I am getting a little tired of Russian films that make claims to universality of theme and yet are packed with obscure (to me as a Westerner) and specific cultural cues. You can't have it both ways. At least I hope that was what was going on. Otherwise I would have to say that many of the exchanges between characters were fraught with mechanical sentimentality, were oddly disturbing (as when Alexandra takes a deep whiff of her grandson's manly aroma)or just downright incomprehensible.
Alexandra's grumpy, tough as nails old Mother Russia come to inspect her sons embroiled in yet another war is understandably cranky. Having survived the hell on earth of WW2 Russia would wouldn't be a little impatient with all things military? But while the actress carries the role with some gravitas, she is surprisingly unsympathetic and never more so as when she stops to deliver the director's pearls of wisdom regarding the relative merits of brute force versus intelligence to a surly Chechen youth or discusses with her grandson the autocratic structure of the Russian family - or was that government? Even an uninitiated Westerner can detect when a filmmaker breaks into his own film to use his actors as mouthpieces. It's not only jarring and annoying - it bespeaks a failure to convey these thoughts within the framework of character and action. Only when Alexandra encounters other women does she soften and become more accessible but I'm afraid most of the credit for the emotional connectivity of those scenes goes to the woman playing the Chechen cigarette vendor. While I enjoyed those scenes, they were nonetheless somewhat suspect for me, smacking of oversimplified beneficent sexism - women nurturers good, men warmongers bad.
On the plus side, it was the specificity of location and the excellent photography of the camp, the crumbling town and the seared countryside that kept me engrossed. The silent tableaux of working soldiers, hostile locals, the machines of war and even grandma traversing this landscape were far more effective and evocative than scenes that included dialog and reminded me that the great strength of Russian film making is traditionally grounded in the purely pictorial. These images, thankfully devoid of distracting and mysterious verbal cues and directorial soapboxing, did succeed where the storyline failed, in transforming the local to the universal.
Alexandra's grumpy, tough as nails old Mother Russia come to inspect her sons embroiled in yet another war is understandably cranky. Having survived the hell on earth of WW2 Russia would wouldn't be a little impatient with all things military? But while the actress carries the role with some gravitas, she is surprisingly unsympathetic and never more so as when she stops to deliver the director's pearls of wisdom regarding the relative merits of brute force versus intelligence to a surly Chechen youth or discusses with her grandson the autocratic structure of the Russian family - or was that government? Even an uninitiated Westerner can detect when a filmmaker breaks into his own film to use his actors as mouthpieces. It's not only jarring and annoying - it bespeaks a failure to convey these thoughts within the framework of character and action. Only when Alexandra encounters other women does she soften and become more accessible but I'm afraid most of the credit for the emotional connectivity of those scenes goes to the woman playing the Chechen cigarette vendor. While I enjoyed those scenes, they were nonetheless somewhat suspect for me, smacking of oversimplified beneficent sexism - women nurturers good, men warmongers bad.
On the plus side, it was the specificity of location and the excellent photography of the camp, the crumbling town and the seared countryside that kept me engrossed. The silent tableaux of working soldiers, hostile locals, the machines of war and even grandma traversing this landscape were far more effective and evocative than scenes that included dialog and reminded me that the great strength of Russian film making is traditionally grounded in the purely pictorial. These images, thankfully devoid of distracting and mysterious verbal cues and directorial soapboxing, did succeed where the storyline failed, in transforming the local to the universal.