A Greater Promise: A Long, Dusty Trip to Nowhere

Is this for you?

If you like historical dramas that don't mind feeling a bit slow and dusty, you might find something to hold onto here. But if you’re looking for a tight, punchy narrative or anything resembling modern pacing, steer clear. You’ll probably hate this if you get restless when a movie spends ten minutes on a scene about sowing grain. It's not exactly The Gray Horizon in terms of excitement.

The film starts with a lot of heavy breathing and wide-eyed optimism, which is the standard setup for a story about settlers. The family arrives in Birobidzhan with these big dreams, but the movie is surprisingly honest about how quickly that gets stomped into the dirt.

There’s a scene about halfway through where they’re just trying to get a plow to work, and it lasts forever. It’s not profound or anything, it’s just painfully real. You can almost feel the callouses forming on their hands while you’re sitting there in your living room.

The Good, The Bad, and The Mud

• Lyubov Shmidt is doing a lot of heavy lifting with very little dialogue.
• The landscape feels appropriately miserable.
• Some of the group scenes are so cluttered it feels like the director just let everyone stand in the frame until they were told to move.

Sometimes the film feels like it’s trying to convince you that this collective farm is a grand experiment, but the background extras usually look like they’d rather be literally anywhere else. It’s funny in a way I don’t think was intended. Oops.

It’s not as charming as something like What a Bozo!, that’s for sure. It takes itself so seriously that it occasionally trips over its own feet. Still, there’s an odd, jagged sincerity to it that I found myself weirdly attracted to.

The pacing is just... weird. It lingers on faces for way too long. Sometimes you’re staring at someone’s forehead for three seconds too many, and you start wondering if they’re going to say anything or just keep looking into the middle distance.

It’s not a masterpiece. It’s barely even a coherent movie half the time. But if you want to watch people struggle against the elements in a way that feels uncomfortably grounded, it’s worth a look. Just don't expect a polished ending. It just sort of... stops. Like the budget ran out or the film stock gave up.