A Long and Happy Life (2013) poster
2013 · drama

A Long and Happy Life

Directed by Boris Khlebnikov1h 17m2013
  • heavy
  • intense
  • bleak

Sascha lives in a village on the Kola Peninsular in northern Russia and dedicatedly manages what is left of an old collective farm. He gets on well with his farm workers who respect him and also tolerate his more or less clandestine love-affair with Anya, a secretary at the local government office. But then Sascha is suddenly faced with a dilemma: the district’s self-seeking administrators, none of whom could be termed squeamish, offer him a lucrative deal for the farm. In legal terms, Sascha doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on since his lease on the farm was only agreed with a handshake. The pressure mounts, and even more so when his employees convince him to stand firm. Against the backdrop of a landscape exposed to the elements, this unflinching man’s destiny takes its course.

Our read · A Long and Happy Life (2013) reads as a heavy, steady, grounded drama entry — measured in intensity, mid-stakes in scope, measured in temperature, nihilistic in outlook. Hand-scored on twelve axes of taste — mood, pacing, weirdness, hope, stakes, humour, reality, density, warmth, auteur, intensity, and era — with a derived palette drawn from its dominant cinematography.

Cast
Anna KotovaYevgeni SytyGleb PuskepalisAleksandr YatsenkoVladimir Korobeynikov
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The shape of A Long and Happy Life

DNA · twelve axes

The reading.

Each axis is hand-scored — not derived from votes or genre averages. The marker shows where this film sits; the gradient fill uses the film's own cinematography palette.

Mood · HeavyCosy
Pacing · Slow-burnKinetic
Intensity · GentleExtreme
Weirdness · ConventionalSurreal
Hope · NihilisticRedemptive
Stakes · IntimateEpic
Humour · NoneBroad
Reality · GroundedFantastical
Density · SparseTwisty
Warmth · ColdTender
Auteur · TransparentSignature
Nearest by DNA

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Geometric closeness in the twelve-axis space — pure DNA distance, not “people also liked.” Distance numbers are listed under each title for sceners who like to know the maths.

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