To Russia With Love :)

It is difficult for a movie-buff like me not to discover old forgotten movies - that too in different languages. I won't write a long post today - I am in the post-movie delirium which I'd rather not escape for a while. To get to the point - I happened upon Moscow does not believe in tears. It is a movie older than me and therefore depicts an age which should be difficult to identify with - but to my surprise wasn't so difficult either.

It is about three young girls who turn up in Moscow with their dreams and ambitions and their lives ahead of them and then fast-forwards to twenty years later to find out what happened to them and their dreams. There are some age-old never to be forgotten lessons in it of course, but they are particularly relevant since I believe I am getting to find some of it out for myself:

• how you never know what the next turn in life will bring you 
• it depends on how you face what life throws at you (yes even the kitchen sink) what effect - and this is important - you will allow it to have on the rest of your life
• you learn the most when you are at the bottom
• sometimes life's way of sending some hardship your way is to do exactly that - harden you up

The movie soundtrack has a hauntingly captivating melody - here's the youtube snippet and the lyrics for the closing which I got from the dvd subtitles.

Not everything worked out right away

And Moscow was not built in a day

It never took your word for it

Moscow only believes in love

Whether covered with softest snow

Or glistening in the autumn glow

It will warm a lonely soul

And nurture a tree in a grove

Aleksandra Aleksandra

And here's a translation I got from another site:

Everything had not turned out all right not at one stroke,

Moscow wasn't built in a moment.

It burned so many times,

And grew from the ashes.

A tree stretched to the sky,

And believed only the sky,

And besides the sky,

It believed the overworked ground.

Refrain:

Alexandra, Alexandra,

What is flattering there, in front of us? –

An ash-tree scatters seeds,

And they’re waltzing round on the pavement.

[Literally: an ash-tree is waltzing round by the seeds on the pavement ]

An ash-tree, with its rustic look,

Has accommodated itself to Viennese waltzes;

It’ll push through, Alexandra,

It’ll breathe in Moscow air to its heart’s content.

[Literally: it’ll breath in Moscow]

Moscow was decorated with rowans,

And oaks stood like princes,

But they weren’t those ones which grew without permission –

They were ash-trees.

It’s not in vain that Moscow hopes

To dress in leaves –

Moscow will find at least a plot of land

For a little tree.