Little Vera

Little Vera depicted citizens of the Soviet Union as they actually may have been. Moscow and Lenningrad were huge cities but millions of Russians did not live there. Economic conditions would have probably been more difficult outside of large cities due to the lack of jobs. The large majority of young people in the movie simply could not find work. Also, in my opinion every character in this movie displayed significant flaws. One of the main 'rallying cries' for communism was that in a communist society everyone would be doing equal work for equal pay. The large majority of characters from films that we have previously watched were not portrayed as 'flawed' to the extent that characters in Little Vera were. In my opinion, this movie highlighted that the Soviet Union was not a utopian country with perfect citizens but rather a floundering nation compromised of ordinary people with ordinary problems.

I immediately noticed how run down everything looked and how little space there was in Vera's parent's appartment. The dormitory that Sergei lived in had rooms that were seemingly not rennovated since Stalin was in power (they were rustic). Also, the young people seemingly had no public places to go to socialize. They either loitered around outside, visited the beach, or went to the cafe. Vera and her friends never went to a club, or a pool hall, or any other place that Westerners may have gone to have fun; for the most part they just sat around and talked. Contrastingly, characters from Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears were always doing some sort of activity. Katya went to an art musuem and Lyudmila went to a library. Granted, there was probably more to do in Moscow, but there seemed to be more forms of entertainment available to them than characters from Little Vera. Apparently, Katya's appartment when she became the director of the factory was either uncommonly fancy or else unrealistic. Her appartment had much more space and nicer appliances than that of Vera's parent's appartment. Katya's appartment seemed new and tidy while Vera's parent's home was dirty and old in comparison.

This was also the first film where alcohol comsumption was depicted in a negative light. Vera's father turned into a sulky, abusive person when he drank. He definitely beat Vera and Viktor when they were children. Vera's father also used unbelievable language to harass his wife and Vera when he was drinking. For that matter, the entire family addressed each other using terms that were not becoming of people that were supposed to love each other. In my opinion, Sergei seemed to be unable to control his sarcasm while he was drinking while Vera turned into even more of a depressed, selfish brat than she normally was otherwise. Little Vera also dealt with and portrayed violence, drug use, and sex in a negative light. Vera and Sergei's relationship was seemingly based upon sex and jokes. Once they tried to become serious with each other - as Sergei tried to be with her on the beach - their relationship seemingly faltered. Had Vera actually become pregnant, or one of them had aids, they would have probably run into some serious problems. Tolik definitely got into trouble for his mindlessly violent behavior and Vera's father should have gotten himself into legal problems for stabbing Sergei. However, Vera's father seemingly deserved what he got when he had to deal with the psychological effects his actions had on his family as well as himself. Also, Andrei's attempted violent rape of Vera was clearly depicted in a negative light. Obviously, Vera's effort to overdose on pills toward the end of the movie portrayed the dangers of drug use. However, all of these occurences take place in all societies. Little Vera merely portrayed the more somber happenstances of life in the Soviet Union that other movies had previously either been unwilling or unable to do.

In my estimation, nobody in this movie was a sympathetic character. All of the characters were selfish and were only concerned with things that pertained to them. Vera's parents were only concerned with their own lives. They were clueless as to what their children were up to. All that they probably cared about were their jobs - which they were incapable of dealing with - and old traditions. If any characters in this film had to be singled out for being responsible for the family's problems Vera's parents should be at the forefront. Vera and Viktor were merely products of their environments. I am sure that Vera's parents probably had taxing jobs, but they could have dealt with their jobs in other ways than abusing alcohol and raising their children in such a poor fashion. Vera seemingly buried herself in books and rebellious activities when she was a girl whereas Viktor probably stopped actually caring about any of his family members an extremely long time ago. Viktor most likely only came back out of some nagging sense of obligation. He would never introduce his wife and child to his family because he was either embarassed or did not want to 'tarnish' them by having them come into contact with his family. Sergei, Andrei, and Tolik were seemingly slaves to their desires. They were perhaps less responsible for all of the problems in the movie, but they certainly did not help to get rid of them either. Andrei and Sergei were both infatuated with Vera and Sergei could not control his disdain for the 'older generation'. Tolik simply could not harnass his violent nature. He was constantly fighting with people because he could not control his anger.

I felt that this movie could have represented social problems that any modern working-class family has to deal with. Working-class families tend to have parents with more physically taxing jobs and economic troubles. The very fact that a working-class family was depicted as 'broken' in this movie was ironic. This was supposed to be the ideal family that all Soviets were supposed to aspire to and yet there was nothing even remotely ideal about Vera's family. Apparently, Little Vera served as evidence to one of the main reasons why the Soviet Union ultimately broke up; the 'working-class' simply ceased to be able to function.