Elegy of a Voyage
Elegiya Dorogi
France, Netherlands, Russia
2001
48 Min
Color
Dutch, Russian
Synopsis
Elegiia dorogi (Elegy of a Voyage, 2001) is billed as a documentary, but the connection seems tenuous—if indeed it exists at all. The film is a series of oneiric images taken from a journey which a nameless narrator (even he questions who he is) mysteriously finds himself to be a passive participant of. We see him, but only from behind or looking down at his feet. A variety of modes of transport are used—walking, train, car, ship and even the suggestion of flight—to take the protagonist to a deserted, moonlit art gallery (in fact the Boijmans Museum in Rotterdam). Here he looks round at the paintings (some of them missing, obviously hanging there only moments ago) before finding one labelled as being by Pieter Saenredam and dated 1765 which at first he thinks he painted. As the memories come back, he realises that he did not paint it himself but was standing by the artist at the time it was made. Surveying the canvas, he comments on its details, noting which ones the artist made up and which were actually observed. —Kinoeye
Director
Aleksandr Sokurov
Alexander Nikolayevich Sokurov (Russian: Алекса́ндр Никола́евич Соку́ров) (b. June 14, 1951, Podorwikha, Irkutsk Oblast) is a Russian filmmaker from St Petersburg who has been hailed as successor to renowned director Andrei Tarkovsky.
Sokurov was born in Siberia in the officer’s family on June 14, 1951. He graduated from the History Department of the Nizhny Novgorod University in 1974 and entered one of the VGIK studios the following year. There he made friends with Tarkovsky and was deeply influenced by his Mirror.
Most of Sokurov’s early features were banned by Soviet authorities. During his early period, he produced numerous documentaries, including an interview with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and a reportage about Grigori Kozintsev’s flat in St Petersburg.
Mother and Son (1996) was his first internationally acclaimed feature film. It was mirrored by Father and Son (2003) which baffled the critics with its implicit homoeroticism (though Sokurov himself has criticized… read more
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zondabez
28Mar12
Se 'elegia' quer dizer melancolia, tristeza, com Sokurov associe então poesia e beleza. Tendo o Boijmans Museum em Roterdã como lugar e suas obras como referência 'espiritual', seguimos com ele, seu narrador-personagem, pela memória - estradas e caminhos subjetivos. A neve cobre a tela e a imagem é, literalmente, instável como a própria realidade das ideias. Sokurov sonha junto com Eisenstein e Tarkovsky. Um deleite.
Aurora
3Oct11
Una vez hubo gente viviendo aquí, yo los conocí. incluso creo que viví con ellos. Cuando alguien moría, llorábamos. Temíamos... ser cada vez menos, acercamos nuestras casas al camino, todos lo hicimos, todos queríamos vivir más juntos, nadie quería estar alejado, pero no puedo recordar si eso nos ayudó.
zondabez likes this
© <',))( Astro-Tofupraxographer
22Feb11
From one elegy to another: "For the Beautiful is right at the margin of the Terrifying, which we can only just endure."-Rilke, the First Duino Elegy This is the most Beautiful film shot on video I've seen. And it is is Terrifying. A perfect film for those who want to dream while awake. To give it a fucking generic critical blurb, "Pure Cinematic Poetry."
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