Diagonaldi Very well executed

RyothChatty ridiculous rating

Dorathen Better Late Then Never

Brendon Jones It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

dkwootton Mother follows a divided family during a workers strike in the Russian Revolution of 1905. After the father is killed in a skirmish and the son is sentenced to work at a labor camp, the mother revises her ideology and helps to plan a prison escape. The film concludes with troops subduing the revolt and the death of the mother and son at the hands of the soldiers. Vsevstol Pudovkin's (1893-1957) method of montage more closely resembles Kuleshov's "brick laying" method, where the combination of cutting helps to more effectively convey or dramatize an event, in contrast to Eisenstein who advocated a montage of colliding images to generate a meaning that cannot be depicted on film. The film may be silent, but the sounds are transmitted from the image. We feel the silence drop in the bar as the father demands vodka. Mother marks a clear development in the structure and formation of the motion picture, but modern day audiences may be desensitized to the films spell. The film utilizes a cinematic language familiar to the contemporary moviegoer, but we may take the easily followed, continuous action and cutting that develops suspense for granted as we witness everyday movie vocabulary in its conception. While Pudovkin shared different theoretical views from Eisenstein, the film includes abstract sequences as well. After the death of the father, Pudovkin cuts to several images of trees blowing in the wind as a break in the action. He draws a parallel between blocks of ice plummeting down a river and the crowds of people marching, while also establishing simultaneous action for a crucial plot point near the end of the film. Mother also experiments with subjectivity, as we iris to the mother's memory of her son hiding weapons (using an x-ray vision effect to show the storage beneath the floorboards) and as we are given images of water and a child after Pavel reads the getaway plan as if to show his yearning for freedom. While the portrayal and privileging of a hero, the prison escape sequence and the climactic chase renders Mother rather Hollywood, ultimately the film is too tragic to be a Hollywood film.

Pierre Radulescu Five movies were made based on Gorky's novel: in 1920 by Aleksandr Razumnyi, in 1926 by Vsevolod Pudovkin, in 1941 by Leonid Lukov, in 1956 by Mark Donskoy (starring Aleksey Batalov as Pavel Vlassov), and in 1990 by Gleb Panfilov. Also Bertolt Brecht put the novel on stage in 1932. Hanns Eisler created, based on the novel, a cantata for chorus, solo voices and two pianos in 1935.From all this list, undoubtedly impressive by number and persons implied, I was able to watch only the silent made in 1926 by Vsevolod Pudovkin. Politics aside, it is a masterpiece. He was one of the greatest Soviet filmmakers of the 1920's avant-garde (in the same line with Kuleshov, Eisenstein, and all the others), and this movie proves it brilliantly.Pudovkin's movie has an architecture that is radically different from that of the novel. One is talking about very recent events, the other is framing the facts and personages into a paradigm. Both are strongly motivated politically, but the two political moments are very different: the novel is made in the aftermath of the 1905 Revolution, it's real time life, while the movie comes in the first years of Soviet power, preoccupied to build the official history of the revolution, in other words the founding mythology. While Gorky tells us a story of life flowing naturally, with personages of flesh and bones, Pudovkin demonstrates a paradigm, deals with a myth in the making. And in any myth the facts and personages are no more just facts and personages like anything else from real life: they are prototypes aiming to convey a sense. I'll give you only one example: the bridge over the river separating factory and the neighborhood. At Gorky it's just a bridge, nothing else. At Pudovkin it is a path you take to leave your submissive life and enter the revolutionary struggle. So it becomes a prototype within a paradigm, conveying a metaphysical significance.Gorky's novel inaugurates the Socialist Realism: it means its approach is realist to the bone, so its style is traditional (following the traditional Realism of the 19th century, that were to be observed by all Socialist Realist artists). Does also the movie belong to the Socialist Realist style? I don't think so. I would say that by the contrary it belongs hundred percent to the avant-garde of the twenties, so it rejects totally the tradition. It is a Constructivist oeuvre, calling in mind maybe the Expressionist movies made in Germany in the same epoch. These artists of the twenties, totally committed politically, while thinking to build the new society based on their radically new form of art and throwing over the board all that was old, traditional, classic, Realism included. The thirties would stop them forcefully, they would have to obey to the party dogmas or go to hell (the first circle or beyond).A few words about the cast: Vera Baranovskaya made a remarkable performance in the role of the mother; she would play one year later in the following movie made by Pudovkin, The End of St. Petersburg; Nikolai Batalov (1899-1937), who played in the role of the son, was also Soldier Gusev in Aelita (a fine role in a fine movie); it seems that he was not related to Aleksey Batalov, who played Pavel Vlassov in the movie of Mark Donskoy from 1956; and last but not least, Pudovkin himself in the role of a police officer- the guy really enjoyed the negative roles

