Tom Ford | A Single Man / 2009

moment of clarity

by Douglas Messerli

 

Tom Ford and David Scearce (screenplay, based on a novel by Christopher Isherwood), Tom Ford (director) A Single Man / 2009

 

Tom Ford's first feature film, A Single Man, is a beautiful and intentionally serious work, presenting the last day in a literature professor's life. George Falconer (brilliantly played by Colin Firth) is a gay man who has lost his lover, Jim (Matthew Goode), in an accident, and has since that time lost himself to grief, stumbling through the early 1960s society (the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 is played in the background a of couple of times during the film's action) like a dead man walking, unable to connect with his neighbor, the Strunks, with three somewhat obnoxious children; with his students, to whom he attempts to teach Aldous Huxley's novel After Many a Summer Dies a Swan, a book, appropriately about death and longevity; or to reconnect with his close woman friend, Charley (Julianne Moore). It is a time when being gay, particularly for a careful and slightly fastidious man like George, is not openly shared; and after having had sixteen apparently happy years with his companion, he is quite frankly all alone in life, a man who at times feels truly singular, if not entirely "single."

    

  

     To increase the drama of his film version of Isherwood's 1964 novel, Ford has slightly altered the plot so that on this particular day, the day we follow his actions from waking up until his death, George has determined that he will kill himself, ending his utter loneliness and, as he wryly describes his New Year's resolution to Charley, to put to rest the things of the past.

     One of the important elements of Isherwood's fiction was, that despite his homosexuality, George was, in fact, an average person, an intelligent ordinary man, whose loss of love had simply led to a great emptiness. And Ford, given the strength of Firth's performance, also attempts to capture that ordinariness. Everything George does during the day, with a couple of exceptions, is set to pattern. As he drives past the play-gun of the neighborhood boy, he cocks his finger and shoots back, he briefly drinks coffee in the faculty lounge before facing his disinterested students, he shops for a bottle of gin Charley has begged him to bring to her party that night, he visits the local bank.

      The trouble is that Ford has so beautifully and precisely framed these events, carefully dressing his characters and sets, stunningly lighting his stylish designs, and choosing some of the most beautiful people to portray his odd assortment of figures that he renders George's great angst nearly meaningless. Accordingly, it is hard for the audience to share that character's desolate state of mind.

      Yes, George's great love of life has disappeared. The homophobia of the period underlining his lover's death is quite clearly established: he is secretly called by a family friend who reports Jim's death, telling him, in no uncertain terms, that the funeral will be a family-only affair, disinviting the most loved "family" member of the deceased.

     And, in her attempt to woo him back (Charley and George once had a temporary fling), Charley reveals the sensibility of the time, characterizing George's and Jim's shared life as "not a real relationship." We certainly understand, accordingly, his isolation with regard to the society of the day. As a gay man, as Jim proclaims, and later, as his student reminds him, George is "invisible."

     Yet George lives in one of the most beautifully moderne houses possible, all windows and sleek lines. He dresses in well-designed suits. He is helped in his daily chores by a maid. He works only a few hours a day teaching the literature that he, if not his students, most loves. He is adored by his friend Charley, who lives only a few houses away. He drives a Mercedes. It is a bit difficult, given his quite luxurious life to fully comprehend his endless languor.

      On the day of his intended suicide, moreover, his student, the radiantly fresh Kenny (played by the photogenic Nicholas Hoult) openly flirts with him. A stunningly handsome Spanish James Dean look-a-like (played by startlingly beautiful model Jon Kortajarena) is ready to jump into his car and bed if he wants. And then there's the sky, the glorious sunset over the city of Los Angeles! We are told, of course, that sometimes the most beautiful things are dangerous; that incredible sunset, after all, is a product of pollution, while in the background is a poster for Hitchcock's Psycho. George is apparently in danger, despite all these lovely trappings.

