Director: Andrey Zvyagintsev
Studio: Kino Video K351
Video: 1.85:1 widescreen enhanced for 16:9, color
Audio: Russian, PCM stereo
Subtitles: English
Extras: “A Film About the Film” (63 min.), Theatrical trailer, 3 Galleries of stills
Length: 106 minutes
Rating: *****
Not to be confused with the Sam Shepard vehicle of the same name which came out last year, this unnerving Russian film was a winner at the Venice Film Festival the year it was released as the Best First Film, and also picked up awards from Sundance, Toronto, and a nomination for Best Foreign Film at the Golden Globes. The new director has been compared to Tarkovsky and Polanski in his seemingly realistic treatment of things cinematically mystical, but I found the film’s overall acting and cinematography style closer to that of Bergman.
The story concerns two young brothers raised by their mother. After ten years absence their father suddenly returns to them and takes them on a week-long fishing trip to the wilderness. He is coldly stern and increasingly violent with them, and the younger of the boys fears their father might try to abandon or kill them and begins to oppose him. He does abandon the younger boy in the rain for some time over a slight infraction of rules. Yet the boys, who seem closer than most brothers, clearly want a father. A shocking incident happens on the trip that changes everything. The wrap-up of the story delivers the knockout punch of the mystical a la Gabriel García Marquez – it involves photos which were taken by the two boys on the trip using a 35mm camera, some of which we had seen them shooting.
There were two experienced cinematographers behind the camera and it shows. The strong horizontals in many of the images are striking. The reason I sought out this film was my fascination with the superb musical score by Andre Dergatchev, which I reviewed Here. Unfortunately, not a lot of it is heard in the actual film, but what there is works perfectly with the images and psychology of the story line. The featurette is one of the most honest and straightforward “Making of…” documentaries I have seen on any film. The director, who did only commercials previously, marvels over hearing the 35mm film rolling thru the camera for minutes on end, instead of just for two or three seconds as when he shot commercial work. The entire screen test of the 14-year-old is shown, and the pros and cons of his work are discussed, because only two weeks before the film won the award in Venice the boy accidentally drowned.
– John Sunier
