Friday, 6 January 2006
Roads to Koktebel (2004)
Here's another father and son Russian road movie and I would truly like to be more enthusiastic, but there seems to be a surfeit of existential journeys of late. We have the pair making their way as best they can from Moscow to the Crimea some 1000 miles away without the means to fund their journey. We watch them as they live from hand to mouth, to some extent dependent on the kindness of strangers (as Blanche Dubois would have it). After being shot by a drunken employer, the father holes up with a female doctor and the boy takes off to complete the journey on his own. Some details of the filming linger in the mind and the acting was first-class -- particularly by the boy -- but I felt a little weary myself on reaching the end of the road.
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So much to say in this film. You can feel the Russian earth speaking to you - especially in those scenes at the farm. Cruel, hard and cold - the same as the emotions that the boy at the centre of the film has to deal with. But you don't know exactly what it is - you're never quite told, you're just left to guess through what you learn quite late on when the father is drunk with the guy that's given them work as board. It's that fight that shows how deeply troubled his character is. And how harsh Vodka and Russian winters can be. It's more than just a fight - it's a fight against blotting out the past. Knowing it, but not being able to deal with it. It's that failure that finally makes the son run off. If drama is about change, this is the moment when that character can break free. Do you accept the past or run off and find a new way yourself? When is it that you don't need anyone else? But where does it end? In eternal defeat. Nothing is ever perfect. Dreams don't come true. The change you were so excited about is foiled.
And where do we end up then? Back to the image of water. (And in this respect it almost makes a triangle with the films 'Mirror' and 'The Return'). The eternal lapping and stillness of the freezing water, the mudfilled country - these are the real things, and in their stillness they convey all the answers...... if you look, and feel long enough......
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