     Yet it is hard to completely square Ford's carefully choreographed picturesque sets with the despair George seems ready to embrace. Were it not for Firth's intense commitment to the role, we might break out laughing, as the audience almost does—this humor intentionally sought—when George tries to find a comfortable spot and position in which to shoot himself in the mouth. Fortunately, after thrashing about like a just-caught fish in a sleeping blanket, he fails to find the level of comfort necessary for the act.

 

    After a lovely dinner and intense argument with Charley, George returns home, now more than ever determined to end it; but he still cannot get up the courage. Out of liquor, he runs to the local bar, a kind of gay-straight joint on the nearby beach, wherein awaits his student Kenny.

     The two now attempt a game of trying to find just how far the other will go, until they discover themselves swimming naked in the ocean and return home to George's intended house of horrors. Despite the sexual overtones, or even "overtures," no actual sex occurs as George, exhausted by his games, falls asleep after nights of lying awake. He awakens to find Kenny asleep in the other room, guarding the discovered handgun within his blankets to protect the older man. George steals it away from the sleeping angel, locking it up.

     Suddenly, he has come through, as D. H. Lawrence might have put it, he has reconnected with a person—an action which Ford heavy-handedly reiterates time again throughout the film by transforming the color of George's skin from gray to a warm yellow-brown whenever he makes close human contact—bringing him a moment of clarity. As George opens the patio door to look at the stars, an owl flies up. Abandoning wisdom and its attendant reservations, George has been redeemed and saved.

     But life is not like the movies, particularly not Ford's near-perfect universe; as George returns with his newfound happiness to his bedroom, he falls dead of a heart attack, an irony that almost redeems the film.

 

Los Angeles, December 16, 2009

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (December 2009)

Reading Films: My International Cinema (Los Angeles: Green Integer, 2012).

Shobha Nirvan | Slave / 2023

the gift

by Douglas Messerli

 

Shobha Nirvan (screenwriter and director) Slave / 2023 [37 minutes]

 

The loving couple of Indian director Shobha Nirvan’s 2023 film Slave, Adhyan and Avi, enter a “bungalow” in Goa, Adhyan being completely surprised by his lover having hidden the fact that he has such a place in which they can vacation.

 

     For a day or so they enjoy the ocean, make love, and luxuriate in the pleasure of the exotic locale. But it is now Adhyan’s birthday, Avi promising a surprise gift about which he is nervous whether his lover will accept. He blindfolds Adhyan and leads him downstairs to the present, where the startled Adhyan discovers a beautiful man standing before him, as Avi whispers into his ear: “This is your gift.”

      Adhyan is indignant, and immediately leaves, returning to his upstairs room. Avi tries to explain that it is simply his gift, but Adhyan argues that he must have gone mad, he has no intention of turning to have sex with someone else given his love of Avi. What he doesn’t quite realize is that it is a test, as Avi describes the delights of his present: “Is this something to ask? You are getting such a handsome and sexy boy as a gift and you are asking me what will you do with him?”

     Adhyan still doesn’t comprehend, demanding he send the boy away, but Avi arguing that he spent good money and promised to accept his gift. “But he is not a gift,” argues Avi.

    By morning, Adhyan discovers a note on his bedside table, Avi has gone away on business to Mumbai for two days, and that the “gift” is now in his shower. When the stranger attempts to seduce him, all Adhyan can reply is that Avinash “is so crazy.” The beautiful “gift” argues, he’s not crazy but is all his “for two days.”

     “So just leave,” the deserted lover insists. But the “gift” refuses since nothing has happened between them. But again, Adhyan insists that he leave, the stranger refusing since, he claims, he has principles, he does not take money without some results.

     Given no choice, Adhyan himself decides to leave.

    Sitting alone on the beach, he is finally greeted again by his “gift,” who walks towards him before moving off into the ocean before turning back to sit down next to the reluctant birthday boy.

    Don’t you find me sexy? the stranger asks, Adhyan replying, that since his relationship with Avi he has never felt so sexy himself.

