Poltory komnaty ili Sentimentalnoe puteshestvie na Rodinu

"A Room and a Half" is a film by Andrey Khrzhanovskiy's masterpiece, fantastic in content and surreal in form. A trip home to St. Petersburg to the beloved aging parents of the great Russian poet Joseph Brodsky, who never really happened. Along with brilliant poetry in the film, an unusual visual series - cartoons based on Brodsky's drawings. The brilliant duet of Alisa Freindlikh and Sergey Jurskiy.

Generally,for the most part,fiction films dealing with real life persons have always left me cold,so I approached this film with a sense of dread. Guess what? It turned out better than I expected (although not without a flaw,or two,but more about that later).'Poltory Komnaty ili sentimentalnoe puteshestvie na rodinu',released in English speaking countries as 'A Room And A Half',focuses on Joseph Brodsky,a Russian poet,who was exiled by the Soviet government in the early 1960's for ideas that were anti Soviet (as well as the horrific crime of being Jewish,by Soviet standards),is the central focus in this film. We see an aged Brodsky (played by Grigory Dityatkowsky),usually sitting around,either on a boat,or in some New York Russian social club, ruminating over what has happened to the Russia of his dreams. Incorporating narrative,Brodsky's poetry,animation,visual expressionism (Brodsky's parents are at times represented as a pair of black birds,as a visual metaphor),we get a feel of what it's like to be the odd man out, in an era of totalitarianism,as well as vile anti Semitism. The rest of the cast is rounded out by Alisa Friendich,as Brodsky's Mother,Sergei Yursky as Brodsky's Father (no first names are ever given),as well as Svetlana Kryqichkova,Alexander Bergman,Vladimir Rozygraed,and way too many to mention here. The film does at times acts as a mirror for certain aspects of Russian social history in the early to mid 20th century If I have any quirk about this film,is that it is a bit long in the tooth (clocking in at 130 minutes is a bit much---20 minutes could easily have been pruned out without compromising the film's message). Veteran film maker/animator Andrey Khrzhanovsky ('Osen') directs from a screen play written by Yuri Arabov & Khrzhanovsky. The film's poetic cinematography is by Vladimir Brylyakov,with editing by Ryjonkov Evgeni,Timofey Golobororodko & Lacis Normund. A film for the deep thinker in all of us. Spoken in Russian with English subtitles. Not rated by the MPAA,this film serves up one brief outburst of strong language,some brief nudity,some minor sexual content & some on screen smoking & drinking of alcohol

This film by 70-year-old Khrzharnovsky, an award-winning animator and documentary filmmaker, his feature debut, is an imaginative exploration of the life of exiled Russian Jewish poet and Nobel laureate Joseph Brodsky that wonderfully weaves actual footage and restagings, artfully distressed film in the manner of Guy Madden, color and black and white, animation, dramatized scenes and scenery, childhood, adulthood, and one sentimental but very touching scene between Brodsky and his parents after all have died, sitting in the cramped Soviet era room and a half where Joseph spent his youth and his parents lived out their days. We see the mature Brodsky as an exile in America, dreaming of returning to his homeland (he never actually did). It's all woven together with readings of Brodsky's poetry and prose, recollections of his development, and meditations on the journey back he took only in his imagination.

Some of the early scenes of Brodsky trying to get to second base with girls and sampling jeans and vinyl records are reminiscent of Karen Shakhnazarov's recent film of a Sixties Moscow youth, The Vanished Empire (2008), except that here, with the setting moved to Leningrad, the sequences are more stylized. Before that we see Brodsky as a little boy coddled by parents and exploring his immediate surroundings. Throughout, Alisa Freyndlih and Sergei Yursky are excellent as Brodsky's mother and father.

And as Brodsky grows up he becomes a confident intellectual, declaring his to be the last generation that will truly value culture and extolling the virtues of cigarettes as a wellspring of poetic creativity. He is outspokenly political, and this leads to exile to a remote village. A letter asks for a care package from home of mustard, cheese, and other delicacies, but says that he is fine. After he has been expelled from Russia and become a professor in he USA, first at the University of Michigan, later at colleges on the East Coast, he's seen drinking and partying, and recurrently calling his parents, who in turn are seen struggling with the bureaucracy to get permission to leave Russia to visit him; they never could. There's nothing about Brodsky's American family life. Focus is on his relationship with Russia.

Though a bit long at 130 minutes, Room and a Half is an enchanting work of the imagination and remarkable for its blending of different visual and filming styles and engaging and beautiful animated sequences, often making use of blackbirds and cats. As a portrait of Brodsky, despite the rich actual Brodsky material, it's not to be taken literally, and hence stands more as a study of the theme of the artist in exile. This provides rich material that one would certainly love to show students if one were teaching a course in Brodksy's writing. (He came to the US in 1972 and was naturalize in 1977; died in 1996 at the age of 55.)

Shown as an official selection of the New York Film Festival.

Out of the movie, the first thing I can think of is its sensual cinematography immersed in saturated colors. The film is more than a biopic, it involves the imagination of the writer and director to make it a poetic look into a Nobel laureate poet's life, that of Joseph Brodsky's.

The movie starts in his childhood and ends after his death, and in fact the part after his death, like most of the other parts of the movie is beautiful fiction. There is an overdose of anti-Soviet tones but that must also reflect what he had to go through until his defection to the US and his parents' troubles with Soviet officials while trying in vain to visit him. No question all of that was true but somehow the movie put too much emphasis on it.

The movie also explored family dynamics from childhood, in a touchy and insightful way how his family bonds were strong, though this also must be fiction. So it is actually better to watch this movie as a pure fiction movie and a good one. And to watch a biography mixed with fiction is surely refreshing.

I have seen this movie in Istanbul Film Festival and found it as one of the better ones in competition.