“the friend must prove worthy of his friends and friends can get closer than siblings”
said a very wise man, a very long time ago,in a very far away land…and this short film(better yet this great film) says the samething( with powerful and beautiful images, lovely music and fine words) almost the same thing( although the violinist does not have brothers he had very close family) this outstanding work of art marks the first collaboration of a tandem not unlike(but for its briefness) that of ingmar bergman and sven nyvist; vadim yusov cinematographer and tarkosvky( mr yusov went on to lens the three first feature films of tarkosvky) and the great russian filmmaker; a man that as an artist is beyond praise.
both men were young, know a lot of their craft, and really love the subject involved (children and friendship; as can be prove just by watching half or their next collaboration) and a deep understanding of the ways cinema express itself: light, shadows, music, the elements: rain, stone, and above all people and people reactions to each other and themselves…a love and understanding(arent those thing the same?) so depht that it take people with its faults and embraces them with their mistakes, and shows us that even at our best we fails and that failure (not always expected) its nothing as bad after all.

facets edition of this dvd (a bit expensive; almost on par with criterion on price, not even close on technical presentation value )
is really very good for a movie so rare…the strange palette can be attributed more to the source faults than to the transfer that itself looked really well on a 42’ plasma at 1080i resolution , so you can rent it( or buy if you can spare the movie) without fear…awareness of this movie can only make it more interesting to criterion (that already owns the other three collaboration of the friends) and could make for a really worthy supplement to a blu ray edition of “ivan s childhood”