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Set in 1930s Ukraine, as Stalin advances the ambitions of communists in the Kremlin, young artist Yuri battles to save his lover Natalka from the Holodomor, the death-by-starvation program that ultimately killed millions of Ukrainians.
It seems like Mendeluk and his writer Richard Bachynsky Hoover were striving for something sweeping and old-fashioned, but the end result is claustrophobic and comically out-of-touch.
Almost inevitably, approaching the Holodomor via a standard-length dramatic feature risks reducing the cataclysm's enormity to a trivializing size and emotional impact.
Given the scope of the early-1930s atrocity, the most shocking thing about director George Mendeluk's new dramatization is how utterly devoid of emotional impact it is.
In reality, more than seven million people likely died on Stalin's orders. (The final numbers remain unknown.) Don't they deserve a better epitaph than this?
It's not Zhivago. The big picture is drawn a little too hastily for that. But it is a rousing tale with political pertinence, given the current state of relations between Russia and the Ukraine.
While "Bitter Harvest" will undoubtedly serve to raise awareness, there can be no doubt that the events deserve a more compelling and responsible treatment than this.