Aleksandr Sokurov - Mat i syn AKA Mother and Son(1997) Quote: In festival circles, Russian director Alexander Sokurov has long been dubbed the next Andrei Tarkovsky (Solaris, Andrei Rublev), but Mother And Son, his 14th feature, is his first to attract much attention in the U.S. In this paper, I will be relating the time-images found in Mother and Son to the notion of fractals. To be sure, seldom has film been more transfigured, to the point of resembling a series of paintings. It is however the film’s treatment of time, rather than its fabled visuals, which calls today for further inquiry. However, there is another form of time-image other than the crystal-image, the transcendental time-image. The question “what could have motivated Sokurov, the mournful, but vibrant filmmaker of films such as Days of the Eclipse, to retreat into a cinema increasingly preoccupied with death and contemplation, through the 1990s?” is thus correlated to the equally problematic “how is a superb chamber artist like Sokurov […] moved […] to reflect on the lives of ‘great men’ like Lenin, Hitler and Hirohito?”5. During his early period, he produced numerous documentaries, including The Dialogues with Solzhenitsyn and a reportage about Gri… Alexei is sitting on his father’s lap. He is the great Russian director who once shot a whole film in a single take. He also posited the use of sound in Sokurov as a third dimension, complementing and complicating the allegedly flat images and frequent absence of reaction shots in his films. Which leads us back to Mother and Son’s treatment of time – and its meaning – proper. I truly hope so. As each face new choices, however, they are forced to realize that they may have to let go of their dependence on each other. It is an important piece in Sokurov´s art creation as it was his first internationally acclaimed feature film. If the lives of many (and nowhere more so than in Russia, as it were) had gone to waste, at least, the director thought, they could find some solace in the acceptance of death. With Mother and Son, Sokurov posited himself as a “therapist of souls” for some, while reminding others of a forgotten function of art. Time Out is a registered trademark of Time Out Digital Limited. The mother is old and sick, and they spend the rest of her life in what looks like the ruin of a nineteenth century country house. Mother And Son [1997] [DVD] Alexei Ananishnov (Actor), Gudrun Geyer (Actor), Aleksandr Sokurov (Director), Alexander Sokurov (Director) & 1 more Rated: Universal, suitable for all Format: DVD 4.1 out of 5 stars 21 ratings In Mother and Son, death is thematised through the mother’s fate, but also through the network of allusions of the romantic representations, and the proximate nature of anamorphosis and the Vanitas as a genre (think of the anamorphic skull in Holbein’s amply commented The Ambassadors). The case is no different with Sokurov's latest film, Mother and Son , which depicts the final day of an old woman's life as she is being cared for by her son. In his Cahiers article “Le cinéma comme la peinture?”, Rancière challenged the lofty spiritual aspirations of Sokurov by dismantling the very notion of bi-dimensionality and “pictoriality” in his films – and the rejection of the 20th century contained therein. This is not a post-narrative time as Rancière reads it in Tarr, even as both filmmakers show an equal interest, in this antechamber of sorts, for the fabric of the sensitive (“l’étoffe sensible”). Aleksandr Sokurov Celebrity Profile - Check out the latest Aleksandr Sokurov photo gallery, biography, pics, pictures, interviews, news, forums and blogs at Rotten Tomatoes! Sometimes even like lovers. If you are an Australian resident, any donations over $2 are tax deductible. A father and his son live together in a roof-top apartment. We already have this email. Conversely, there was undeniably a vibrant, ebullient (juvenile, almost) quality to Sokurov’s Perestroika films (Skorbnoe beschustviye [Mournful Insensitivity, 1982, released 1986], Dni zatmeniya [Days of the Eclipse, 1986, released 1987], and Spasi i sokhrani [Save and Protect, 1989]). Let’s come to Mother and Son (1997). Mother and Son, with its score of references to the tradition of Western art, already articulated the idea of humans being integrated in a block of time and space that constitutes, as it were, an imaginary museum of variable and endless possibilities. Even the film’s carefully produced sound design, itself replicating the sensation of a cotton-like coating, enshrouded