The Return
Andrey Zvyagintsev, director
2003 • Russian, with English subtitles
Kino Video (www.kino.com)
When pressed by a journalist to give a brief description of what his film, The Return, is about, Andrei Zvyagintsev said, “it’s about the metaphysical incarnation of the soul’s movement from the Mother to the Father.” Oh, is that all?
Tellingly, beyond this rather (one suspects) purposely cryptic summary, Zvyagintsev refused to dissect his work of art, saying, “you either perceive it or not. There are things which are without answers, and there is nobody who can explain them. Either we feel them and sense them, or not. Sometimes we just give up and carry on. That’s normal. I can’t do much to help the members of the audience who don’t understand certain things in the film. It would be like telling another person what that person is already seeing by himself.”
It is refreshing to hear someone so respect his audience.
The Return is Zvyagintsev’s first film. Made for all of $500,000, the movie has been an unqualified success. It is the first Russian debut to win the Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival since 1962, when Andrei Tarkovsky took that prize.
On the surface, Zvyagintsev’s film is a beautifully austere thriller, packed with the oedipal tension of two boys struggling to come to terms with the return into their lives of an overbearing, morose and taciturn father. For reasons not entirely clear, he wants to reconnect with his sons, and so takes them along as unwitting accomplices to dig up a piece of his past. The performance of young Ivan Dobronravov as Vanya, the younger son who resists his father’s every request, is haunting and authentic.
But, as the filmmaker himself suggested, this is not just a road trip movie about a man reconciling (or not) with his two boys. There is a metaphysical level to the film that is haunting and yet also very attractive. Is the father real, or maybe some kind of post-Soviet golem, resurrected (we don’t know, and Zvyagintsev doesn’t suggest, where the father has been) to play his part in a morality tale? We can’t and won’t know.
Rich with the luminous colors of the Russian North, where it always seems to be an hour before sunset, Zvyagintsev uses colors, character, a lingering rhythm and contemplative cinematography in a style reminiscent of Tarkovsky, proving that a thriller does not need to be full of bullets and explosions to succeed.
But perhaps the most satisfying thing about The Return is Zvyagintsev’s lack of moralizing or preaching. There are many messages and interpretations one can take away from this film, many powerful images. And it is refreshing, in a world increasingly anxious for simple, pat answers and easy, predictable story lines, to discover a storyteller who does not tie up all the loose ends. It is nice, for a change, to be left with something to turn over in your mind when the lights come up.
See this film.
Notes from Underground
Gary Walkow, director
2004 • English
Olive Films (www. olivefilms.com)
Like The Return, this film, based on Dostoyevsky classic tale, is full of an agonizing loneliness and despair. But director Gary Walkow goes in an entirely different direction.
Notes from Underground is about self-absorption, isolation, deception and guilt, about the cost of closing oneself off from community, from love, from comraderie.
Told largely through a monologue which the main character speaks into a video camera (a modern version of the inner dialogue allowed in a journal, which was Dostoyevsky device), the film is particularly successful in crafting a modern reflection of the nameless, faceless 19th century St. Petersburg clerk so common in Dostoyevsky or Gogol. We half expect to catch a glimpse of Nevsky prospect or to watch the anti-hero chase down the street after a lost overcoat.
Instead, the underground man chases after the acceptance of some old college buddies who scorn him almost as much as he loathes them. Following them into a brothel, he falls for the prostitute Liza (or, more accurately, for the idea of saving Liza). Somehow, his pathetic guilt, anger and desire to shame others draws her out of her own alienation and, in her pity for herself and him, she comes back to life. Like a warm beacon, Liza timidly invades his hovel of a half-basement, offering him a way out of his pitiful, insulated life. But, unable to recognize her love and unable to control the unpredictability she introduces into his world, he shuns her and falls back into his self-loathing, lies and suffering.
In Dostoyevsky original tale, the anti-hero says that he is searching “for something quite different – something I long for but cannot find.” For Dostoyevsky, the answer to man’s alienation is faith and the community that abides with it. There are no religious tones in this film, but the dead end of isolation and alienation versus the opportunity of community, is a note loudly struck.
This is not as beautiful or impressive a film as The Return, but then a comparison between the two films is unwarranted. The films have entirely different styles, techniques and cultural backgrounds. Yet they are alike in their desire to portray moral and personal dillemas without offering easy answers for their solution.
In the end, Dostoyevsky Notes from Underground – and this movie – is one of those great tales that, even when we know from the beginning how it will end, even when we know that the characters will make wrongheaded and stupid choices that will depress us, we watch it to the end anyway.
Briefly Noted
briefly noted
Three albums have recently been vying for the attention of our office’s CD player. To order, visit your local record store or the links provided.
This is a wonderful compilation of some of the most beautiful Russian Ballet Suites, recorded by the Russian National Orchestra, under the baton of Alexander Vedernikov.
russianarts.org/store
Oleg Timofeev has just released the hauntingly beautiful Acrobatic Dances, works for the seven-string Russian guitar composed by Matvei Pavlov while in a Soviet gulag.
haenssler-classic.de
We “discovered” Zolotoj Plyos at nearby Middlebury College’s Russian School. The trio of vibrant folk musicians are also accomplished carrillion performers.
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