"For years, this fairly obscure Russian movie has probably been my favorite movie. I first had a crummy Russian VHS with blocky Soviet-era lettering (in which the movie title was translated as Unmailed Letter). Then in the early 2000s, my friend somehow found me a bootleg DVD. (Shoutout to Bilge!) Miraculously, in 2012, I saw it listed on Criterion’s “Coming Soon” page. I remember when I saw that, I just couldn’t believe it. This story of survival in the Siberian wilderness is simply the greatest “tough terrain” adventure movie ever made (with apologies to another Criterion fave, The Wages of Fear). Both director Mikhail Kalatozov and his cinematographer, Sergei Urusevsky, seem half-crazed, and my jaw drops repeatedly while watching. Kalatozov is one of cinema’s boldest stylists, and there are a zillion shots in this movie that blow me away. Yet, despite the cinematic fireworks, the most affecting shots might actually be the many meticulous close-ups of the explorers’ faces, which foreground the raw human drama unfolding before your eyes."