Le bannissement

Those who have seen Russian director Andrei Zvyagintsev's first film "The Return" will have no trouble in realizing that his second film "Izgnanie" /"The Banishment" is equally impressive.However,his second film is little less effective despite having many themes in common with his first film.It can be surmised that it was due to intriguing focus on adults instead of children.This is exactly the reason why many a times viewers might get the impression that children are used merely as unavailing props.Astute viewers will also notice that many references to Tarkovsky are quite natural and self explanatory as Andrei Zvyagintsev is an honorable heir of that famous Russian school of cinema which prides itself in observing minute things in greater detail.It is true that a film maker must not give all answers to viewers but highhandedness of Andrei Zvyagintsev's direction failed to engage viewers.This is one reason why so many essential questions remained unanswered throughout the film.But this would surely not deprive any sagacious viewers to enjoy this extremely meaningful film with excellent focus on art direction especially in the manner interiors have been created.

Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid. -- Fyodor Dostoevsky

This second feature film from Russian director Andrei Zvyagintsev had a lot to live up to considering how great his 2003 debut, The Return, was. I was really a bit skeptical going in because the advanced reviews had been mixed, and I really didn't know how a director who had made such brilliant use of the Russian landscape as almost a perpetually menacing character in its own right, would handle what sounded like a very indoor domestic drama. Boy was I wrong to doubt. Zvyagintsev and cinematographer Mikhail Krichman find an abundance of interesting things to shoot, from drab constantly overcast soviet-era industrial cities to old decaying farmsteads. I love the way these two frame and light almost every shot and the slow stalking way the camera pans and moves is almost deliberately predatory. I'd probably be mesmerized if these two shot nothing but landscapes and people for two hours with no plot whatsoever, which, to be fair, is what the movie feels like at times, considering how minimal and terse the typically Russian script is. The story revolves around a man (played by Konstantin Lavronenko who also starred in the Return), who moves his wife and two young children from the city to his father's old farm in the country where he expects better prospects for work. While in the country his wife reveals something that threatens to tear the family apart. Like the Return, the Banishment is about the tragic consequences of the failure of individuals to make emotional contact, communicate, and ultimately understand each other. Unfortunately the final denouement, which unravels through a few too many twists for a story this simple and sparse, is really unsatisfying because it strips all the characters of any last shred of sympathy, leaving the audience almost indifferent towards them. Still, this was so brilliantly photographed and paced that I couldn't help but enjoy every shot.

I have only just learnt that Zvyagintev's The Return was his feature film debut. It really impressed me with it's sparse and elusive narrative, filled with mystery and ambiguity. It is visually spectacular, with a strong Eastern European aesthetic that one can't look away from. The Banishment is no less a film.

This is a much more ambitious effort than Zvyagintev's debut. Again he has crafted a story that is highly enigmatic. It stars Konstantin Lavronenko, who played the role of the absent father returned in The Return. Alex is a man with a shady past and his brother Mark (Aleksandr Baluyev) is of the same ilk. When Alex's wife, Vera (Maria Bonnevie), reveals she is pregnant and that he is not the father, a sequence of events unfolds that will have you on the edge of your seat. "If you want to kill, kill. If you want to forgive, forgive", says Mark.

The tension is palpable, magnified by the sparse dialogue. In one sense, words are not needed as the body language says it all. Yet in another, the inability of the protagonists to bring out into the open what needs to be said leads to unforeseen consequences. This is both thematically similar to Nuri Bilge Ceylan's similarly excellent Three Monkeys and stylistically they also share much in common. As in Ceylan's films, Zvyagintev shows great confidence in telling a story, taking his time to create a palpable ambiance. At 157 minutes, the film is quite long, but always engaging.

The cinematography is stunning throughout, with excellent use of the widescreen. There is one tracking shot in particular that left me breathless as the camera seemingly floated through space. I can recall only twice where the camera movement impressed me so: the caravan sequence in Noise and the various tracking shots in Soy Cuba. The use of darkness, light and shade are used to great effect. The music is haunting, reminding me of the Gothic sounds of the music of Enigma. It renders the film with a sense of tragedy of biblical proportions.

Zvyagintev is a magnificent talent that just can't be ignored. If you see only one Russian film this year, make it The Banishment.

Andrei Zvyagintsev's second film "The Banishment," if evaluated closely, could arguably be as interesting as his first film The Return, if not better. Both relate to related concepts "Father" and "Love/Absence of Love." In both films, there are few words spoken.

To evaluate "The Banishment" is like completing a challenging crossword puzzle. You would know this unusual situation if you have seen "The Return." To begin "The Return" was not based on a novel. This one is. That, too, a William Saroyan novel—"The Laughing Matter." Yet the director is not presenting us with Saroyan's novel on the screen. He develops the wife as a woman "more sinn'd against than sinning," while in the novel she is mentally unstable. Understandably, the director decides to drop the Saroyan title. Thus the words "I am going to have a child. It's not yours" provides two utterly distinct scenarios depending on whether the woman who speaks those words to her husband is a saintly person or a mentally unhinged woman. The change in the character of the wife by the director opens a totally new perspective to the Saroyan story—a tool that contemporary filmmakers frequently use, not to wreck literary works, but creatively revive interest in the possibilities a change in the original work provides.