    The stranger finally admits why Avi has hired him, the goal being to know whether after spending two days and two nights with another sexy guy he would still be able to love him. But in telling him that, of course, the seduction has begun.

    Adhyan returns to the bungalow, this time watching the sexy boy shower with deep longing. “But what do I do with this because I love Avinash, only Avinash.”

     According, the standoff continues.

     Adhyan invites the new roomer for a drink, almost as a truce.

     The “gift” finally asks Adhyan if he wasn’t in a relationship would he still leave him alone.

     The loyal lover still refuses to answer. But he soon asks the important question, “If anything happens between us tonight, will you still tell Avinash?”

       The prostitute’s answer is evasive, “What do you think?”

        But it seems suitable to the clearly lusting Adhyan, as the two soon kiss and spend the night in bed.

      Now, in this soap-opera, we discover what Adhyan parent’s lost everything, but that he too has a house in Goa, which he shows to his new friend, a place he had to buy back with his own hard-earned money. And soon we realize that the “gift” has fallen in love with Adhyan. And now it slowly comes out how Adhyan himself has felt all along with Avi.

 

     In Mumbai he was feeling lonely, with no job, no place to live. And then it met Avinash “at the bar and my life changed.” Nonetheless, he now admits, he never really maintained a true relationship with his lover, “I used to always depend on Avinash” because of his financial stability.  

Adhyan finally admits he feels he is a slave to Avi, a slave which he no longer wants to be.

       His new friend asks how long he remain in the situation, Adhyan responding that he will be so until he meet someone like him who might make a commitment. The two lovers walk late into the night, discovering as they return to Avi’s bungalow that he has suddenly returned.

       Avi is surprised to see the prostitute still there, but invites him to stay for one more night, the now quite confused “gift” not knowing how to respond: “It is very difficult for me to stay here.”

When Avi inquires what he means, the man declares he has another client meeting him in Goa. But Avi declares he will pay him one more night if he remains.

       He can only agree, but in so doing, of course, sets up the scene we have long expected.

       Avi is certain that Adhyan has done nothing with his lovely temptation because he loves him. But why the extra night, Adhyan wonders?

       Adhyan now feels all the inner terror he has long known lay before him. How to tell Avi, or should he tell Avi? How can he free himself from his sexual slavery?

       Suddenly Krish—the first time we hear his name—enters while Avi takes a shower, hugging Adhyan, and he now demands that his lover stop being afraid of Avinash and tell him the truth.

       Adhyan tells him the truth: he is not yet sure of Krish’s love.

       That evening, Avi taunts Krish, telling him that he heard he was a magician. “You have cast a spell with your sexiness.” Yet Avi wonders how that spell did not work on his own lover.

        Krish can only answer something to the effect of how he knows it spell has not worked?

       But Avi is sure of his control over Adhyan. “True love has power, Krish, in front of which every magic fades.”

        We know, of course, that Avi’s power is money, and money doesn’t win out over love.

     

      Avi finally demands a showdown, demanding Adhyan join them. He demands that Krish kiss Adhyan to prove his powers. As we know already, Krish pleas for Adhyam to love him have their effect, and Avi’s boyfriend quickly shows his true love of the interloper, Avi realizing he’s lost the bet.

        Avi insists that Adhyam has lost, but the outspoken ex-lover admits that he no longer wants to be Avi’s slave and has shared his bed and his heart with Krish.

        This Indian gay soap-opera (starring Akshat Talwar, Ayush Dubey, and Shawn Gupta, no roles listed) joins the many South American works of its kind as well as the numerous Asian boy-love stories that have become popular staples of weekly TV in their various countries, a genre, with the a few exceptions such as Queer As Folk, that has not yet found favor in the US and Europe.

 

Los Angeles, January 4, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (January 2024).

