Four Russian poets navigate intense personal and creative lives during the brutality of the Stalinist period and World War II. Their individual struggles to survive become intertwined with their struggles to express their experiences through poetry. And these poets orbit each other’s memories. They compare the trajectories of their lives and words and ask of themselves: Did I show courage? Did I act honorably? Could I have done otherwise? Will my work survive? In Four Monologues Anna Akhmatova, Osip Mandelstam, Boris Pasternak and Nahdezda Mandelstam look to each other as they consider the answers to these questions. Four Monologues is a meditation on the power of language to transcend the forces of history. This is a film about the collision between legacy and destiny. “A song, unlike a man, can’t be shot.”