Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival: "Wild Field"

[Lydia Leftcoast]

Russia seems to specialize in depressing films lately, and this one is no exception. It's about a young doctor who is the district physician for a wide swath of arid land that contains twelve farms and little else. He has few supplies, almost no equipment, and lives at about the level of an American settler in a sod house, except that he has electricity--sometimes. When people come in, he practices nineteenth century medicine, sometimes with the help of the local veterinary technician.

When his supervisor comes around, he asks for medicines and supplies, but his supervisor tells him that there are no supplies anymore and notes that the area used to have a well-equipped clinic. He doesn't say what happened to it, but he is angry and disgusted.

The doctor's fiancee comes to visit, but that goes badly, too.

It is only in the last scene that we find a paradoxical glimmer of hope for the now thoroughly depressed doctor.