The film speaks about the lives of young people from Latvia during the years 1985-86. Their conflicts with parents and the society, the fear that there is no place in life for them. A young mother worried about the future of her daughter after the Chernobyl catastrophe, a young man believing in Krishna, young men coming back from the war in Afghanistan …
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Over 20 million Soviet spectators have seen IS IT EASY TO BE YOUNG? Today many see it as the Glasnost film par excellence, as the work which incarnates more clearly than any other the spirit of the Gorbachov era. <…>
Drug abuse, the threat of nuclear contamination, the cult of the Hare Krishnas, as well as general feelings of uselessness and despair are among the other problems which Podnieks explores with the same unrelenting directness, foregoing the use of a didactic voice-off commentary in order to let young people themselves address us. The difficult readjustment of veterans of the war in Afghanistan is another prominent theme.
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Yet, despite its powerful immediacy and authenticity, IS IT EASY TO BE YOUNG? makes no claim to being an "objective" reflection of unadulterated reality. Rather, Podnicks openly admits to his role as deliberate manipulator of sounds and images, assuming a clear authorial stance not through the use of voice-over narration, but through the unabashedly stylized use of techniques normally associated with fiction film.
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Brenda Bollag from Jump Cut, no. 34, March, 1989, pp. 32-33
copyright Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, 1989, 2006
