I keep seeing this DVD on the shelf at the library, and I'm tempted to pick it up. Village Voice ranked it in the year's top ten the year it came out. Has anyone here seen it? Should I devote a couple of hours to it?

Yes!
I have and you should.

It's a very slowly paced film but so tender and touching that it's worth 10 times most films you normally wouldn't think twice about watching.

This is part of a trilogy - the third installment, father and son was recently released here but on such limited distribution that I haven't had a chance to see it. I only found out that it's a trilogy recently. I think it's along the lines of the 3 colours trilogy - theme and not plot.

I saw mother and son on the recommendation of a Nick Cave review, and went during the day. I had the whole cinema to myself. It was a very moving experience and I'm sure that if you watch it you'll agree it deserves to be on the top 100 list.

I still haven't seen Russian Ark either... *makes mental note to get to it*

I saw this one years ago, but regret to say I remember very little of it, and I don't think I wrote anything on it at the time. I did write this blurb on Father and Son during last year's film festival:

- - -

I caught Alexander Sokurov's Father and Son (Russia/Germany, 84 min.) last night, and, uh, well, I can certainly understand why the reporters at Cannes asked if there was something "homo-erotic" about the film, and I can also understand why Sokurov got upset and complained that they were trying to read "filth" into his film, but at the same time, I don't think Sokurov can justifiably claim to be surprised by such questions. The film begins with a lot of heavy breathing and intertwined limbs before you figure out that what we're looking at is two almost-naked men embracing each other, and it's not until just a bit later that you find out that these men are father and son; what's more, these men are both current or former military men, so they are in perfect physical shape; and what's more, in the program notes, Sokurov himself says, "The son's features constantly remind the father of his wife. He doesn't separate his son from his still persisting love: this is his unity with his beloved woman." So, like, when the two men gaze soulfully at each other's faces, I don't think Sokurov can turn around and claim that there is NOTHING erotic about the film's subtext. At the same time, though, I would not want to say that the physical intimacy between these two characters automatically translates to sexual intimacy; and I remind myself that this film takes place in a country where men greet each other with kisses, sometimes on the mouth, the way that we greet each other with handshakes. Anyway, there is something dreamlike and Tarkovskian about this film that I liked -- the scene where the son talks to his (ex?-)girlfriend through the window is especially beautiful and tantalizing and poetic -- and I wouldn't mind seeing it again at some point. Interestingly, though, quite a few people walked out of the theatre over the course of the film, so I suppose it's definitely not for all tastes.

- - -

Incidentally, what's the third film in the trilogy?

Now, you see, you mention 'Mother and Son' and as Australian, I automatically think of the following...

http://www.ezydvd.com.au/item.zml/226331

I'm guessing this Mother and Son is competely different from the one you are referring to.

gigi wrote:
: Father and Son is the second part of a trilogy begun with Mother and Son and to
: be completed by Two Brothers and a Sister.

Oh, cool. The lack of decent films about adult brother-sister relationships is a longstanding pet peeve of mine (as per an article I wrote four years ago here).

It's an interesting point that I have never really considered. I do recall being deeply moved by the siblings in Secret and Lies, perhaps because it did bring to mind the relationship between my brother and I. I've always found siblings to be an interesting phenomenom - I don't mind meeting other people's parents, but there is something intimidating and fascinating about meeting their sibling.

As for the point you make about brother/sister relationships often being sexualised on film, it is something that frustrates me enormously. I think the When Harry Met Sally conundrum rings true to a large degree when applied to film - men and women, according to Hollywood, can't be just friends. I would also say that
equally, female relationships are often sexualised in a similar manner. Which is why I would take contention with your comments above about Father and Son having a homoerotic quality. I haven't seen the film, so I can only go by what I have read about it, still photographs, and my experience of other films. I recently saw "Nathalie," which is a story about a middle aged woman's relationship with the prositute she hires to trap her philandering husband.



Although it wasn't a great film by any means, it was incredeibly refreshing in it's portrayal of female relationships and the human body. For a large part of the film the audience is lead to believe that the middle aged woman is getting her kicks from the stories "Nathalie" tells her about her sexual encounters with her husband. At one point, Nathalie even accuses her of such. There is a feeling of inevitability that their relationship is leading to a lesbian relationship. However, there is a moment in the film that changes our view of the middle aged woman completely. We find out quite far into the film that she is a gynaecologist, and it is a quite shocking moment (refreshing that for once it is the counter of sex that is shocking). It forces a complete reevaluation of our understanding of her, and forces us to see "Nathalie" in a more human light (not desexualised, but humanised) whereas before we were almost encouraged towards voyeurism. Yes, there is substantial nudity and discussion about sex but, the film shows us, the human body is much more than a sexual object and physical intimacy does not equate with sexual intimacy.