the whole (including the viewer) like a funeral veil. Mother and Son 3 out of 5 stars. This allowed Sokurov to layer and give additional depth to his mise en scène: the director would paint onto the surface of the mirror, adding surprising and unique effects to his already unusual, soft and gauzy representations. His father was a Red Army veteran of WW2. Aleksandr Sokurov’s films include Russian Ark, A Russian Youth, Mother and Son, Faust… Fractal Images of Memory in Mother and Son, Part 2 Alexander Sokurov. So that the whole, be it in the wanderings in nature or even the conversations between the son and the dying mother, seems to take place in a perpetual present, an eternal spring time that is also an endless fall, an ever repeated routine, the universal cyclical repetition of life and death. Since Sokurov envisages the twentieth century as having lost this transcendental ability, we can interpret his aesthetic project in Mother and Son as the antidote to contemporary art: a blending of religious traditions with “natural religion” – as expressed in the painterly sublime. The Spiritual Worlds of Alexander Sokurov PART TWO: Sokurov's Search for Spiritual Identity in "Father and Son" & Other Films "We shouldn’t be afraid of difficult films, we shouldn’t be afraid not to be entertained. Many have pointed out to the a-chronological and “fairy tale” nature of the film. The viewer pays a high price for a film. Much as the ghost of Stalin was never entirely gone from Russia (through the 1990s and early 2000s it was stupefying to see the number of cab drivers in St. Petersburg or Moscow who adorned their cars with an effigy of the Batyushka – as many as those who would boast an Orthodox icon, making the two essentially indistinguishable in their function), so was Sokurov’s “retreat” into contemplative and slow cinema never entirely bereft of ideological agenda and implications. Painterliness in cinema has its pitfalls. A time of waiting, possibly outside of time. Alexander Sokurov’s Mother and Son is a son’s farewell to his dying mother. Mother and Son (1997, Russia/Germany, Alexander Sokurov) Given that Sokurov's 'Alexandra' has finally received a UK release, a full year after I saw it at the London Film Festival, it's perhaps useful to look at one of Sokurov's previous films about family bonds. Read movie and film review for Mother and Son (1997) - Aleksandr Sokurov, Aleksandr Sokurov, Alexander Sokurov on AllMovie - Mat i Syn is quite literally a film unlike any… I’m not sure whether the trilogy will ever be completed. While the first contradiction could not be more salient in Mother and Son, the latter cognitive dissonance is also exemplified in the film – and is more apparent today than it was twenty years ago. He is the author of The Cinema of Alexander Sokurov: Figures of Paradox (Wallflower, 2014) and the coeditor of Directory of World Cinema: Belgium, with Marcelline Block (Intellect, 2014), The Global Auteur: The Politics of Authorship in 21st Century Cinema, with Seung-hoon Jeong (Bloomsbury, 2016), and On Women’s Films Across Worlds and Generations, with Ivone Margulies (Bloomsbury, 2019). The characters speak to one another from an unlikely beyond. Aleksandr Sokurov’s Mother and Son (1997) contains examples of what I am calling the transcendental time-image. There is little question that, after the funeral of Krug vtoroy (The Second Circle, 1990) and the ghost of Chekhov in Kamen (The Stone, 1992), through his use of distorting lenses and mirrors in Mother and Son, Sokurov had accomplished yet another memento mori. And not in money. Plot. Aleksandr Sokurov, Director: Russkiy kovcheg. With a visually stunning, quiet intensity, director Alexander Sokurov awakens the senses to the world of nature, human relationships, and death in this film about the poignant last hours of a dying mother and the son who cares for her. Though this sublime morphed into a different form of affect, reaching its more appeased, spiritualist form, in Mother and Son, the helplessness and pain of the son remain nonetheless. Mother and Son The ultimate heartrending elegy by ALEXANDER SOKUROV for the deepest human relationship (nostalgia, loss, solitude) Universal Award Berlin Film Festival. Dreamy and eminently contemplative, with its near absence of plot, the film thus also boasted a subtle reflexive quality, which was lost on many critics, who opted to marvel at the painterly (and escapist) quality of it all. Sometimes they seem like brothers. Try another? With Andrei Shchetinin, Aleksei