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Father And Son

2003, Movie, NR, 97 mins

Father And Son: Review

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The second film in Russian director Alexander Sokurov's planned "Family Trilogy" shares certain stylistic similarities with MOTHER AND SON (1997), but it's also something of a departure. Both are sheathed the same hazy, beautifully stylized veneer that frequently resembles painting more than film, but where the first film was a darkly hued, dread-filled death watch, the second glows with golden, late-afternoon light and deals with the thriving, codependent love between a widowed father and his teenage son. Aleksei (Aleksei Neimyshev) and his father (Andrei Schetinin) share a small garret apartment in some unnamed seaside city in Russia. Father's wife died years ago but he still hasn't gotten over his loss, and he's transferred that abiding love onto Aleksei, who strongly resembles his late mother. Like his father, who once served in the air force, Aleksei has embarked on a military career and is now in his second year at the military academy. Father has been offered a good paying job in another city, but he's afraid Aleksei won't let him leave; Aleksei wakes up screaming from terrible, often Oedipal, nightmares and only his father can calm him. At the same time, father worries that he's becoming a burden and Aleksei moves even closer in order to assure him that he hasn't. That closeness is beginning to undermine Aleksei's relationship with his girlfriend (Marina Zasukhina), who resents his devotion, and Aleksei suspects she's begun seeing someone else. Moviegoers who enjoyed Sokurov's briskly paced tour de force RUSSIAN ARK (2002) but aren't familiar with the rest of his considerable body of work might be a bit put off by this dream-like film's leisurely pace. There's no real plot, the score often sounds like it's drifting in from another room, the dialogue recalls the intense whispers of middle-period Ingmar Bergman and the images are stretched and skewed like a modernist canvas; rather than telling a conventional story about a father and son, Sokurov vividly evokes the emotions underlying paternal love and filial devotion. When the film screened at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival, critics were surprised by what they perceived as its incestuous implications, an observation Sokurov countered with a complaint about the narrowness of Western thinking. But the homoerotic sensuality is too manifest to be anything but intentional — the opening moments are all grasping hands, entwined limbs and opened mouths — and further adds elements of Freudian family romance to this altogether hypnotic film. leave a comment --Ken Fox
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