Which is where I return to Father and Son. The portrayal of flesh on screen always has the potential to be erotic (which reminds me of a moment in Code 46 where a girl is asked to "tell me something about yourself" and she reveals she has a fetish for freckles: "it's like being dressed but naked," there "is no pornography for freckles" and she considers Anne of Green Gables "an erotic classic") but i think there is a dire need to learn to watch images of the body without eroticising them. Just as there is a dire need to portray male/female relationship without sexualising them or making them into a love story. I think this is especially important for men, particularly (in the UK) with the paedophelia hysteria that has resulted in such strict child protection laws that two people have to accompany a child to the bathroom and childcare workers not being allowed to come into physical contact with the child (no hugging). I remember an American male friend of mine told me a story that he was in town and there was a kid in a pram who was playing and smiled at him so he smiled back and the mother "flipped out," and started hitting him and shouting "don't look at my child."

It's time we reclaimed the look as something non-sexual. I think cinema has needed to for a very long time (especially since Tania Modelski's article highlighted the sexualised connotations of the cinematic gaze). I think reviewers have a big role to play in this. What do you think?

gigi wrote:
: It's an interesting point that I have never really considered. I do recall being
: deeply moved by the siblings in Secret and Lies, perhaps because it did bring to
: mind the relationship between my brother and I.

[ blink ] Are you a woman, then? If so, that's interesting, as that had never occurred to me.

: Which is why I would take contention with your comments above about Father
: and Son having a homoerotic quality. I haven't seen the film, so I can only go by
: what I have read about it, still photographs, and my experience of other films.
: . . . It's time we reclaimed the look as something non-sexual.

Agreed. But as I indicated in my blurb, it's not just a question of "the look" -- the opening sequence in Father and Son also includes a lot of heavy breathing, and the characters have their arms or bodies entwined in a way that heightens the physical intimacy of the scene way beyond what we might expect if we were simply looking at a topless guy. So it's not just look, it's sound, too; and it's not just look, but it's what we're actually looking at, and in this case, we are looking at an image of physical intimacy, and in our culture, we just don't know how to view physical intimacy without thinking there is a kind of sexual intimacy to it, too. But I agree, this is something we need to work on.

It kind of reminds me of how, during one of my first experiences at the Orthodox church I attend, I looked at the icon of the "mystic supper" (the Orthodox don't call it the "last supper" because, as far as they're concerned, EVERY celebration of communion is linked across space and time to that original event), and it portrays the apostle John (AKA the "beloved disciple") reclining against Jesus, and I couldn't help thinking, at least somewhat tongue-in-cheek, "That's so gay!" That same kind of modern cultural disposition also lies behind the current Da Vinci Code craze, I think -- we can't accept that Leonardo would have portrayed a young man who was close to Jesus as somewhat effeminate (which, as I understand it, was somewhat standard in medieval portrayals of young men), so we start inventing crackpot theories about how it's really Mary Magdalene in disguise.

gigi wrote:
: Click on my user info and check out the picture (not of me, I hasten to add).

What, following the gazillion threads on this message board ain't enough -- I gotta start clicking on people's user infos now?

I have such hard time with Mother and Son because of the Freudian undertow to the whole deal. It is abstract enough that at times we can almost sidestep that whole issue, but there isn't enough time spent on the interior lives of the characters to really get around the dense imagery of mother and son. I didn't catch Father and Son, so I don't know how he dealt with this in that film...it sounds quite similar.

Well, I say that tounge-in-cheek of course, as Freud rarely holds any sway over the way we think these days. But the film mainly concerns itself with stylized landscape or interior shots of a son caring for his dying mother. Often this consists of long scenes of him either lying or sitting with her, or carrying her across the lush Tarkovskian green landscape. Since we learn very little about either of them psychologically, the film leaves the audience plenty of time to fill in whatever gaps they want to.

It is an elegy for death, The Barbarian Invasions minus the morality play and reduced to a snail's pace. But what undercuts the simplicity of the film is the fact that no matter what you do, putting a son and a mother in such close contact for such an extended period of time dredges up classic modernist psychological discussions about such relatioships. If this film wasn't backed up by two other portraits of family relationships in intimate settings, then it would be hard not to imagine that Sokurov chose "Mother and Son" on account of the psychological baggage these images carry with them.

But he is off the hook, as he has produced more than one film that deals with the same subject matter. Obviously he is taking us through a cycle, perhaps starting with the death of the mother as a sort of irony. (The death of the mother/birth.) But at first, having no other films in the cycle to compare Mother and Son to, it was tough to watch.

Going slightly off topic again - I've remembered one film which has a great sibling relationship between adults: Sleepless in Seattle. Sad thing is, I've been thinking about this since our last posts and this is the only one I've been able to come up with!