Neymyshev, Aleksandr Razbash, Fyodor Lavrov. She is dying. A promise is hinted at – and articulated later in the more triumphant if equally melancholy Russkiy kovcheg (Russian Ark, 2002) – of a renewed faith, and the possibility for these “eternal souls” to sail forever. This accounted for the sublime (if sedate) nature that I have identified in the film. Jeremi Szaniawski is Assistant Professor in Comparative Literature and Film Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. "Mother and Son" by director Aleksandr Sokurov is a visual masterpiece of cinematography reminiscent of Impressionistic paintings by Monet, Renoir, and Cezanne. In this film, the feeling of oppression is everywhere: not only in the faces of the main characters, not only in the claustrophobic, dimly-lit … As I noted elsewhere, Mother and Son proposes a new phenomenology of time, the feeling of which it nearly abolishes to remarkable effect. This is not an entombment, then, but rather an en-womb-ment; no funeral veil so much as a placenta-like wrapping – with the quasi-uterine and aquatic, filtered sound design and promise of rebirth contained therein. Aleksandr Sokurov's previous films have borne such titles as The Lonely Voice of Man, The Degraded and Sad Insensitivity, accompanied by documentary 'elegies' - Declaring the ‘End’, Signaling a Renewal: Stairways to Paradise: Youssef Chahine and, Waiting for Rain: Oppression and Resistance in Youssef Chahine’s, An art historian would easily find a wealth of references in. ‘Father and Son’ forms the second part of an intended trilogy by Sokurov, best known for last year’s ‘Russian Ark’. Otets i syn) is a 2003 Russian drama film directed by Alexander Sokurov. In so doing, he purported not only to elevate cinema to the rank of high art, but also to re-inscribe a wayward medium into the great tradition, concocting a more potent remedy for the viewer than any comfort the son might have given his ailing mother: a glimpse into life everlasting. Aleksandr Sokurov talks to Steve Rose about Soviet spies, fallen dictators – and … Aleksandr Sokurov's previous films have borne such titles as. 1 Following in his father's path, Aleksei attends military school. Mother and Son is a story of deep and tender affection between a mother and her son. Mother and Son (Alexander Sokurov, 1997) Gary Morris; December 1, 1998 Even the cinematic frame isn’t safe from Sokurov’s grim sleight-of-hand. Avoiding the kitsch such reproductions may have yielded, director Aleksandr Sokurov resorted to a variety of practical tricks: in some shots he used anamorphic, distorting lenses applied directly onto the camera; in other instances, the image was actually shot in the mirror reflection of miniature landscapes and ruins – accounting for the many fixed, static compositions in the film. Sokurov’s time in Mother and Son is not “after”, but rather “in between” – a time of the interstice. © 2021 Time Out England Limited and affiliated companies owned by Time Out Group Plc. One of most important contemporary filmmakers, Sokurov worked extensively in television and later graduated from the prestigious film school, VGIK, in 1979. One that nests itself in the crack following the apocalypse (the deluge, the fire, as in his friend Andrey Tarkvosky’s films to whom his own are so often inaccurately compared) and preceding rebirth. He too is absent when his mother dies (in The Second Circle, the son arrives too late). He imputed this injustice to the cultural and spiritual vacuum of the day, proposing a film that would do away with the 20th century, and inviting its viewer to another approach of cinema, of time, and existence. But Alexander Sokurov's Russian Ark has every right to the claim. The answer to both questions must have to do in equal parts with the end of communism and the near total collapse of the Russian economy as with its rebirth under Vladimir Putin. Directed by Aleksandr Sokurov. Nonetheless, this despondence and sorrow fuelled the artist’s Muse – The Second Circle and Mother and Son being perhaps his two greatest films. This is what Fredric Jameson has identified in other Sokurov films as “l’emploi du temps”,6 a time of routine and contemplation, perambulatory or fixed, which never seems to end – nor ever to start, for that matter. But in the 1997 opus – much like its warmer, sepia and gold hues are in contrast with the wintry, muted chromatic palette of The Second Circle – the promise of a reunion in the afterlife is asserted. Source for information on Father and Son: VideoHound's Golden Movie Retriever dictionary. He was born with a disability because of an anatomic defect of his leg, in 1951 in Podorvikha village in Siberian Russia. A lexander Sokurov’s Father and Son, about the relationship between a young father (Andrey Shchetinin) and his grown-up son, Alexei (Aleksey Neymyshev) is disturbing in many ways.The first sequence shows close-ups of athletic bodies firmly intertwined. Jacques Rancière, “Le cinéma comme la peinture?”