The Return
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Movie Reviews of The Return
Movie Review: You want boredom? Rent "Gerry."
Summary: 5 Stars
Some of the diaries of the German troops heading east to the attack on Russia seem to elicit not so much a fear of the Russian Army as being thunderstruck by the vastness of Russia.
The immensity of the country comes across in this purely Russian movie about two boys reunited with their father after a hiatus of 12 years. Since the boys, Ivan and Andrei, are so young, they have no independant memory of him and are forced to run to a secret hiding place where they have ferreted away a photograph of him. Both nod affirmatively: 'It's him.'
One of our weaknesses as Americans, whether we travel to foreign countries or read foreign books or see foreign movies, is that we expect to see the USA in a foreign tongue. When we don't, we criticise the effort because in our minds, it doesn't measure up. 'It just ain't normal, Gladys!'
So one thing this film isn't is that it isn't American. We don't know what the father was up to. We don't know why he came back. Millions and millions of sons and daughters grew up in that sad, anonymous, fungible childhood that was eastern europe after Communism. And in some families men returned and in some, other men returned. There wasn't any "Leave it to Beaver" and there weren't any "Waltons."
Beautifully filmed we see the boys taken on a painful and lengthy journey and in a manner of speaking, the journey represents their passage from adolescence to something else, not adulthood but something just before that.
It's beautiful and worth the effort. But it ain't Rocky. 5 stars. Larry Scantlebury
Movie Review: Bleak and Beautiful
Summary: 5 Stars
It is amazing how the Russian director manages to direct a masterpiece. A very simple story about two sons and their father. Ivan and Andrei are typical siblings, always fighting with each other and trying to outrun each other. One day they come back home squabbling as usual only to find their mother hush them up. The reason: their father who has been gone many years has suddenly come back and is sleeping inside. The kids are confused, delighted and suspicious all at the same time. The Father offers to take the kids for a 3 day fishing trip. Andrei, the elder son wants to gel with his father and follows him everywhere. Ivan, the younger son is a little held back and suspicious.
Father's behavior with his kids fluctuates between the caring to the harsh, but mostly harsh. On one occasion he abandons Ivan on the road and in freezing rain only to pick him up later. At times, he ensures that the kids are wearing jackets for the nippy evening. On the second day they paddle to a desolate island in near blizzard like conditions and camp in the open. Things just get bad on the island and a sudden tragic accident happens. The events thereafter have been directed brilliantly. The emotional swings are very natural and the bleak natural surroundings just add to them. The cinematography is simple, but creative.
Nine year old Ivan's acting is superb and is the the highlight of the movie.
Movie Review: Brilliant filmmaking, thrilling, poignant story.
Summary: 5 Stars
I stumbled upon this 2003 Russian film and was pleasantly surprised by it. Accolades and words are not enough to describe the film and it's quality. It is done so well, I just had to watch it twice, for the sheer pleasure of the cinematography and compelling story.
Stylish, solid and beautifully filmed. The music and sound effects are hunting and the acting is spellbinding especially from the 2 kids. It is a film by first time director Andrei Zvyagintsev, about a father and his two sons. I will not spoil it for you, but all what I will say is that movies are meant to be created this way. Absorbing, riveting, thrilling and leaving you with so many questions to ask. But soon as the film was over, I watched it again, to find so many metaphors and references, it became a spiritual journey. Observe in the beginning of the film, the younger kid running up in the attic to look at the only picture of the returned father, and notice where it was placed in the book, look at the illustration. Galina Petrova plays the silent grandmother and it only appears a few short seconds in the film, nevertheless powerful. Andrei Tarkovsky has been mentioned for the style of the film and rightfully so. I am sure the young director is very much inspired by the great master of cinema. The Return is nothing short of a masterpiece.
Movie Review: Haunting
Summary: 5 Stars
There is something about this movie that sticks with you long after you have watched it. Is it the way the story starts? The way it ends? The way your primary expectations are not met, and yet you find something else that you didn't expect? Hard to say, but it eventually matters very little. You are moved, you are disturbed, and you keep thinking about it... It beats those blockbusters that you forgot five minutes after you stepped out of the movie theater by a long shot.
I personally love movies where I am unable to predict anything. How refreshing and disturbing!
It is a movie made by a Russian director, with outstanding Russian actors (the kids!), but there's nothing "Russian" about the story. It is a "universal" story of a father returning to his wife and children after a twelve-year unexplained absence and taking his two sons - to whom he is a perfect stranger since he left when they were very little - on a fishing trip.
From then on, "unexpected" is the guideline and you hold your breath. What is going to be revealed? What is going to happen? How will the three characters deal with their new relationship?
You'll have to watch to find out...
The photography is beautiful, and the score at times adds real power to the images.
A must-see movie for cinema buffs, not for the average "movie goer".
Movie Review: Lamentation over the Dead Christ.
Summary: 5 Stars
This film is shot with unsurpassed attention to beauty of the cadre - each scene could be a picture in itself. Cinematography here is simply masterful, in a traditional way reminding of Visconti or Tarkovsky, as many observed, perhaps, but certainly nothing of the new wave.
What makes it so enigmatic that there is certainly symbolism there, of a Messaiah, an unknown father who has come from nowhere and who perishes trying to save his boy.
This symbolism is underscored by the very first scene where the father appears - he is sleeping, but in fact the whole composition, and even his image and facial features, are a direct depiction of Andrea Mantegna's "Lamentation over the Dead Christ" picture in Pinacoteca di Brera, in Milan. It is amazing to think that Russian director obviously knew of this eternal picture. And when we see the father the very first time as dead Christ, does it not foretell ominously his fate?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lamentation_over_the_Dead_Christ_(Mantegna)
The film is deeply enigmatic, as the treasure that the father dug out on the remote island disappears with his departure. What is the significance of this to his children? One decides to herself.
A masterpiece.