Product Details

• Actors: Galina Vishnevskaya
• Directors: Alexander Sokurov
• Format: Anamorphic, Color, Dolby, DVD, Letterboxed, NTSC, Surround Sound, Widescreen
• Language: Russian
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Number of discs: 1
• Rating: Unrated
• Studio: Cinema Guild
• DVD Release Date: April 28, 2009
• Run Time: 92 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B001UE49BQ
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #40,955 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #65 in	Movies & TV > Art House & International > European Cinema > Russia
  #67 in	Movies & TV > Art House & International > By Original Language > Russian
  #77 in	Movies & TV > Military & War > Anti-War Films

Editorial Reviews

Review

"One of the ten best films of the year... A film of startling originality and beauty... A beautiful, eerie work of art." --Manohla Dargis, THE NEW YORK TIMES

Product Description

In a desolate, sun-scorched corner of the world, an elderly woman has come to see her beloved grandson, a young officer stationed at a remote military outpost. With the enemy just beyond the compound, she wanders the barracks, observing the routines of military life, before making a sudden trip into the outlying countryside. Featuring a mesmerizing performance by Russian opera legend Galina Vishnevskaya, Alexandra is a viscerally powerful new film from the great Alexander Sokurov.

Special Features:
- Press Conference with director Alexander Sokurov, actress Galina Vishnevskaya and composer/producer Andrei Sigle (60 minutes)
- Patience Labour (10 minutes), short film by Alexander Sokurov
- Theatrical Trailer
- Essay by film critic David Shengold

See all Editorial Reviews

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Aesthetics of the spirit., June 28, 2009

By	Ted Byrd - See all my reviews

To this reviewer, "Alexandra" is a truly beautiful film. But its beauty isn't expressed by scenery, music, costumes, or even(in my opinion) by the cinematography.

The acting was brilliant, in that it was that sort of non-professional acting that succeeds in being genuine and profound through its very naivete. Only Galina Vishnevskaya, who played the lead role is an actress of note in Russia.

There are no glamorous people in this story. Alexandra Nikolaevna, a portly widowed grandmother with weak legs, undertakes an arduous journey to visit her grandson, a soldier in a remote area where the Russian army is trying to suppress a rebellion by a Caucasian ethnic group. The ugly, dusty camp in which she arrives appears to be bleached of color by the stifling heat. The occupying Russian soldiers and the inhabitants of the countryside alike have been dehumanized by the long and bloody conflict.

Alexandra Nikolaevna is no saint. She is rather crusty and does her share of complaining and criticizing, as well as groaning. But she is a woman of compassion and empathy for others, and she is filled with love and pride for her warrior grandson. Her presence in the camp elicits a wistful, somewhat grudging remembrance from these uncouth, brutalized soldiers that there are still finer sentiments buried within them.

She has come to see exactly what it is that her grandson is experiencing, and to try and comprehend the real meaning behind it. Her shrewd grandmother's eye sees things not in political terms, but in very elemental human ones. She is persistent in her investigations of the matter, even to the point of leaving the camp to visit the marketplace of the rebel town. Here her empathy for fellow humanity is unable to break down the animosity of the younger populace, but she establishes a bond with the elderly women of the town.

The beauty that is manifested in this film comes from those remarkable scenes in which this simple(but determined!) grandmother, who represents the nurturing human qualities of compassion and mutual respect,forms a rapport of understanding with the wide range of people she comes into contact with. The vulnerability and poverty of soldiers and civilians alike will be jolting to the sensibilities of Americans, who have been conditioned to think they should be protected from such hardships.

The idea of an elderly woman traveling to an area of armed conflict to visit a relative could not be tolerated in our society, where we must all be regulated and shielded, even from our own desires. This is not to say that one way is better than the other, but this film will definitely expose you to a different worldview. In all honesty, I suspect that the vast majority of movie-watchers would find this story to be dull, pointless, and oppressive. But, if we were stripped of our conveniences and our entertainment gadgetry by war and poverty, we could only hope that such a tempering grandmotherly influence might intervene to appeal to our better matures.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A warmth gaze about the war!, August 2, 2008

By	Hiram Gomez Pardo (Valencia, Venezuela) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Alexandra (Aleksandra) - with ENGLISH subtitles (PAL/R5 - Russian Import) (DVD)

Alexander Sokurov has demonstrated to have inherited the priceless coronet among the most genuine distinctive and fervent spiritual followers of Andrei Tarkovsky.

This sharp, reflexive and inventive metaphor deals with the visit that Aleksandra Nikolaevna makes to her grandson, one of the best officers of his unity. She travels there to live together with that masculine universe, in which there are no women, no comfort, no tenderness. The life is meaningless and everyone jealously hides it from the others. There is military proud, desire to be recognized in that well apart place, where neither of the members of that little village appreciate them. Maybe there's no energy or even time for the feelings, being the authority, discipline and obedience are only the elements which formally has to be kept in mind for the rest of the trop. Everyday, every hour, everything debates between life and death. However, she sparks a light of hope, humanity and transcendental signification for the human being, because before nothing it` s a community where there are persons.

A poignant film that care and beautifully undertakes its warmth poetry before our eyes from start to finish.

Don't miss this brilliant jewel of the cinema.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars peerless filmmaking, December 26, 2009

By	J. Anderson (Monterey, CA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Alexander Sokurov's work is always worth watching (Elegy of the Land, Russian Ark, and Spiritual Voices spring joyfully to mind), but, of them all, I believe Alexandra stands as a perfect work of collaborative genius. I admit the great attraction for me was experiencing the gifts of Galina Vishnevskaya in the role of a lifetime. This greatest of Russian sopranos, whose own life has proven more profound than any opera role, proves herself an actor of genius by the most natural and sublime interior passion I've ever seen committed to film. Her performance as Alexandra is overwhelming, perfectly detailed with subtleties impossible to catalog, and more impossible to forget. The character she creates with myriad physical details, gestures, glances, and aided by a consummately naked script, lodges in one's mind and heart with scorching pain and beauty. There is little I can add to Ted Byrd's review here; his comments are richly insightful. This is filmmaking the gift of which one will not find coming from the base lot of Hollywood. It is, rather, art wrought of suffering, and there lies the difference that defines. The frightening war policies of American profiteers find a perfect antidote in a work this finely wrought, this truthful and revealing. Alexandra is a film experience I'm positively compelled to recommend with urgency and devotion. Gift yourself, and don't hesitate.