IR Film Review: BURIAL [IFC Midnight]

The aspect of secret missions and the cultural standing within them is normally about how do you inflect genre. What "The Burial" does is turn it on its head and uses folklore in a way to mask some very real human approaches, behavior and setbacks, many of which are lost to time. The film follows Brana (Charlotte Vega), a lone female intelligence officer in a Russian detachment tasked with bringing a coffin back to Moscow for Stalin during World War II containing a very specific occupant. While the cat is let out of the bag so to speak very early, it is interesting to see many of the characters motivations in terms of what this man even in death can represent for a culture or a cause in terms of perspective and the texture of a symbol. Vega plays Brana with a conscience but a knowing of what world she is in. When they get pinned down by what seems like a nocturnal ambush, they have to reassert their position.

The film works in a basic way because the progression makes sense. Her reaction makes sense. The eventual repercussions and what happens make sense. Bookending it with Dame Harriet Walters as an older Brana is a bit of a plot ploy but the pay off even in the way it is simply done is effective and yet not overwhelming. The balance of the story is supposed to be Tom Felton as Lucasz, a refugee of sorts who disappears very well into his guide. But the character that rises to the top in many ways because you see the pain and weariness both physically and emotionally in a different way than Brana is Tor (played by Barry Ward). He understands the issues but also the pressure of war. He is a man out of time but that is the reason it works. Ultimately the interaction builds to a logical conclusion in an interesting retro would-be found footage type of way that delivers in an effective but not overt narrative. B

By Tim Wassberg