Aleksandr Sokurov: 10 films to ease the soul.

By: kuxa kanema

One of the most important directors in both Russian and world cinema, Alexander Sokurov is considered by many to be the spiritual heir of the great Andrei Tarkovsky. Sokurov, who has enjoyed a long creative relationship with Tarkovsky — has discounted such comparisons, but certain similarities between their works remain indelible: a predilection towards very long takes, natural performances by their actors, and an almost otherworldly use of natural sounds and music. and, perhaps most important, both directors are concerned with the essential questions of human existence and the state of the human spirit.

Born June 14, 1951 in Podorvikha, a village in Russia’s Irkutsk region, Sokurov was the son of a World War II veteran. His family moved around a good deal while Sokurov was growing up, and after finishing high school, he went to Gorki, Russia’s third largest city. There, he attended Gorki University and began to work as an assistant television director when he was 19. He continued to direct television programs for the Gorki station until 1975, and during this time he became part of the university’s history faculty. After completing his tenure with the station, Sokurov went to Moscow, where he was accepted at the prestigious State Film School, VGIK. Sokurov enjoyed a measure of success at VGIK, receiving mentoring from Alexander Zguridi and earning a prestigious Eisenstein stipend for his work. It was during this time that he met Tarkovsky, who took an interest in what the young filmmaker was doing.

After taking his diploma in 1979, Sokurov — under Tarkovsky’s recommendation — began working for Leningrad’s Lenfilm Studio (Russia’s second-largest film studio), where he made a number of documentaries. Two years earlier, in 1978, Sokurov had made his first feature-length film, Odinoky Golos Cheloveka (A Lonely Human Voice), but it was not released until 1987, after the onset of perestroika. Indeed, most of Sokurov’s early films received a negative response from Leningrad’s party executives, and his work was not really visible to an international audience before the late ‘80s. A Lonely Human Voice, his first released film, was greeted with a measure of international acclaim, winning a Bronze Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival. A somewhat tragic love story based upon the writings of Andrei Platonov, it had been made into the 1983 Maria’s Lovers by Andrei Konchalovsky, who neglected to mention Platonov in the film’s credits.

The same year that Voice was released, Sokurov made Skorbnoye Beschuvstviye (Heartless Grief), an experimental film inspired by George Bernard Shaw’s Heartbreak House and by the life of the playwright himself. The film, with its disturbing look at the more base preoccupations of a culturally erudite family, further established its director as one of the more dynamic and original voices in international cinema. His two 1989 films, Spasi i Sokhrani and Dni Zatmeniya (Days of Eclipse) had a similar effect. The former a radical retelling of Madame Bovary and the latter a bleak look at human pain, they impressed audiences with both their poetic imagery and uncompromising view of the more miserable aspects of the human condition.

The oppression of the human spirit figured largely in Sokurov’s next three films, a trilogy beginning with Krug Vtoroy (The Second Circle) (1990). The film, which examined the absence of connections between people and the artificial insertion of once-vital rituals into contemporary everyday life, was followed by Kamen (The Stone) in 1992, and Tikhiye Stranitsy (Whispering Pages) in 1994. Three years later, Sokurov made one of his most acclaimed films to date, Mat i Syn (Mother and Son). A 75-minute portrait of the relationship between a grown man and his terminally ill mother on the last day of her life, the film stunned viewers with its intensity and somber beauty. A deeply symbolic meditation on life, death, and spirituality, it was given added depth and an artistic feel by Sokurov’s use of special filters and lenses. In 1999, the director earned further acclaim with Moloch. Based on the relationship between Adolph Hitler and Eva Braun, it dealt with its sensitive subject matter by offering a reflection on the complexities of power. Although the film received mixed reviews, many felt it was worthy of praise, as was evidenced by a Best Screenplay Award at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival. – Rebecca Flint Marx

