One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Worthy, faithful version of Solzhenitsyn's novel about the difficulties of life in a Siberian labour camp. Courtenay is superb as Ivan, struggling to survive to the end of his ten-year sentence, and the whole thing is conscientiously put together - shot in sub-zero temperatures near the Arctic Circle in Norway, with gaunt, haunted faces and the drab buildings and landscapes evocatively shot by the great Sven Nykvist (Bergman's regular cameraman). The problem, however, is that in his efforts to be accurate and restrained, Wrede forsakes passion, and creates a film as cold and clinical as the environment it observes.