Sokurov and Mother Russia
A grandmother visiting her grandson (an officer in a military unit stationed in Chechnya) makes friends with a group of Chechen women. Without showing the conflict directly but behind and within the characters, the great Russian director Alexandre Sokurov tackles the Russian military’s occupation of the independent republic, turning it into an eternal and universal theme, that of a ravaging war.
After having depicted terror with his trilogy (Moloch on Hitler, Taurus on Stalin, Il Sole on Emperor Hirohito) and the supporters of horror, Sokourov exalts in 92 minutes the inexpressibility of that horror with Alexandra [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (produced by Proline with France’s Rezo).
To do so he adopts a legend of Russian opera, Galina Vishnevskaya – a solo performer at the Bolshoi, wife of the great musician Mstislav Rostropovich and decorated with the title of Popular Artist of the USSR – who thus becomes a symbol capable of incarnating the volitive and sensitive Russian woman, Mother Russia, capable of opening the hearts of those young soldiers sent to front that since 1994 has taken over 80,000 lives.
Sokourov gives the woman his own name, Alexandra, to best superimpose his vision, and lets her roam freely around the military base in Chechnya – asking questions, exacting answers, psychoanalysing the timid soldiers – and outside it, showing that the fates of these Chechen mothers are the same as hers.
"We speak of constants in this film. Not only Russian constants. The heroine could be an American woman with a grandson in Iraq, or an Englishwoman in Afghanistan. I know the terrible price that Chechnya has paid for peace, I know the crimes perpetrated and the cruelty of women in wartime. But the war is over and we need to return to one another. The film is fiction, not a political act. We were looking for ways to bring the people together, and we found them," wrote the director in the film’s press book (he was not in Cannes), expressions his impassioned defence of human values and his profound devotion to cinema.
His camera moves delicately across the characters’ sweet and beautiful faces, and the name Vladimir Putin is relegated to a corner of our minds.
(Translated from Italian)
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