfortunatly it failed in all three areas…

Plot was boring, badly paced and intended bits of non-linear storytelling made some bits even straight confusing, and I imagine it would be even worse for the people who have not read the source novel first. Cinematography was poor. Artistic choice of making every…single…shot to have an angled horizon was just painful to watch – instead of serving as a nice touch and bringing some fresh framing to the scenes, it left me wondering whether the film crew simply had a problem with a camera dolly leveling… And acting was far from what I expected after reading news articles about “cast of young, fresh talents” – there was absolutely no chemistry between any of the main characters in the love triangle, or between anyone else, for that matter. The dull expressions and awkward clumsiness of the lead actor was not so much portrail of his character, as it was simply a bad acting. Asking actors to speak in three languages, most of which were not their native, didn’t help at all.

In conclusion – maybe if this movie would’ve been conceived, shot and launched in theaters a few years earlier, before the numerous other latest Latvian historic dramas, it would be a somewhat decent movie by itself, but given the good Latvian movies shot lately, this was a really dissapointing in comparison. 5 out of 10 stars from me.