How I Ended This Summer is an enthralling psychological drama of slow-building tension. Two meteorologists – the 40-something Sergey (Sergey Puskepalis) and the 20-something Pavel (Grigoriy Dobrygin) – are alone on an island in the Arctic, tending to a weather station where they collect and report readings by radio several times a day according to a strict schedule. In the frigid, punishing environment, the men – separated by a generation – fail to connect in any way that will allow adequate cooperation between them. Sergey is resentful of the younger man’s seeming frivolity and lack of respect, compared to his own stringent professional code, and Pavel is utterly intimidated by Sergey and begins to commit worsening mistakes in his attempts to cover up each one. The issues are more than generational. Pavel is more educated and cosmopolitan. Sergey is proudly but stubbornly working class, and he dismisses Pavel’s career choice as mere tourism. A series of easily-fixable fumbles lead to absurd and life-threatening calamities as the two men lose touch with civility and sanity. Though it may read like a parable about alienation in the post-Soviet era, the film itself is subtle and gently menacing; preserving the threat but not the depiction of Hollywood-style pulse-pounding action sequences. As in some of Werner Herzog’s best films, we are left with a forlorn sense that both nature and culture are conspiring to crush the individual human spirit, combined with a feeling of empathy for those struggling to survive anyway.
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