Damián Szifron | Relatos Salvajes (Wild Tales) / 2014

cold tales

by Douglas Messerli

 

Damián Szifron (writer and director) Relatos Salvajes (Wild Tales) / 2014

 

We follow a young model (María Marull) about to embark on an airplane journey. Striking up a conversation with a man across the aisle, she discovers that he is a music critic, and mentions that she once had a relationship with a musician that ended somewhat badly. When asked his name, she replies, only to discover that the man across from her is the one who savagely reviewed his work, ending the musician’s career. Soon others, overhearing their conversation, begin to reveal that they have been teachers and acquaintances with the same man named Pasternak; indeed everyone on the plane have been involved with this difficult, apparently mentally ill being. His psychiatrist, also on the flight, attempts to pound on the cockpit doors where, we discover, Pasternak is now in control. “It was all your parents’ fault,” declares the psychiatrist, hoping to divert the obvious destruction of all trapped on board. The film cuts to an elderly couple sitting on a terrace in their back yard as the plane appears low on the horizon and dives down toward a couple who are obviously the parents who have raised this sudden mass murderer. The film’s credits begin to roll.

     The stories that follow are all similar in theme, dark tales of strange compulsion, of dark interactions between unknown individuals, and utter frustration with the injustices of everyday life which end in violence and death. In “Las Ratas” (“The Rats”), a waitress (Julieta Zylberberg) in an isolated diner one rainy evening suddenly encounters a customer who previously destroyed her family, having forced the sale of their home—an event that killed her father—and tried to force her mother into a sexual relationship, the reason why they now live in such a clearly isolated spot. In tears, she confesses her situation to the cook (Rita Cortese). 

     An ex-felon, the cook argues that she should put rat poison in his food. Despite her hate, the waitress refuses the offer, but the cook proceeds with her plan. Only after serving the beast his French fries does she realize the cook has conspired to kill him. When the monster, now running for political office, is joined by his son, the waitress rushes to remove the poisoned food, but the belligerent diner refuses to have them “warmed up,” and his son joins him in consuming the fries, soon after, becoming sick to his stomach. In horror, the waitress grabs the plate, spilling its contents to the floor, the ogre rising to threaten her in response. As he moves toward the girl, the cook suddenly appears behind him, stabling him in the back several times, a pool of blood welling where he falls to the floor, trapping the waitress underneath his body. The police arrive; who will be found guilty we can only wonder?

    In “El más fuerte” (“The Strongest”), a driver, Diego (Leonardo Sbaraglia) on an isolated highway, is trapped behind a meandering old and dented car, whose driver, Mario (Walter Donado), refuses to let him pass. As Diego finally gets an opportunity to speed around the other driver, he insults him and gestures a profanity. Further along, Diego’s car gets a flat tire, and he is forced, rather ineffectually, to change it. Soon after Mario catches up with him, proceeding to attempt to smash in his windows, defecating and urinating upon the front windshield. Terrified at the perverse turn of events, Diego finally leaves his car to push Mario and his vehicle into the river nearby; but when he observes that Mario has survived and is about to return to the highway, he attempts to run him down, overshooting his position and ending up on top of the other car. Unable to free himself, Diego is again attacked by Mario, who first tries to choke him on his own seat belt and later beats him. Diego reacts in response, beating Mario over the head with an emergency fire extinguisher. Finally, entering from the car trunk, Mario makes his way back into the automobile, stuffing a lit rag into Diego’s gas tank. As the two attempt to fight it out for escape, the explosion finally consumes everything, leaving a tow truck driver who Diego has earlier called to observe, along with the police, the two charred bodies bound in a ghoulish embrace.

    “Bombita” (“Little Bomb”) is also about explosions, as we observe demolition expert, Simón Fisher (Ricardo Darin) organize and blow up a series of old grain silos. He calls his wife soon after, promising to pick up a cake on his way home for their daughter’s birthday. He pulls into a parking place outside the bakery and picks up and pays for the cake, only to discover that in the interim his car has been towed, even though there seems to be no evidence that he has been located in a no-parking zone. Forced to pay for the towing despite his insistence that he done no wrong, he arrives home late, the party nearly over. His wife (Nancy Dupláa), angered by his numerous excuses of tardiness over the years, demands a divorce.

