Chad Shiira
The father is not your quintessential hobo; he's educated and sober, so when the hobo's son points to a bird in the sky, he can name the bird(a falcon), and explain why it can fly without a constant flapping of its wings(aerodynamics). According to the father, a former engineer in Moscow, an albatross is aerodynamically superior to a falcon: wing span matters. It helps the albatross glide in an airstream. The albatross lives by the sea. This spontaneous birdwatching incident portends of a lag in their long journey, as the roads to Koktebel will be bumpy roads, when the old man's demons return to circumnavigate the engineer(Igor Csernyevics) and his son(Gleb Puskeaplis) from their goal of reaching the seaside town in Crimea. The albatross is not only a seabird; it's also a byproduct of human frailty that greatly hinders accomplishment.From the outset of the journey, in a scene aboard the train, the filmmaker privileges the boy in profile who stares at the ever-changing tableaux outside of the boxcar. Starting off at an objective distance, the stationery camera approaches the boy, until we're more intimate with the geography of his face. As the boy is being singled out for viewer sympathy, the filmmaker surreptitiously assigns blame towards the father, in due part to these found facial nuances effectuated by the maternal camera. Although the father refuses alcohol from their first benefactor near the train station, the college-educated widower reverts to full-blown alcoholism during their second major detour from the road, a tempestuous work/lodging arrangement with a drunken Stalin sympathizer. The optimism on the boy's face is a tell-tale sign of the two-fold journey(the geographical and the personal) that they're embarking on, in which the father's road to recovery encompasses the road to Koktebel.Soon after being kicked off the train by a cordial provincial train conductor, the boy finds himself staring at an outhouse while the syncopation of electronic music emanates from a small boom-box hanging on a tree. This dialectic of aggressive music and the silent countryside is suggestive of futurism, in which contemporary life, as expressed by the relatively cacophonic sounds, provide an unlikely soundtrack to the pastoral setting. Futurism proclaimed that "a roaring car that seems to be driving under shrapnel is more beautiful than the Vixtory of Samothrace". When the teenaged girl emerges from the outhouse, the boy, later in the day, demonstrates his own brand of futurism(independent of the Italian and Russian movements) when he tells the girl, "I can see everything from above," and covers his eyes with a single hand as a prelude to his flair for astral-projection. In the next scene, we see a god's-eye view of the village. Like the evoking of an albatross, futurism has a dual meaning, too; the film invokes the savage power of the machine age, in which the boy has the power to glimpse the future.Twice disappointed by his father(the drinking and the f******; the f***ee, a doctor who heals his gunshot wound at the hands of their former employer), the boy takes the road to Koktebel by himself. On a path, in the dark among the denuded trees and wild foilage, he puts another hand across his eyes, keeps it there, for a beat, then resumes his walking. Upon arriving in Koktebel, the symbolism of the birds reveals itself, as an albatross tries to steal the bread from out of the boy's possession while he sits alone on the lonely dock(the end of one, but not two journeys). He grabs the seabird by the neck, asserts control with a chokehold, before conceding to its beating wing and cry, and releases the avian machine to the sky. In the final scene, the viewer sees what was behind the boy's hand during his sojourn, another god's eye view, in which the father approaches, then sits down next to his son at the end of a pier. The meaning of this scene is unmistakable: the father, the albatross, has become the child; and the child, the father. The journey, the second journey, completes both men.
shneur
A film like this just couldn't be made in America, where action must occur at a slam-bang pace, and children must be either pitifully ignorant of life or else caricatures of evil. Here, there is exquisite attention to detail -- a countryside, a vase of flowers, and long periods with no dialog at all where a mood is simply allowed to develop. The passage of time may not be in equivalent "real time," yet it passes noticeably. And what a skilled performance by Gleb Puskepalis, a boy with, as often seems to be the case, a distinguished acting history in legitimate theater. His character is master of his fate and of the plot, and he himself is master of the camera and the cast. I like this film especially because it is the boy who is rational, determined and self-directed, while the adults, as in reality, are continually made fools by their alcohol, aggression, and just wanting "to f*** each other" all the time. Bravo!
LE020
Good cinematography will only take you so far. However, amazing cinematography will carry your film by itself. And that's just the start...Acting is well above average, and the writing, although somewhat resembling the "Russian soul" in its mystique and lack of structure, nevertheless fulfills its duty: to get to the hearts of those who for some unknown reason would not find themselves enchanted by the visuals alone...