THIS LIST IS IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER. IT IS TOO HARD TO RATE THE FILMS I LOVE THEM ALL

1.Lonely Voice of Man, 1979
After the end of the Russian Civil War, Red Army soldier Nikita Firsov returns to his hometown. There he meets Lyuba, whom he has known since childhood. Lyuba lives alone, since her mother has died and her brother has gone somewhere with the Red Army. Nikita begins to visit her frequently. He is in love with Lyuba but never tells her. When he falls sick, Lyuba brings him to her house and takes good care of him. They get married, but their marriage is never consummated; it is Nikita’s fault, and, remorseful, he leaves town. He wanders a lot and almost stops talking to people. A sudden meeting with his father — who tells him that Lyuba has been missing him so terribly that she even attempted to drown herself — makes him change his mind, and he returns to Lyuba, whom he loves so much.

2. Mournful Unconcern, 1987
In the title of this film we have the diagnosis of a mental illness. The title of George Bernard Shaw’s play Heartbreak House is a formula-symbol introduced by the great British wit in order to describe Europe before the First World War. The Russian filmmaker discerned and brilliantly developed Russian Chekhovian roots of the play in his saturated with associations cinematographic composition. This was a feast of Sokurov’s imagination and an anthology of almost all of his devises to be subsequently developed. Here one could find a model of a set, closely imitating the real surrounding, documentary shots juxtaposed to the deformed image, a mask of Shaw himself, and non-professional performers next to the celebrated Georgian actor Ramaz Tchkhickvadze. The film had scandalized the powers that be as early as during the process of production which had been several times interrupted and banned by various structures of officialdom — until the film was eventually released in the beginning of Perestroika, in 1987. Perhaps nowadays one of the most important for the director themes — the defenselessness of man, hiding in the house as in a cocoon in the attempt to evade the horrors of history and the problems of existence — sounds more articulately than ever. And the defense — science, technic, culture — civilization — may crash any time and crush ‘proud’ humankind.-smz

3. Second Circle, 1990
Aleksandr Sokurov creates a haunting, austere, and emotionally honest examination of death, bereavement, and loneliness in The Second Circle. The title of the film refers to the second circle of hell depicted in The Divine Comedy, Volume I: Inferno by Dante Alighieri, the realm of damnation where the souls (of the lustful) are punished by the eternal lashing of a raging, infernal storm (note the referential parallel imagery of the opening blizzard scene). Using high contrast, raw, monochromatic imagery, and spare, but deliberate use of close-up shots, Sokurov reflects the soul’s innate longing for compassion, human decency, and spiritual communion in an increasingly amoral, apathetic, and materialistic society: the atypical rapid intercutting of medium and long shots as the son washes his father’s body in the snow; the innocent reassurance of the doctor’s young son, Seyozha, who attempts to comfort him by saying “everything’s going to be all right”; the chaotic and near violent bus ride that results in theft; the extended shot of the son’s long, melancholic gaze after opening his father’s eyes for a final glimpse. Inevitably, the doctor’s parting words, “the most terrible thing has been left behind” echoes the resigned sentiment of the epilogue verse “Lucky are the nearest and dearest of ours who died before us” – a prophetic observation of the painful and isolating process of grief, longing, and survival.-smz

4.Spiritual Voices, 1995
The film develops as the author’s diary, where unbiased narration is dissolved in the lyrical intonation. You watch the real persons in the particular circumstances on the screen. They are Russian frontier–guards on the Tadjik–Afghani border. But it is also a piece of art, where aesthetic laws give the theme and arrange the facts taken from life. That is why the film begins with the story about Mozart, about death concealing under the poor cover of the daily routine, about music, breaking through this cover and absorbing spiritual voices of the Universe. And that’s why the northern landscape is being shown during a long while, motionless and at the same time subtly changing. The border between life, which is far away, and death, which is always close, this is the environment of the people in the war. That’s why they attract author’s attention — and ours as well. Sometimes the filmmaker identifies himself with these people. Sokurov grew up in the family of a military officer and he understands the boyish curiosity for the warfare, in which youths must be engaged. He follows the people in the soldiers’ boots, and we, spectators, follow him; but suddenly he separates himself from his personages, he looks at them tenderly, he is puzzled, he suffers and prays.- smz

