The success that Okraina achieved at the time at home and abroad went beyond the filmmakers’ greatest expectations. It was Barnet’s first sound film and also the most powerful expression of his idea of balance between drama and comedy.
In a remote patriarchal town, where the economy revolves around a shoemaking factory and everyone makes shoes, the slow rhythm and grayness create an undefined sense of time. It will be History, with war and the revolutions of 1917, that will jolt the destiny of these people suspended in time and put them to the test. “Revolutionary pathos” and “proletarian internationalism” are the themes at the root of Okraina. But Barnet also reveals “all his innovative power and his maturity as an artist in gathering and reinterpreting the motifs, procedures and characteristics of Soviet cinema that were evolving and absorbed them into his own sensibility” (Evgenij Margolit). The individual portraits of each character are poetically transformed into an extraordinary chorus. The final jubilation fades into the background, and the death of Kol’ka, though symbolic, is far from being molded on the stereotype of the cathartic sacrifice of the hero. In the meantime, sound film becomes a new strongpoint for Barnet. The atmosphere is richly nuanced while drama, humor and lyricism all find unity.