An Example of Intonation

An Example of Intonation (Пример интонации) is an 1991 Russian documentary film directed by Alexander Sokurov.

Plot
The second part of a duology about the politician Boris Yeltsin after the “Soviet Elegy” filmed two years earlier.

At the center of what is happening on the screen are the first months of Yeltsin’s presidency and how the life of his family changed after being elected to office.

Critical response
TV critic Irina Petrovskaya noted in her review: "An Example of Intonation remained an isolated example, but not for imitation, but for the clearest characteristic of the time when presidents were not ashamed of the humanity in themselves and allowed those filming to record this weakness. Or, conversely, force."

Alexandra Tuchinskaya wrote that Sokurov managed to “reveal in his interlocutor the mental pain and insecurity human, all too human”.

Harvard Film Archive: "Just weeks before he became Russia’s first democratically elected president, Sokurov engaged a deeply fatigued, mumbling Boris Yeltsin in a provocative discussion of his personal beliefs. Set in and around Yeltsin’s family home in an informal atmosphere of tea and blinis, the film asks the urgent question: “Who is this man?” Sokurov inflects his portrait with a sound track that obscures Yeltsin’s voice often to the point of incomprehensibility."