A man whose face is never seen walks through the quiet corridors of a gallery. Light shines in from windows set high, dimly illuminating famous paintings as the man reflects upon the life he's lived through each painting. The paintings distort reality/memory - the man explains how in some place the light was different, in another a window is open which was 'actually' always closed and some kids are omitted. He was there, and remembers it different.
The distortion of the video medium is visualized by a wavy effect, as if the Betacam footage was shot through water. This device might have been interesting but the overall effect looks as cliched as that old trick of waving an image when crossing the dream/wake barrier. Indeed, the voyager tells of moving through realities in such a sense that brings all realities into one plain. This is surrealism.
If there is a finer point to all this, Sokurov is very unclear about it. The rhetoric of the film, as expressed by the voice-over, annoyingly reiterates the notion that 'something is there which cannot be expressed.' So why sit through the film? What can be and is expressed may not be worth your while.
The distortion of the video medium is visualized by a wavy effect, as if the Betacam footage was shot through water. This device might have been interesting but the overall effect looks as cliched as that old trick of waving an image when crossing the dream/wake barrier. Indeed, the voyager tells of moving through realities in such a sense that brings all realities into one plain. This is surrealism.
If there is a finer point to all this, Sokurov is very unclear about it. The rhetoric of the film, as expressed by the voice-over, annoyingly reiterates the notion that 'something is there which cannot be expressed.' So why sit through the film? What can be and is expressed may not be worth your while.