Arduous art film from Russian director Alexander Sokurov, focussing on a dying mother and doting son, in a depopulated pastoral dreamscape, photographed in a peculiar through-a-whisky-glass-darkly style, with smoky diluted color and funhouse-mirror distortions, backgrounded by soothing "environmental" sound effects: rumbling thunder, gurgling water, cheeping birds, chirping crickets. All very beautiful in a rarefied, museumy sort of way. The action consists of the son lifting, carrying, and setting down his enfeebled mother, asking her if she wants to eat, wants to sleep. Then the son wanders off alone, watches a train go by in the distance, lies down in a forest glade, leans up against a tree trunk and cries. Then the mother dies, and we look at a blank screen for a while. Seventy-three minutes total. Few will wish it went on longer. With Gudrun Geyer and Alexei Ananishnov. (1997) — Duncan Shepherd
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