    At the city parking division, not only does the city employee refuse to hear his plea of innocence, but sarcastically denies the possibility: he has been towed, so he is automatically guilty. Angered by the smug illogic of the employee, Fisher grows violent, security is called, and he is briefly imprisoned. Upon meeting with his company lawyer, he is told that his job has been terminated, the company fearful of the publicity. Without a job, his custody of his daughter is called into question. At a new job interview, a secretary refuses to allow him to see a company head, and when he attempts to return to his car, he discovers it has been towed once again.

    Furious with the marital and bureaucratic injustices of his life, the former demolition expert plants a “little bomb” in his car and, as he dines nearby, watches it being towed away. The bomb goes off in the towing yard, destroying property without killing anyone, proving that the bomb expert knew precisely what he was doing. Now in jail, he has become a public hero, and the last scene shows a visitation by his wife and daughter who bring him a cake which he and the inmates consume in joyful celebration.

    “La Propuesta” (“The Proposal”) concerns a hit-and-run accident that kills a pregnant woman and her unborn child. The rich boy who has been driving has clearly been protected by his family throughout his life, and now that he is involved with a death, they call in their lawyer who suggests a possible solution: together, the lawyer, father (Oscar Martínez), and mother convince their faithful caretaker, Casero (Germán de Silva), to take the blame by insisting that he, after drinking, had borrowed the car and driven throughout the city. In return for his confession, the family will pay him $500,000 and care for his wife and children, assuring him that, at most, he will receive only one year in prison.

    The scheme is undone, however, when the local prosecutor (Diego Veláquez) perceives that the car mirrors are not at the right height and angle for the driver of his small proportions. To put the “proposal” back on track, the lawyer offers the prosecutor one million dollars for his silence. The put-upon father is about to go along with the proposal when the lawyer himself demands another large sum and the caretaker, overhearing some of the bargaining, demands a further payment in the form of a city apartment. A final request for $30,000 just for operating expenses jinxes the entire deal, as the father determines to offer no funding and force his son, for the first time in his life, to own up to his behavior.

     After a great deal of further bickering, the “legal” crooks all agree to split the million dollars up between them, but as the caretaker is led away in handcuffs, the dead woman’s vengeful husband rushes forward to kill the innocent Casero.

    The final long “tale,” Hasta que la muerte nos separe” (“Until Death Do Us Part”) begins as a wedding celebration for a lovely and apparently loving young couple, Romina (Érica Rivas) and Ariel (Diego Gentile). In the midst of the celebrations, however, Romina perceives that a fellow worker whom her husband has invited to the affair is more than a casual friend and discerns, by calling her cell phone, that she has the same number that her new husband had claimed was that of his guitar teacher. Mortified by the discovery and, soon after, by the admission of by her husband of the sexual relationship, Romina rushes from the party, and, in an almost suicidal state of mind, escapes to the hotel roof. A kitchen worker discovers her at the very edge of the edifice in tears and gently attempts to comfort her, reminding her that love must be stronger than a single event.

    His consolations appear to have an effect as she calms down and attempts to kiss him for his help. The kiss, however, suddenly turns into a passionate embrace and, soon after, results in animal sex, which Ariel and his cohorts, rushing after Romina, shockingly encounter. Suddenly the vengeful Romina declares that she will spend the rest of their relationship having sex with every man she meets, torturing Ariel until either he dies of leaves her his entire estate. Sickened by her behavior, he nonetheless, requests that they return to their guests. She has now become almost a new woman, forcefully leading the guests in celebratory dances, and grabbing up the arm of the woman with whom her husband has had the affair, spinning with her in what begins as an almost ritualistic revel which ends, somewhat predictably, with her loosening her hold so that the girl crashes into a mirrored wall.

