"Mother and Son" is one of the most heartbreaking films I have ever seen, a work of aching tenderness that encapsulates all the lifelong feelings possible between a good son and a good mother. Sure, it is a simple story, a non-story to some, but what poetry there is here in the last hours as a mother dies and the son tends. During that time we see son being mother to the mother. He feeds her a beverage from what looks like a baby-bottle, he holds her and carries her in his arms as though cradling an infant, and with her in his arms we are given the image of a Pietà in reverse. The painterly backgrounds are at once hauntingly beautiful and desperately lonely. There is no one else in the film but mother and son, and his throbs of mournful desperation and loss during the moments he is alone move us deeply as do the moments of the mother stroking the hair of her no-longer-infant son. Seek out this film if you like poetry and images of humanity at its most elemental, most poignant.
Review of Mother and Son