Will E Pudovkin's Mother is a strong film that refused to be bound by the limitations of its time and should remain interesting to contemporary audiences. The plot of the film is simply outstanding. While some would say it was to be expected since the film is based off of a novel by Maxim Gorky, it should be noted that good source material does not guarantee cinematic success. The film follows a mother and her revolutionist son, Pavel, as they navigate a series of difficulties resulting from her son's allegiance.With no speech, a major challenge for silent films is the creation of multidimensional characters. Pudovkin overcomes this challenge by being able to capture the emotions of the characters. I thought the mother, was exceptionally interesting. Her struggle did not only represent that of a loving mother, but also that of a movement. Pudovkin make great use of the camera, whether it was a side profile emphasizing the pensiveness of the character or a well-timed frontal close-up, he facilitates our ride on this emotional roller-coaster.For the most part, I really enjoyed the pacing of the film. While the pacing did vary in tempo, it was always well within its own "groove." Even in the extremely exciting conclusion, one did not get to feel the extremely fast-paced tempo of a Battleship Potemkin, which I believe speaks to the differences between the directors. On that note, it was interesting to see how Pudovkin's use of montage differed. His cuts were far more gradual and subtle when compared to Eisenstein's in Battleship which contributed to the stability of the film.All in all, Mother was a good watch and one of the stronger films that we have seen.

chaos-rampant Structures shaping into motion, motions reshaping into structure, against each other, so that the whole thing is like a snowstorm rolling down a hill; gathering itself to itself. Which is to say the people to the people, in an effort at once to reshape and portray the reshaped world.Look here. The first third ends with a murder, so the entire part is about wild kinetic energy building to it; disenchanted workers plotting a strike – the metaphor for revolution, as so often in these films – factory cronies plotting to break them, pitting rugged father against idealist son. Meanwhile the factory owners, disinterested, arrogant, oversee the bloody drama from their lofty window.The second third ends with injustice, and so the entire second part is about the mockery of justice; a colonel promising the hapless mother her son – the instigator of events - will be okay if she surrenders a hidden stash of guns, then arresting him, followed by a mock trial where each of the judges presiding is a parody of human values.The final part is about revolution, so the entire thing is about the preparations of the final stand. Again the revolutionary metaphor, so poignant in these films; a prison filled entirely with workers, farmers, the oppressed with a dream languishing somewhere. And so, everything becomes imbued with meaning; the prison walls as walls at large, the doors slammed open with conflict, the bridge where passage is presaged by a rite of violence.The strikers scattered by mounted police into a mob, it's the mother who picks up the banner of revolution. Down by the bridge, floating ice is shattered on the concrete pillars; ice dissolves, floating away, but the bridge stands.And so the suffering and sacrifice of the nameless heroes is transformed into structures that will stand the test of time; bridges, factories, where the banner of revolution unfurls at the top, enduring symbols of a thriving industry, a healthy, self-sufficient nation. We may think what we want about the equation in terms of politics, but how it's equated through cinema? It comes with the natural ease that only a filmmaking tradition so deeply centered in its worldview could afford; the individual is transmuted, engulfed into a collective structure - the Soviet god in place of a god - , in a way that reveals the individual struggle to have been redolent with purpose all along. It's a spiritual vision, make no mistake; about communion with the life-destroying, life-renewing source; about harmony of structure from the chaos of forms.