Customer Reviews

Father and Son

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Aleksandr Sokurov is as artist of the highest order. Not only does he understand his medium of film as his chosen avenue of creating art, he has the gifts of ingenuity, fresh creativity, and daring that make his works unique and stunning without any of the hoopla of 'experimental' filmmakers: Sokurov honors his humanity and celebrates the miracle of life with every stroke of his hand.

For those first introduced to Sokurov by viewing his extraordinary RUSSIAN ARK, a film of such importance historically as well as culturally and artistically that it stands alone: the conception and pre-camera preparation of covering 300 years of Russian history as played out in the Hermitage Museum buildings allowed this master to turn on the camera and record non-stop for the hour and a half of the complete story. The result is breathtakingly beautiful and enormously educational and enlightening - all that one can ask from a work of art.

In FATHER AND SON Sokurov has distilled all of his energy into a quiet, rhapsodic, sensually elegant examination of the relationship between a father and son. There is not much story: there is much being said. A father (the handsome and sensual Andrei Shchetinin) lives with his son Aleksei (Aleksei Nejmyshev - as handsome and virile and tender as Shchetinin) in a rooftop flat in St. Petersberg. The father has had a military career and the son is now at age 19 in military school studying medicine along with his training. The mother is dead and the father and son are closely bonded by her absence and by an amazing love for each other.

Aleksei has had a girlfriend (the incandescently beautiful Marina Zasukhina) but seeing that she is competing unsuccessfully for Aleksei's love for his father, she informs him she has found another love. Another young military student Sasha (Aleksandr Razbash) observes the strong bond between Aleksei and his father and being without a father, asks to move in their flat. Knowing that their time as unified family is limited by the way life passes, the two remain living alone.

Aleksei has dreams that approach nightmares but generally deal with separation anxiety. The father is always there to console Aleksei after his dreams and gently encourages him to pursue the life that will bring him happiness.

And that is really the bulk of the story, simple and short as it may sound. The brilliance of Sokurov's genius is in his means of telling this simple tale. He has elected to film using varying lenses and limiting his color spectrum to the sepia tones that resemble daguerreotypes come to life. His use of moments of Tchaikovsky melodies is sensitive and additive to the mood. His ability to linger over extended physical embraces between this father and son says more about love than any filmmaker before him. Part of the magic he creates is due to the physical beauty of the two actors embracing in the nude in the soft winter light of their rooftop flat. Some viewers have found this homoerotic and are concerned about that aspect of a father with son. A pity, that, being concerned about homoeroticism: the passion between father and son should be able to be viewed on every level for its richness, not for the fear of censorship.

FATHER AND SON is one of the most beautiful artworks on film I have ever viewed. I felt the same about RUSSIAN ARK. I eagerly await viewing his MOTHER AND SON and all the other works that hopefully will flow from Sokurov's gifted mind and talent. Highly recommended. Grady Harp, March 2005

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.

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.

Once seen, I could not get this film out of my mind. So moving, I took a day off of work in order to see it again before its much-too-short run ended. A New York Times reviewer described it best: "[I]t has an intensity that surpasses understanding." The cinematography is gorgeous, the story is deeply moving, the characters are much more human than most Americans care to admit. Immediately shooting to the top of my list, I had to e-mail and thank Aleksandr Sokurov personally for his wonderful film... and happily received a reply. Watch it with an open mind.

I saw this film at the theater about a month ago and I am very happy to see it being released so soon, though I suspected as much since there were only about 10 people to see this film on its opening Saturday. This is a wonderful, beautiful film. It is highly stylized, even pretentious, but still wonderful. I have been following Sokurov for some time. I find his earliest films to be almost unbearable. Perhaps it was a need on his part to follow his mentor, Tarkovsky. Finally, with Mother and Son and Russian Ark he has developed a style of his own, much more willing to distort the film image than Tarkovsky was. His films are slow and meditative, like Tarkovsky or Bresson, without much speaking. I don't won't to talk of the plot of this film, esp as it has very little, much like Mother and Son. Instead, it is the visual experience that is remarkable, beautiful and the interesting way he has of showing the interiors of his characters' feelings without much use of words. Mother and Son was about loss and alienation, so is Father and Son, but because of different reasons. You have to see the films to find out. However, from what I know of Sukurov, loss and alienation seem to be his favorite themes, and the reasons I like him so much. I realize these films are not going to be to everyone's liking, perhaps esp Father and Son because of its extreme slow pace and sometimes pretentious confusing story line. The film has a very homoerotic feel, but one tempered by a growing distance between the father and his son. And like his previous films that I have seen, the ending leaves a strong impression. Sokurov has become a master at high impact finales. Overall, a great, thoughtful, unique film. Buy it or rent it and see why.

What a wonderful film with such sweetness and love between a father and son. The relationship changed with time, but the heart of it all remained. The light seemed to soften the roughness of the days. This movie is more than just a movie...it is a painting that captured the true beauty of what matters the most...LOVE.

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.

I had high expectations for this film because I thoroughly enjoyed Sokurov's Mother and Son. What works in this film are the cinematography, the acting of the son and supporting characters, and the bond between father and son-- in essence, what this film's all about.

Sokurov masterfully frames each scene as a delicate, russet-colored portait, whose subjects are captured in soft, diffused light. Absolutely beautiful. Aleksei Nejmyshev as the son gives a credible and engaging performance as the son. He reminds me of French actor Jean-Paul Belmondo. The supporting cast is likewise on-target; Marina Zasukhina as the girlfriend is charming. The depiction of the closeness of father and son is remarkable, and an area not explored enough in cinema.

What doesn't work for this film is Andrei Shchetinin as the father. His acting is noticeably deficient. He does well enough in some scenes, but fails miserably and painfully in others. And the thing is you want him to do well for the sake of the film, but, alas, he smiles too damned much. Sometimes it's a nervous smile, sometimes a silly smile, sometimes a smile just because "the camera's on me and I don't know what else to do." Don't do anything, let us guess. I picked up on this during my first viewing, and the second viewing was painstakingly distracting because of it. This is a serious flaw to the movie and Sokurov should have caught it. And, especially, for Russians--Russians don't smile unless it's truly something to smile about. Bottom line, he's just a little too fawning.

The five-star ranking is a mistake, and for some reason Amazon lets you edit your review, but not your ranking. This really is about a 4-star film.

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.

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.