Those viewers familiar with the plethora of Christian symbolism in "The Return" will spot the painting on which the children play jigsaw is one of an angel visiting Mary, mother of Jesus, to reveal that she will give birth even if she is a virgin. This shot is followed by a black kitten walking across the painting. And the forced abortion operation at the behest of the husband begins on Vera, the wife in Zvyagintsev's film. By the end of the film the viewer will realize that the director had left a clue for the viewer—not through conventional character development using long conversations.

"The Banishment" is representative of contemporary cinema provoking viewers to enjoy cinema beyond the story by deciphering symbols strewn around amongst layers of meaning structured within the screenplay.

As usual, the cinema of director Zvyagintsev is full of allusions to the Bible. This is the third famous film that refers to a single abstract chapter in the Bible on love: 1 Corinthians Chapter 13. In "The Banishment" the chapter is read by the neighbors' daughters. In Krzysztof Kieslowski's "Blue", set to the musical score sung towards the end of the film a choral musical piece sings the words "If I have not love, I am nothing" from the same Biblical chapter commenting indirectly on communication breakdown between husband and wife and the slow and painful reconciliation with the husband's lover. Bergman's "Through a glass darkly" is a phrase on taken from the same chapter of the Bible, a film also on lack of communication and love between father and son, husbands and wives.

The banishment alludes to the banishment of Adam from the Garden of Eden represented in the film by the anti-hero's tranquil family house, far from the inferred socio-political turbulence elsewhere. Soon after the wife's proclamation we see her children playing with the jigsaw puzzle depicting an angel appearing to Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus, that she will bear a child. These clues indicate to the viewer that wife was innocent. In the movie, these are but a few of the dozens of symbols and metaphors that extend even to the selection of classical music. As usual, the cinema of director Zvyagintsev is full of allusions to the Bible. The banishment alludes to the banishment of Adam from Eden represented in the film by the anti-hero's tranquil family house, far from the inferred socio-political turbulence elsewhere. A black kitten crosses the jigsaw puzzle and tragedy follows. These clues indicate to the viewer that wife was innocent. In the movie, these are but a few of the dozens of symbols and metaphors that extend even to the selection of classical music Bach's Magnificat or the "Song of Virgin Mary". There is washing of the brother's bullet hit arm, reminiscent of Pilate washing his hands in the Bible.

While the story and structure of "The Return" is easier to comprehend, "The Banishment" is more complex. The first half of the film entices the viewer to reach the wrong conclusions. The Father is correct, the wife is wrong. The second half of the film surprises the viewer as all assumptions of the viewer made from the preceding episodes are turned topsy-turvy. Men are arrogant, egotistical and father children without love. There is no love in the silent train journey of the family while the wife is looking at her husband with love. Like Kieslowski's "Blue" the woman appears stronger than the man—and in an apt epilogue its women (harvesting a field) who are singing a song of hope and regeneration.

A supposed major flaw noted by critics is the lack of character development. In this film, Zvyagintsev develops characters using silent journeys (lack of communication) and misconstruing of reality ("child is not ours"), very close to the storyline of the director's first film. Actually, Zvyagintsev progresses in this second film by extending the relationship of "Father and children" in the first film, to "Father and wife" in the second. In the first film, children do not understand the father; in the second, the father does not understand his wife. When he does it is too late, just as the kids in the first film of the director. This is a film that requires several viewings to savor its many ingredients of photography, music, and screenplay writing. Zvyagintsev is not merely copying directors Tarkovsky, Bergman and Kieslowski—-he is exploring new territories by teasing his viewer to "suspend his/her belief" and constantly re-evaluate what was shown earlier.

In "The Return" we saw a citation from renaissance painting by Andrea Mantenia,"The Lamentation over the Dead Christ", which had been cited also by Tarkovsky in "Soryalis". Then we saw also black and white photography,resembling in texture to that in "The Mirror(Zerkolo)",and tracking back into the forest from open space with the water("The Mirror" and "Sacrifice"). All these citations or reminiscences naturally reminded us of Tarkovsky's cinematographic tradition. So it's not strange that Zvyagintsev was then mentioned as his successor.

But in "Izgnanie" we can see also reminiscences of another,religious and one of the greatest director;Robert Bresson. Children with a little donkey from "Au hasard, Balthazar",the use of windows and doors as symbols of human isolation,framing of shots which make us feel not too close,not too distant form characters... As far as I remember, Bresson wrote about "ironed"shots as his ideal material for editing.For him,and for Zvyagintsev,cinema is not an instrument to "move" viewers' soul,but only a key, through which every viewer's mind must find the way to the higher Order. I would say that Bresson made religious novella in laconic prose, but Zvyagintsev makes religious fable with poetic language.

In this time too, we see reminiscences of Tarkovsky(the composition and camera movement of the first shot,for example),but here an another tradition,which the director follows, is clearly shown.