Dead Man's Letters

After the nuclear war. A scientist sits beside his dying wife in a museum basement turned shelter and writes letters to a son he does not know is alive. Outside is ash, inside is dark, and everyone is still explaining a plan for salvation to everyone else. Konstantin Lopushansky does not show the catastrophe, he shows consciousness after it: people go on reasoning, and that persistence is both the hope and the tragedy of the film. The image is drenched almost entirely in yellow, and the texture is rust and dust. The director had worked alongside Tarkovsky and the sense of time here makes that plain. It was released in the Soviet Union in 1986, the year of Chernobyl. Who it is for: viewers who like the philosophical wing of post-apocalyptic science fiction. Who it is not for: anyone wanting action, since this is almost entirely waiting and talk.