     Blood is spattered everywhere, doctors are called. Now drunk, Romina takes out her fury on the groom’s mother and others. The mother, in turn, attacks the new bride and other family members join in the melee until each are peeled away, standing as opposing forces in the grand ballroom. Picking up a knife, Ariel seems intent on his own revenge, but simply cuts out a piece of wedding cake, pushing it into his mouth. Approaching his new wife, now sprawled out on the ballroom floor, he offers his hand which, finally, she accepts as they dance slowly across the floor, kissing—at first rather cautiously, but gradually more and more intensely—and falling into an intense passionate session of lovemaking. As the embarrassed guests tiptoe out, the couple proceeds to engage in sex across the table, fragments of the wedding oozing onto the floor.

     Such tales may indeed seem “wild” to U.S. audiences, but, in fact, they belong to a long tradition in Latin American and French literature. Their roots can be traced back to Medieval times, taken up again by 19th century writers such Edgar Allen Poe, through the stories of Petrus Borel, and others. In the late 19th and 20th century numerous writers continued the tradition, one of the most notable of them being the Cuban writer Virgilio Piñera, whose Cuentos fríos (Cold Tales) might suggest a name for the genre.* These tales of hysteria, passion, anger, hate, and murder, presented from an icy cold objective point of view, reveal that in their obsessional perspectives of reality, love and hate can become so intertwined that any warm emotion can suddenly be converted into cold-blooded wrath and freezing anger can boil the blood to such a passionate intensity that everything blows up.

     For years, translator/friend Rick Gilbert has lobbied for me to publish just such an anthology as in this film Argentine director Szifron has quite brilliantly achieved, while contributing another group of works to the genre.

 

*I published one of the tales from Piñera’s Cold Tales, “The Face” in 1001 Great Stories, Volume 1 (2005) on my Green Integer press.

 

Los Angeles, March 14, 2015

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (March 2015).

 

 

Andrey Zvyagintsev | Нелюбовь (Loveless) / 2017

racing to nowhere

by Douglas Messerli 

Oleg Negin and Andrey Zvyagintsev (screenplay),  Andrey Zvyagintsev (director) Нелюбовь (Loveless) / 2017

 

If you want to see a grim and often dreary film in which not much happens for long periods of time as the camera lingers over the openings and/or closings of various scenes, if you long for a film where nearly all the figures—expect for the volunteer citizens who attempt to search for missing children—are truly loveless and endlessly selfish, then Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Loveless is a perfect choice. For, in this film not only are the central characters, husband Boris (Aleksey Rozin) and wife Zhenya (Maryana Spivak) heartless and unloving as they attempt to break up and find love in what they perceive is a primarily loveless relationship, but they take their 12-year-old son, Alyosha (Matvey Novikov) down with them, openly expressing their opinions so that he can hear them behind a closed door; neither of them wants custody of him after the divorce, and they argue loudly over how to best put him in a boarding school or even an orphanage before sending him off to the Russian army.

 

     Is it any wonder that the child, as Zhenya describes him to total strangers who are considering purchasing their apartment, is always crying—as if somehow, she and her husband have had no hand in the boy’s sorrows.

      Just before he disappears, after hearing of his own loveless situation, we see him hiding behind the bathroom door with a look of such horror on his face that it will remind you of Edvard Munch’s famous painting The Scream, even though his is a silent scream after basically having his heart pulled out of his body by his fighting parents. By the end of the film, we discover that the intemperate Zhenya has had a similarly unloving Stalinist-era mother, who has verbally abused her since childhood; and although Boris’ mother has died before the film begins, we can only suspect—given how he treats and ignores Alexey, and later attends to his new son born to his girlfriend and later wife, Masha (Marina Vasilyeva)—he was probably maltreated by his family. In this film the failures of previous generations have determined the heartless world in which the current survivors exist.

