The unique cinema of Russian auteur Aleksandr Sokurov, more contemplative mood pieces than narrative, work (when they do work) by coming together subliminally inside your head. But this particularly severe example is just too off-putting to connect.* Hard to know what (if anything) is going on as the handsome young caretaker of the old Crimean home of doctor/playwright Anton Chekhov, discovers the long dead author dressed in underclothes and soaking in the tub. For the rest of the film, these two will speak a few lines, share a meager repast, wander thru the home and eventually the grounds & nearby village, and ceaselessly stare (with unnatural interest?; with longing?; with deep empathy?) at each other. Filmed in misty/mottled b&w and given a purposefully muffled soundtrack, the slightly distended image almost, but not quite anamorphic, meant to be left distorted in compressed Academy Ratio, with their physical closeness making it all that much more uncomfortable. (When asked, Sokurov bristles at any ideas of homoeroticism. But if not sexual, then surely sexualized?) By the very last shot, as the men leave the dining room together after devouring each other in a nose-to-nose staring competition, they do seem headed for eternity not bed. Chekhov famously said that if you show a gun on stage, you better use it. Maybe that’s what’s missing . . . a gun.
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/LINK: The film’s much debated look feels strongly influenced by the soft-focus photography Rudolph Maté cooked up for Carl Dreyer’s VAMPYR/’32, itself a similarly unconventional vague mood piece of a film. Though there the mood is horror, here it’s unknowability. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/05/vampyr-1932.html
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Or is until the film’s striking penultimate shot. A long take of a mountainside, shot like a profile, showing an incline that has the look of a cemetery (though it’s not) with a dense fog moving across the view. More Swiss Arnold Böcklin than German Caspar David Friedrich.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Sokurov had a surprise Art House hit with his one-shot wonder RUSSIAN ARK/’02 (more views than all his other films combined), but his distinctive style is probably best served (and at its most communicative) in FATHER & SON/’03. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/father-son-2003.html
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