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Watching Movies in Russian as a Way of Boosting Your Skills

Question:

I take it from your command of both Russian and English that you read a lot. Good for you. I don’t. No time for this. I also don’t live in Russia. Do you suppose there’s a way for someone like me to learn highly advanced and eloquent Russian without having to read voluminous books on history and literary theory and politics and tons of other stuff I don’t care about? Thank you for any suggestions you might have. Have a good day.

I always recommend watching Russian movies, whether you’re an advanced learner or just a beginner.

But first to answer your question: I believe learning any language, including your own, to any level of eloquence requires reading in that language. How much reading you have to do in order to become “eloquent” in a language depends on a number of factors. Rather than delve into that territory, however, let me repeat my suggestion: try watching Russian movies. Not just any movies. The challenging kind, the movies that narrate daily life, explore current Russian mentalities and implicate all that both visually and linguistically in nuanced drama that may or may not have a resolution in the end.

A good follow-up to watching any Russian movie is reading reviews of it.

As is participating in online discussions, if you have no one IRL to discuss it with in Russian. These articles are relatively brief (rather than voluminous). At the same time they’re fraught with very sophisticated, yet concrete vocabulary, complex sentence structures, phrases, and allusions to literature, culture, etc., primarily on the level of language.

I still learn Russian this way two years after passing the C2 exam.

I occasionally stumble on adjectives and even verbs I didn’t know before. Movie reviews use loan and buzz words in various unlikely contexts. All this helps me both maintain and improve my command of Russian.

Anyway, to point you in the right direction, I can suggest Russian arthouse movies that I’m a huge fan of, and also this review site to find some quality reading material. Not sure if this option is for you, but it definitely makes for a reasonable alternative to reading high-end literary works and such.

ETA: You haven’t specified your level of Russian, but you might also be interested in Russian movies with English subtitles.

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