Yesterday I've watched the movie The Barber of Siberia from that link.
This is a great movie everyone. Wikipedia tells that it gives a good example of the Russian mentality. Now I haven't been there yet so of course I've noticed all the little details. Here is a copy and paste of the plot summary from Wikipedia.
The Barber of Siberia (Russian: Сибирский цирюльник, translit. Sibirskiy tsiryulnik) is a 1998 Russian film that re-united the Academy Award winning team of director Nikita Mikhalkov and Michel Seydoux. It was screened out of competition at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival.
Plot summary
"The Barber of Siberia" is dedicated by Mikhalkov to Russian officers, "the pride of the country", and its main topic is the set of values regarded as the cornerstone of Russian mentality, culture and politics. Those values seem to be honor and truthfulness, but also to obey authority and blind willingness to sacrifice one's life. "The Barber of Siberia" marks the beginnings of Putin era in Russian politics, with its sentiment for imperial tradition, and in fact the movie gained much support and applause in government circles.
The plot is a love-story, however a very unorthodox one. Jane Callahan, a once beautiful American, writes to her son, a cadet at a famous military academy, but who is he? Her memories take us back 20 years to when she arrived in Russia to assist Douglas McCracken, an obsessive engineer who needs the Grand Duke's patronage to sponsor his invention, a massive machine to harvest the forests. On her travels, she meets two men who will change her life forever: a handsome young Andrey Tolstoy with whom she shares a fondness of opera, and the powerful General Radlov who is entranced by her beauty and wants to marry her. Tolstoy and Radlov vie for the love of the woman with whom they are obsessed. She confides a deep secret to Tolstoy, promises to marry him, and together they spend a passionate night of love. But later he overhears Jane denying her interest in him to the General. Distraught, Tolstoy attacks the General who arrests his young rival on false charges and banishes him to Siberia. To 7 years of hard labor and 5 years of isolation.
Jane never gives up hope of finding Tolstoy, her true love. After ten years later, although by now married to McCracken, she returns to Russia to discover where he lives in Siberia. She goes to his home, where she finds that Tolstoy is married and with children. She leaves from there taking with her the secret of her true love which will forever tie her and her son to the huge mysterious country.
The stars of the film include famous Russian actors such as Oleg Menshikov, Alexei Petrenko, Marat Basharov, Leonid Kuravlev, and Mikhalkov himself (as Tsar Alexander III), and British actress Julia Ormond.
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