5.Mother and Son 1997
With a visually stunning, quiet intensity, director Alexander Sokurov awakens the senses to the world of nature, human relationships, and death in this film about the poignant last hours of a dying mother and the son who cares for her. The film begins before the first scene and ends after the last, with the sound of wind in the trees and the songs of birds. Special filters and lenses were used to work with reflecting planes, to manipulate light and shadow as an artist would, and to give added dimension to the full experience of living each moment before death. The mother and son are not named, they live in an isolated, run-down home in the countryside, a vast green landscape of trees and fields. One night they dream the same dream, and the son carries the mother outside, where he reads old postcards to her, and they reminisce about their past…strengthening themselves against the impact of a separation they know is coming soon. Paths — through the forest, along a railroad track, and that of a sailing boat heading across an infinite body of water — symbolize the journey the mother has taken and another she will take soon. This combination of the subtle use of images to evoke a greater reality and the astounding use of sound to evoke something unseen but sensed, provides a measure for the depth of the communication and caring between the mother and son. -All Movie Guide

6.Confession, 1998
Alexander Sokurov’s Confession documents life on a Russian battleship. While the ship sails the Barents Sea, the ship’s leader discusses how the loneliness of life at sea affects him and his crew.

7.Taurus, 2001
Following up on his shaded character study of Adolf Hitler in Moloch, acclaimed filmmaker Alexander Sokurov directs this companion piece — the second in a planned trilogy — based on the waning days of the life of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Set in 1923 in the newly created U.S.S.R., state founder Lenin (Leonid Mozgovoy) — though he is never mentioned by name — is convalescing from a stroke at age 51 in his dacha. Surrounded by watchful guards, a live-in doctor, his wife, and his sister, this formerly titanic figure lives as a virtual prisoner after the deterioration of his health. Unable to make contact with the outside world — newspapers are forcibly removed and the phone lines cut — Lenin spends much of his time puttering around in the garden or eating with his loyal wife. One day, Stalin (Sergei Razhuk) pays him a visit, even though Lenin isn’t quite sure who the future tyrant is. He presents the sick man a walking stick, mentioning that he wanted it to be engraved but Trotsky vetoed the idea. After the visit, Lenin becomes upset that he is living in luxury while his countrymen are starving. This film was screened in competition at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival. -Allmovieguide

8.Russian Ark, 2002
Told in one fluid shot, a tale which floats like a dreamlike journey through the majestic spaces of the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, engaging real and imagined characters from Russian and European history. The nameless protagonist, a 19th-century French diplomat, guides the audience through a lost, sumptuous dream that was the Enlightenment period. The film, staged among some of the Western Art tradition’s greatest masterpieces, climaxes in a pageant of color, motion, and music. For Sokurov, the Hermitage—home to generations of Romonovs and repository of so much Russian history—is the ark of the Russian soul, guarding it affectionately until the world sees better days.-smz

9.Father and Son 2003
Father (Andrej Shetinin) and Son (Alexei Nejmyshev) live together in a rooftop apartment. They have lived alone for years in their own private world, full of memories and daily rituals. Sometimes they seem like brothers. Sometimes even like lovers. Following in his father’s footsteps, Alexei attends military school. He likes sports, tends to be irresponsible and has problems with his girlfriend. She is jealous of Alexei’s close relationship with his father. Despite knowing that all sons must one day live their own lives, Alexei is conflicted. Alexei’s father knows he should maybe accept a better job in another city, maybe search for a new wife. But who will ease the pain of Alexei’s nightmares?-smz

