Not Coming to a Theater Near You Two-Thousand Twelve In Review

One of the greatest film I saw all year made its way to me at the 11th hour of 2012: Georgi Daneliya’s 1963 milestone Walking the Streets of Moscow, starring a young and cute-as-a-button Nikita Mikhalkov before his directorial days. It takes place over the course of one day in the city and touches upon the droll, boring, beautiful, lovelorn, and love-filled lives of the city’s resident and visiting youth. And it’s filmed in a black-and-white palette that tinges everything with an innocence and charm. Scene after enchanted scene stand out in the mind weeks after the film has passed from my vision: a girl walking the streets as it begins to pour and a stranger on a bicycle holding an umbrella while flirtatiously circling around her; the lights and speed of a carnival ride; Mikhalkov singing the eponymous song in a metro; a dance between two would-be lovers at a wedding… the promise of lives yet to be lived filled with moments of ordinary magic such as these.