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Winning the longest round of applause yet from critics attending the 12-day filmfest, it joins the short list of front-runners for Sunday's top award, the Palme d'Or, and singer Vishneskaya's maiden performance could win Best Actress. Vishnevskaya suffered heart trouble and Sokurov, 55, cancelled his attendance at the last minute also due to heart problems. While the pared-down movie with little plot is set in Chechnya -- filmed under protection from the Russian intelligence services near Grozny -- "in this film about war there is no war," Sokurov wrote in production notes. War should never be filmed, he added. "It is a horror that cannot be expressed, human degradation that cannot be expressed." In his movie, Alexandra Nikolaevna -- played by veteran actress Vishnevskaya -- climbs aboard an armoured train with a battalion of young soldiers to visit her grandson, an officer on the faraway Chechen front she hasn't seen for seven years. Mumbling incessantly, complaining about her legs and unable to sleep, the typically elderly babushka roams around the all-male universe of the camp, watching soldiers clean their weapons, worrying about the food and the smell ... and her grandson, Denis. Denis, played by Vasily Shevtsov, and Alexandra catch up on family talk, why he won't marry, her freedom since her authoritarian husband's demise. But mostly Alexandra wanders around among the young but tired and sweaty troops in frayed uniforms shut in within the confines of the drab military camp. "I want to look," she says. "It's important to me." And unlike the hemmed-in men in uniform, heavy-set bumbling Alexandra crosses the sentry gate and trudges off to a nearby Chechen village of bombed out homes. The Caucasian state has been ravaged by two wars, from 1994 to 1996, and in 1999, with sporadic fighting continuing today. Highlighting the possibility of reconciliation, Sokurov shows Alexandra befriending Chechen women, whom she invites to see her in Saint Petersburg. "I know it's not your responsibility, but give us our freedom," a young Chechen tells her. "We cannot go on forever like this." The only thing one could ask God, she replies, is "intelligence".
by Claire Rosemberg, 24.05.2007 |
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