Father and Son
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Movie Reviews of Father and Son
Movie Review: beautiful and unbalanced
Summary: 4 Stars
This film, like Sokurov's Russian Ark, is visually beautiful. Almost every frame is suffused with a gentle golden light; the buildings are stone but somehow soft and intimate, the city views shabby but lovely; the principle actors (all men) are beautiful, not just handsome. Everything is a feast for the eyes. This feast doesn't entirely satisfy.
As he did with Russian Ark, I think Sokurov has produced a piece of performance art. This film is even more beautiful than the other, though, and it's emotionally more interesting. There's really no plot; rather, we have a father who's grieving over the loss of his wife and a son who's coming to terms with the idea of loss. The father is young (mid-30s - he seems almost an older brother rather than a father), but he and his son (18 or 19) are coming to a point at which they must resolve some ambiguities in their relationship.
Have I made it seem that there's a story line here? If so, I've mislead you. There isn't. Questions are raised, situations arise, but nothing resolves. Nothing truly happens. That's okay, because Sokurov wants to examine the nature of intimacy and create an emotional mood rather than take us along a linear story. This is Art, to be appreciated as a whole and not just a frame at a time. The nature of intimacy is certainly front and center here. (The DVD even comes with an essay, "Sokurov's Vision of Intimacy"; I think that Wellspring decided that everything had to be spelled out for us lest we not understand the film. The essay is pretentious, obvious, and didactic; it would be at home in the Journal of the MLA.) The relationship between father and son is charged with eroticism, but there's nothing I could point to and say "that's beyond the normal bounds of family intimacy," even in a society as little inclined to such intimacy as ours. If it's Sokurov's intention that we think about intimacy, he succeeds brilliantly.
I've yet to see a Sokurov film that I really liked, let alone that I would recommend to my parents or to friends whose tastes I don't know well. I appreciate his talent. He's an artist of extraordinary skill, and I'll continue to watch his films out of appreciation for that skill. I love beautiful images and Sokurov provides them in abundance. His actors don't really act; he poses his actors rather than direct them. The one who plays the father in this film seems generally uncertain about what to do with his face, so he mostly wears a goofy smile. He doesn't let us know that anything much is going on behind his eyes. The one who plays the son is better, but he likewise exhibits little emotional range. Sokurov seems much more adept at handling the non-living elements of a shot than the living ones. Even so, I was actually drawn into the emotional world of this film, as I emphatically wasn't with Russian Ark. I recommend it to you if you're interested in film technique or if you're feeling meditative about human relationships or pensive about your mortality. If you aren't in a reflective mood, you really won't care for this.
Movie Review: A HOMOEROTIC TEASE ABOUT A TABOO SUBJECT.
Summary: 4 Stars
I am not surprised to find such a vigorous denial of homoeroticism in those reviews that classify this movie as outstanding. The movie is about the construction of the masculine subject in a homosocial environment: the military. Mothers are absent; only one female love interest appears and she is fighting the father for the son (an interesting twist on the Freudian model, where wives fight mothers for their sons, and sons hate their fathers). You have the very ambiguous story of the father's disappeared Army buddy and the strange bond formed between their two sons. Then there is the bond between the son and his own Army buddy, an orphan who openly asks to become part of his friend's family. Let us talk next of the choice of actors. The father,Andrei Shohetinin, is almost painfully beautiful, an ideal homoerotic centerfold whose Ivory muscles are abundantly exposed and lovingly photographed.. The son is quite attractive as well, and their scenes together--those almost-touch-my-lips soulful gazes-- burn the screen with their latent erotic power. When the son tells the father that after he leaves, the father will get married, there is no previous basis for that assertion. Even the ending, open, unresolved, with a hint of tragedy, corresponds to the Western homoerotic artistic ethos. Sakurov's denial of homoerotic content in this movie is an act of Existentialist bad faith--in other words, a bold-faced lie. I give it four stars because neither he nor his work have the courage to come out.
Movie Review: One of Sokurov's most difficult but rewarding films...
Summary: 4 Stars
The first time I saw this, I was expecting it to be just like Mother and Son. Quiet, long takes, not too many cuts, slow, etc., etc.. When I first saw this, I was perplexed. It has the most cuts I've ever seen in a Sokurov film, and it just seemed strange at the time. When it came out on DVD, I decided to see it again, and it's a great film. It's an entirely different film than Mother and Son, but it's still Sokurov. Many have claimed that there's a homoerotic tension between the father and the son, and Sokurov has dismissed this as the product of "sick European minds". He's right. The reason that people have interpreted this as such is because the father and the son don't look alike, they're only 20 years apart, the father looks young, and they're both in great shape. The opening scene is the father is having a bad dream, and the son awakens him. Then they embrace. The 2 men who play the father and son are in good shape, so I suppose that's why they thought it was homoerotic. It really is kind of silly. The film is the thing, here. It's about a widower father losing his son to adulthood and possible marriage, and being left on his own, which naturally saddens and scares him. The whole film resembles a dream more than anything, and its imagery is bathed in warm, yellowish hues reminding us of the sun. It's really a stunningly beautiful film, haunting and unforgettable.
Movie Review: who needs freud?
Summary: 4 Stars
I watched this Russian father-son film in conjunction with the dark, Russian film of a similar theme entitled The Return. Both explore the father-son relationship, the latter one through the lens of patricide, this one through the tender but painful bonds of a very deep love. The two live together in an apartment after the death of the mother, and the film tracks how they both grow into their separate identities while maintaining an intense bond. Should the father leave his son, move to another city for a job, and take a new wife? Should the son follow his father's career path in the military? Does not the son's girlfriend take him away from the father? On two separate occasions in this film we hear the ambiguous and distinctly Christian notion, "A father who loves his son crucifies him. A son who loves his father sacrifices himself for him." This is the second film in a trilogy by director Alexander Sokurov that began with Mother and Son (1997). Sokurov attributed any homoerotic interpretations of this film to "sick European minds." In Russian with English subtitles.Movie Review: Worth The Patience Required to Watch
Summary: 4 Stars
Sokurov's movies take some getting used to. This is so dissimilar from standard American moviemaking that to call both things "movies" is to compare fois gras to corn dogs - both are food . . . but, really . . .
Again, unlike most American cinema, Father and Son is haunted by some images of homoeroticism that Sokurov (initially at least) denied - but the moments, as beautiful and lyrical as they appear, may give one pause for concern - if not for the homoeroticism, then for the fact that this is father and son and the physicality (especially of the opening scene) at times borders on sexual. Repeated viewings however, will fix that for after a while it became evident to me that there was nothing unnatural about this relationship - and that most of us don't have that kind of physicality in our lives: most family pets receive more physical affection than actual family members.
Father and Son is a movie that will haunt long after its final frames and provoke thoughts about family and relationships as few films do.