Filmmaker Arvo Kruusement has passed away, and his greatest success story is inextricably intertwined with the music of Veljo Tormis. Likewise, the spark of Tormis’s creative brilliance in the 1969 film Spring (Kevade) was inseparable from Kruusement’s beautifully poetic vision in the film. Spring was the high point of Arvo Kruusement’s career, and one of the things that helped the film reach such heights was Tormis’s music. Everything Kruusement did after Spring was judged and viewed through the lens created by that particular film.

So, the two men were indebted to each other, and they knew it well. This became especially clear after they tried to recreate something similar in the sequel films, however, without the success they had hoped for. This made them understand all the better what a miracle had actually happened in the making of Spring. They both captured something deeply Estonian, using different means. Through their parents, both had inherited a similar kind of nostalgia—a warm, intimate feeling for that wonderful time of blossoming and awakening, during which they themselves became people who engaged with and related to the world around them. They carried that spark forward.

Photo: still from the film