. The slow, morbid quality of Sokurov’s films, and particularly in his films of the 1990s (the post-Soviet and pre-Putin period) is inescapable. A father (Father) and his son Aleksei share a roof-top apartment in an unidentified seaside city. Following the death of his wife, a handsome father (Andrej Shetinin) shares an apartment with his son (Alexei Neimyshev). Click here to make a donation. In other words, Rancière debunked the proverbial “anxiety of influence” in Sokurov, or his Oedipal rejection of the Soviet and/or modernist father, and the reactionary stance lurking behind Sokurov’s death-ridden characterisations and overly aestheticised and de-populated realms. More importantly, Rancière showed the contradictions of the professed bi-dimensionality in Sokurov’s corpus, by highlighting elements of depth and time in his films. This belief ties in with the Russian man’s equally strong belief that the redemption of the West, now in decline, would come from Russia, harboring and protecting the great ghost, the great spirit of the West, now imperiled. But the “antidote” was also aimed at something else: Sokurov regarded post-Soviet Russia as a depressing socioeconomic and political environment wherein many suffered (following a regime wherein even more suffered and died). The film begins before the first scene and ends after the last, with the sound of wind in the trees and the songs of birds. There he became friends with Tarkovsky and was deeply influenced by his film Mirror. By entering your email address you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy and consent to receive emails from Time Out about news, events, offers and partner promotions. In this, and despite all its Germanic and Western influence, the film and its maker could not be more Russian. Second chapter of Alexander Sokurov's trilogy on family relationships, the first being “Mother and Son”. Alexander Sokurov nos presenta en esta película otro poderoso trabajo de intensa belleza y emociones. Elena Gracheva, “Kolybelnaya” in Arkus Lyubov (ed.). 83m/C DVD . Subscribe to Senses of Cinema to receive news of our latest cinema journal.Enter your email address below: The story of a mother slowly dying while in the care of her son, Mat i syn (Mother and Son, 1997) was lauded worldwide at the time of its release – first and foremost for its stunning visuals of idyllic countryside and misty forests, deeply informed, as most critics noted, by the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich.1. Award-winning Russian filmmaker Alexander Sokurov (Russian Ark) directs the intimate drama Father and Son (Otets I Syn), a companion piece to his 1996 film Mother and Son. In Father and Son, Alexander Sokurov unabashedly tiptoes over the thin line between an ethereal connection and incestuous love, and bestows onto the world cinema probably one of the most brilliantly homoerotic controversies of all time. Even the soundtrack does not quite contradict this temporal indeterminacy, signifying little in terms of narrative progression. Michelle Carey • Daniel Fairfax • Fiona Villella • César Albarrán-Torres. Tribute devoted to Alexander Sokurov From Wednesday 4/1/2012 to Wednesday 25/1/2012, at 21:30. Apparently, it was supposed to be the first part of a trilogy, which was complemented with Sokurov’s later work Father and Son (2003). Déjà vu! At the time of the film’s release, Sokurov exalted the bi-dimensionality and flatness of the cinematic image, relating it to the painterly tradition – specifically to that of the religious icon – elevating cinema as art. Look out for your first newsletter in your inbox soon! With a visually stunning, quiet intensity, director Alexander Sokurov awakens the senses to the world of nature, human relationships, and death in this film about the poignant last hours of a dying mother and the son who cares for her. Family relationships, the first being “ Mother and Son ( Russian: и... The second Circle, the Son arrives too late ) art creation as it was his internationally! 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