 

    Is it any wonder that the terrified Alyosha bolts, presumably to hide out in the basement ruins of an old resort hotel that looks like something out of Tarkovsky’s Stalker, in which nature has almost completely taken over the former, most likely greedy operators of the building? This child’s world, it is apparent, is filled with just such “loveless” people as his parents’. His mother has not  even checked on him for two days while running a hair salon, and hanging out with her older “lover” at nights—to whom she admits, he is the first person she has ever loved—but she seems almost momentarily relieved when she discovers from his schoolteacher that he has not been in school for two days; and the police she is forced to call—after her husband refuses to leave his job to help investigate—suggest they cannot truly begin a new case for a missing boy for some period; these runaway kids, the detective assures her, usually come back when they get tired and cold.

 

    In fact, knowing that his boss is a religious zealot who fires any employee who isn’t married or even gets divorced, we can hardly blame Boris for not immediately leaving the office. He is terrified of the unemployment he later seems to suffer. And, to give him credit, after a horrifying meeting at Zhenya’s monstrous mother, whom they visit with the volunteer group looking for their lost son, he literally forces her to leave his car after she brutally verbally abuses him, later on taking over most of the legwork required in the attempts to find Alyosha.

     As I have suggested, if there are any real heroes in this movie, it is the volunteer group searching for the boy. Yet they too behave with a sense of cold, almost doctrinaire, unison behavior, obviously having found their role in the gap between the under-caring parents and under-funded police. At least they offer temporary possibilities, posting placards everywhere, calling hospitals, and questioning friends such as Alyosha’s comrade Kuznetsov, who leads them to the old, delipidated hotel. There they do find the boy’s blue coat, but discover no sign of the boy himself. When the brigade hears of an unidentified dead boy, matching Aloysha’s age and hair color, who has evidently been tortured, both parents claim it is not their son—although we don’t quite know for certain, given the hysterics of Zhenya and her continued public verbal abuse of her ex-mate. Even the coordinator of the search and rescue team suggests that they should, perhaps, get a DNA test (some parents cannot digest the facts, he explains), but she so violently rejects that possibility while Boris breaks to uncontrollable tears, that we can suspect that the missing mole on the dead boy’s chest may simply be a ruse so that they do not have to accept the reality of their failures.

     We can never know. And the director’s camera continues to look and investigate every spot along the boy’s path, but we see only other people passing the new posters the good volunteers have put up, years after.

     At film’s end, Boris seems trapped in a similarly unloving situation with his new wife, while listening to the Russian daily news which posits that the Ukraine is in complete chaos, and will not even allow in Russians to deliver new food, but simply kills everyone in sight—lies promulgated, of course, by Putin’s government.

      Zhenya, with her new husband, appears equally unhappy, listening to the same news reports, and escapes sharing it with her lover by retiring to the balcony, where she exercises on a stationery running device. The last image of her, dressed in a Russian running outfit, is one of racing toward nowhere, simply running in place, surely an image that Zvyagintsev sees as the moral condition of Russian existence. As the film’s producer Alexander Rodnyansky argues, the film was envisioned as a reflection of "Russian life, Russian society and Russian anguish.”

      Yet, despite all of this, Zvyagintsev’s film keeps searching, ending with a brilliantly beautiful scene in the woods where Aloysha visited in the movie’s very first frames. There we again see a piece of plastic that the boy had discovered in the first scene and thrown into highest branches of a tree. It waves still, almost as a banner, declaring the life of this young man gone missing, one of so many in the Russian world of missing young men. If the trees, the stream below, the ground, even the birds, seem icy and forbidding, they still remain as beautiful images in cinematographer Mikhail Krichman’s filming that in them we can almost understand this forest scene as a shrine for the young life, clearly lost.

      The boy, we know, will never be found, not even if he has miraculously survived. The culture that has treated him as a discardable object has taken away his very humanity.

       That explains, at least partly, why this so very sad film was not only selected for The Jury Prize at Cannes, but as a final nominee for the Best Foreign Film at the Academy Oscars.

 

Los Angeles, February 25, 2018

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (February 2018).