Andrey Zyagintsev/Russia/2003; R4
Roadshow, NZ$29.95 | Reviewed by Alexander Bisley

RUSSIA is a mess, but the artists are still managing to make some terrific films. Just take last year, following on from 2003's Tishe! (Viktor Kosakovksy), which tenderly rendered the world in a St Petersburg street with brilliant minimalism. In 2004, Wellington cinemas were blessed with The Return, In the Dark (Sergey Dvortsevoy), Father and Son (Aleksandr Sokurov, improving on Russian Ark), and, especially, the unmissable The Last Train (Aleksei German Jr). (On reflection, Aleksey Uchitel's The Stroll was probably less than meets the eye.) On that note, memo to the powers-that-be: how about a DVD of The Last Train?

Of the more than 200 films I saw last year, Russian tyro Alexey German Jr's debut was a strong contender for the top spot. The anti-war masterpiece tells of Paul Fischbach (the Rembrandtesque Pavel Romanov), an ungainly nobody drafted to Germany's front with Russia during the last days of World War Two. His mission becomes futile self-preservation in the snow. With a visionary intensity that recalls Apocalypse Now, German Jr masterfully portrays war as boring, awful, dehumanising and senseless. Fischbach has seen horrors. "Why is all of this happening?" Like In the Dark, another underseen Russian work, it's a truly extraordinary film. Blazing with profound humanism and compassion, it's elegiac, even monumental. It deserves an infinitely bigger audience than a couple of ineptly projected screenings at the City Gallery theatrette. The knock-out ending brought rare tears to my eyes. When the great patriotic war can be turned into a humanist elegy like this, there's hope for a generation.

The Return, winner of the top prize at 2003's Venice Film Festival, is freighted by tremendous, raw performances. Andrey (the tragically late Vladimir Garin) and Ivan (Ivan Dobronravov) are two young Russians who live with their mother and grandmother. Their bleak, unspecified town – like Lilja 4-Ever's setting – could be many places in contemporary Russia. One day they arrive back home to find their father (Konstantin Lavronenko) has returned home after twelve years absence. He sleeps, he comes to the dinner table, he demands that the boys drink wine. The questions of why he left, why he's comeback, what he wants etc, remain unasked and unanswered. The questions fester. The film, beautifully shot by Mikhail Kritchman, gets increasingly dark and moody when father and sons embark on a fishing trip. The trios' tensions with each other – and their environment – are palpable. Not a lot happens; a lot happens. First-time director Andrey Zyagintsev at once allows the film a luxuriously leisurely pace and ratchets the tension expertly.


THE DVD has a good, hour-long documentaryette, trailers (American and Russian) and stills. According to the cognoscenti, Zyagintsev is the new Tarkovsky. Most talented new Russian filmmakers get saddled with the burden of being compared to the grandmaster – especially difficult when Sokurov, his actual protégé, is doing A-OK for himself. With Zyagintsev, the comparison works: from the stunning cinematography to Lavronenko, whose rugged, expressive face would have suited Andrei Rublev.