(WARNING - CONTAINS SPOILER, ALTHOUGH THAT'S BARELY RELEVANT HERE) Judged as narrative or as conventional revelation, the film is very slow, with very few set-ups - really he just takes her out for a walk then goes out again during which absence she dies; the only evidence of other humanity is a couple of trains and a ship in the distance (both emblematic of long-distance journeys). But it has a unique poetry, a look that's slightly distorted and color-desaturated, sometimes as though computer generated (somehow not a criticism here) - the sky is stark and moody and turbulent, and the landscapes are bleak and inconsolable, yet with an overwhelming compositional beauty (like the shot of the cliffs in which they seem to glow with golden light which then fades to white). The son's tenderness toward his mother is expressed through just a few utterances - we know she was a teacher, little more: there's no reason to suppose anything too unusual. What an ambition - to evoke the landscape into which one passes between one world and the next - a state of mind which transforms perception in its slipping, distorted, blurry, yet somehow heightened and sensuous state.
Review of Mother and Son