10.The Sun 2005
As Japan nears defeat at the end of World War II, Emperor Hirohito starts his day in a bunker underneath the Imperial Palace in Toyko. A servant reads to him a list of activities for the day, including a meeting with his ministers, marine biology research, and writing his son. Hirohito muses about the impact on such schedules when the Americans arrive but is told that as long as there is a solitary Japanese person living, the Americans will not reach The Emperor. Hirohito replies that he at times feels like he himself will be the last Japanese person left alive. The servant reminds him that he is a deity, not a person, but Hirohito points out that he has a body just like any other man. He later reflects on the causes of the war when dictating observations about a hermit crab, and then about the peace to come when composing a letter to his son. Soon enough General Douglas MacArthur’s personal car is sent to bring him through the ruins of Tokyo for a meeting with the supreme commander of the victorious occupying forces. Underlying all the conversation that follows is the question of Hirohito’s future, either as Emperor or a war criminal. The two very different men strangely bond after sharing dinner and Havana cigars, and Hirohito leaves, renounces his divine nature, and is re-united with his family in the palace to face a new life to help re-build his war-ravaged country as a constitutional monarch.

THIS IS NOT A FINAL LIST AS I HAVE LOADS OF FILMS TO SEE FROM THIS GREAT DIRECTOR….

Filmography
01. Samye zemnye zaboty (1974)
02. Pozyvnye R1NN (1975)
03. Leto Marii Voynovoy (1975)
04. Razzhalovannyy (1980) aka The Degraded
05. Altovaya sonata. Dmitriy Shostakovich (1988)
06. Elegiya (1985)
07. Zhertva vechernyaya (1987) aka The Evening Sacrifice
08. Terpenie trud (1987)
09. Odinokiy golos cheloveka (1987) aka The Lonely Human Voice
10. Moskovskaya elegiya (1987)
11. I nichego bolshe (1987) aka And Nothing More
12. Ampir (1987) aka Empire
13. Skorbnoye beschuvstviye (1987) aka Mournful Unconcern
14. Mariya (1988) aka Maria
15. Dni zatmeniya (1988) aka The Days of Eclipse
16. Spasi i sokhrani (1989) aka Save and Protect
17. Sovetskaya elegiya (1989) aka Soviet Elegy
18. Sonata dlya Gitlera (1989) aka Sonata for Hitler
19. Peterburgskaya elegiya (1989)
20. Prostaya elegiya (1990) aka A Simple Elegy
21. Leningradskaya retrospektiva (1957-1990) (1990) aka A Retrospection of Leningrad (1957-1990)
22. K sobytiya v Zakavkzye (1990) aka To the Events in Transcaucasia
23. Krug vtoroy (1990) aka The Second Circle
24. Kamen (1992) aka The Stone
25. Tikhiye stranitsy (1993) aka Whispering Pages
26. Elegiya iz Rossii (1993) aka The Elegy from Russia
27. Soldatskiy son (1995) aka Soldier’s Dream
28. Dukhovnye Golosa (1995) aka Spiritual Voices
29. Vostochnaya elegiya (1996) aka Eastern Elegy
30. Robert. Schastlivanya zhizn (1996) aka Hubert Robert. A Fortunate Life
31. Smirennaya zhizn (1997) aka A Humble Life
32. Peterburgskiy dnevnik. Otkritie pamyatnika Dostoeskomu (1997) aka The Diary of St. Petersburg: Inauguration of the Monument to Dostoevsky
33. Mat i syn (1997) aka Mother and Son
34. “Povinnost” (1998) aka Confession
35. Peterburgskiy dnevnik. Kvartira Kozintseva (1998) aka The Diary of St. Petersburg. Kozintsev’s Flat
36. Uzel (1999) aka The Dialogues with Solzhenitsyn
37. Molokh (1999)
38. Dolce… (2000)
39. Telets (2001)
40. Elegiya dorogi (2002) aka Elegy of a Voyage
41. Russkiy kovcheg (2002) aka Russian Ark
42. Otets i syn (2003) aka Father and Son
43. Peterburgskiy dnevnik: Mozart. Rekviem (2004) aka The Diary of St. Petersburg: Mozart. Requiem
44. Solntse (2005) aka The Sun
45. Elegiya zhizni. Rostropovich. Vishnevskaya. (2006) aka Elegy of Life: Rostropovich, Vishnevskaya
46. Aleksandra (2007)
47. Cinema16: World Short Films (2008) (V)
48. Chitaem ‘Blokadnuyu knigu’ (2009) aka Reading Book of Blockade