Mother And Son

Pure cinema, and then some. Russian director Alexander Sokurov's latest film pares the medium down to its most basic elements to construct a powerful work of sad, transcendent beauty. The narrative itself is extremely simple: In a lonely country house, a dutiful son cares for his terminally ill mother during the final hours of her life. Scenes unfold in a series of long, nearly silent takes. The mother first wakes. The son carries her outside and reads her postcards from her past. They go for a walk, the son carrying his mother in his arms. They stop and rest. Returning to the house, the son leaves his mother and goes for a walk. When he returns, she is dead. There...