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| Images courtesy of Kino Lorber |
Alexander Sokurov is perhaps Russia’s greatest living
director and obvious artistic successor to Andrei Tarkovsky with his slow,
methodical approach to filmmaking, storytelling and reinvigorating the
painterly possibilities of the cinematic medium. With each and every picture finding its own
unique measure of narrative film language, drifting in and out of dream,
reality, form and meaning, Sokurov’s work despite largely being banned in its
country of origin nevertheless remains some of the most visually striking and
challenging cinema of our time. Though
Sokurov had been directing films as far back as the 1980s, it wasn’t until 1997
with his eighth film Mother and Son that the director finally began
achieving international acclaim and only three films afterwards he unveiled his
most famous work Russian Ark. A
favorite of Nick Cave’s, Mother and Son is a profoundly moving exercise
in pure cinema monitoring the final hours between a dying mother and her child.
Opening on two nameless characters in the Baltic region consisting
of a Mother and Son played by real-life mother (Gudrun Geyer) and son
(Alexei Ananishnov), the film opens in a kind of ethereal void which looks like
a slice of heavenly countryside where the parent and now fully grown adult son
exist devoid of any other fellow humans.
Bedridden, immobile and having trouble breathing over an undefined
illness, the mother is cared for by the doting son who caresses her, combs her
hair, feeds her and carries her around in his arms from place to place. Throughout the film, lensed in a series of
bizarre camera angles to be discussed in more detail later, these characters
maneuver from spot to spot isolated from humanity outside of occasional passing
trains in the far distance. Over the
course of this spiritually draining slow burn, a profound sense of grief starts
to come over the film, characters and viewer as the titular mother inches
closer day by hourless day towards death.
Filmed by recurring Sokurov cinematographer Aleksey
Fyodorov, the most immediate aspect of the film stems from its warped
otherworldly look created by filming through glass panes, mirrors and special
lenses that curve and distort the screen and particularly the actors’ faces and
bodies. The subtly quiet grief-stricken
score by Mikhail Ivanovich is truly deeply sorrowful and yet is faint and
distantly heard through a cacophony of wind, crashing waves, seagulls and distant
trains. With a visual look sure to
remind some more studied viewers of Dog Star Man and the relaxed running
long takes of Andrei Tarkovsky, the experience of looking at and listening to Mother
and Son becomes transcendent as though you’re leaving your body behind to
propel forward into the void. Neither
the mother nor son are professional actors and are the only two characters who
appear onscreen, giving the endeavor a kind of neorealist edge and an element
of truth trained professional actors likely couldn’t convey with the same
degree of authenticity.
Called by some critics a ‘reverse pieta’ concerning themes
of the Christian Passion with the roles reversed, Mother and Son is
subtly different on the eyes and ears with its wholly original cinematographic
approach and special lenses. Though
somber and mired in death and dying, grief, longing and feeling lost and alone
in the world, the profundity of simple human love portrayed in this manner is
at once shattering and poetic if not graceful in its sublime beauty. Included in Steven Schneider’s still evolving
book series 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, Alexander Sokurov’s
soft-spoken gust of wind is every bit as Tarkovskian as it is
Bergmanesque. Deeply entrenched in
spirituality and existentialism and on purely visual terms the director’s most
visually bold film up to that time, Mother and Son winds up being
powerful yet understated, wise yet quiet about its wisdom and somber but not
depressing. A healthy, informed look at
the unshakable power of love between child and parent.
--Andrew Kotwicki
