Father And Son
Filed Under: Film, Reviews | Article Tags : DVD review
By: Lara Santoro
January 2005
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The Russian film Father and Son focuses on two emotional characters, the father and Alexei, and their passionate relationships toward each other in a romantic setting. The characters all share intimate bonds with each other that are seen not only externally through their words and actions, but internally with their hearts that is portrayed though the character’s eyes.
In every scene, the setting is cast with beautiful lighting, as the camera moves over rustic environments. The pale golden palate sets the film in a time period aside from today’s world. The mood cast is dreamlike. The character movement, space and relationships towards one another create a comfortable feeling that transcends their emotions.
The first twenty minutes of the film shows the bond between father and son as the father has his arms engulfed around the son and is calming him down from a nightmare in the middle of the night. Little words are spoken as their shirtless bodies are tied together for reassurance that everything is going to be ok. Nothing is material or complicated about the character direction at all.
The story moves onto the son at his military academy. The father, a retired officer of the air regiment goes to visit his son one afternoon. The father sees him growing up in his footsteps professionally and never encourages it nor condones it. The father and son also deal with the emotional struggle with dealing with the death of the wife and Alexei’s mother. Though the father and son share these similarities, the father is bothered by the adolescent stages he sees his son going though in dealing with these issues.
The film also focuses on Alexei’s relationships with some of his friends, including his former girlfriend. His love for her and the pain of breaking up and watching her have another boyfriend is very difficult for him. There are two scenes where Alexei and his girlfriend meet up: one at the military academy and two when he visits her at her apartment. In both scenes there is a visible screen that separates them apart, at the military academy they talk through the window panes and the director aesthetically plays with the viewer’s perspective, and at the girlfriend’s apartment she speaks to him from her balcony, there is even a joke relating to Romeo and Juliet.
The son also has two friends who he seems to enjoy his time with by playing either on the roof or around the city and on the cable cars. The conversations are not complex as are none of them in the movie, focused more on the bodily interaction the characters share and the expressions shown thorough the characters eyes. Though the story shows the son’s friendships his relationship with his father is still highlighted the most. Alexei acts young, vulnerable, and learns a lot from watching his father and a dependency is still felt even as he gets older.
My lasting impression of the film was that it was put together extremely well. It is a very soothing film to watch, with no drama, action, conflict, or excitement. It was beautiful to watch for the scenery and interesting to think what it would be like to be there in real life. The film didn’t give me any real sense to the culture, and the feeling of love could have been portrayed stronger. I feel that this film is more poetic and simple storytelling. Having never seen any of the other films by Aleksandr Sokurov it makes me curious to see Mother and Son.
Reviewer’s Opinion: RENT IT!!
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