Miracles: A strange, grainy trip through time

If you have a high tolerance for silent-era pacing and don't mind when a movie forgets to explain why anyone is doing anything, you might actually like Miracles. If you need a plot that moves in a straight line or characters who act like real people, skip this one. It's for the folks who like digging through film archives on a Sunday afternoon when nothing else is on.

It’s weird how much a film can change just by being old. There’s a scratch in the print that shows up during the third act, right when everything is supposed to be dramatic, and it’s honestly the most interesting thing in the frame. You spend ten minutes watching a guy look sad by a window, and suddenly, a giant vertical line cuts across his face. It’s perfect.

Konstantin Nazarenko looks like he’s trying to solve a puzzle that isn't there. There's a moment where he holds a teacup—or maybe it's a bowl, it’s hard to tell—and he just stares at it for an eternity. The camera doesn't cut away. It just waits. I started wondering if he forgot his lines or if he was just really hungry.

The Stuff That Stuck

• The lighting is either pitch black or blindingly white. There is no middle ground.
• The background extras in the street scenes are doing absolutely nothing, which is oddly refreshing.
• I’m pretty sure someone walked off-set in the middle of a wide shot.

It reminds me a little bit of the weird, disjointed energy you find in Pan Tadeusz, though it’s much less coherent. Everything feels like a half-remembered dream. You know the kind—where you’re running, but you’re not moving anywhere.

There is no grand message here. There’s no big payoff. It just sort of stops. I checked the player to see if it had crashed, but nope, that was just the end of the movie. 🎥

Is it a masterpiece? No. Is it a disaster? Also no. It just is. It feels like someone filmed a mood and called it a day. Sometimes, that’s all I really want anyway.