Shy People

Beautiful photography of the Louisiana bayou and excellent performances by Barbara Hershey and the rest of the cast make for a gripping drama. Criticised by some for being melodramatic, this film is more than a comparison of the city and country life. It is also surely an analogy by director Konchalovsky for the Soviet Union progressing through harsh but effective tyranny to a more uncertain and questionable "freedom".

This film seems at first pretentious and then very thoughtful.

It begins as a shallow magazine photographer and her daughter travel deep into the Bayou to research their family history. As they meet and establish relationships with their cousins, the story evolves into a truly haunting display of modern life vs. isolation, and the ways in which people relate to each other. Barbara Hershey is especially excellent as a tough but deeply loving widow.

The film evoking Bunuel's Tristana for its unconditional love of characters, embracing all their qualities as they are without judgment. It's a film about mystery of love, the heart, mind and soul colluding with the rationalization of the mind, or more precisely the mystery of the spirit vs the rationalization of an ego, represented by two different worlds and people coming together, learning from one another and becoming all the more whole at the end. A mystical lyrical film that is more about the meaningful poetry of images rather than the story, Andrei Konchalovsky's cinema always seemed to me reminiscent particularly of Dostojevsky's work of literature, focusing on the human soul, works like The Idiot can come to mind often, such an exploration in this film is beautiful and marvelous, unique in a way that has no comparison in the history of cinema. As a film it does remind me of his other memorable works (House Of Fools, Nest For The Gentry or The Postman's White Nights). Konchalovsky has once said that "Cinema is ruthless because it's too specific, the task of the director in the cinema is to leave space for imagination."

For me Shy People is perfect example how to do a film that has no clear message, it leaves it up to an audience to find them for themselves, to find connections, to see what their heart, mind and soul guide them to see and feel.

This movie is for all the people who were enthralled by Runaway Train and wondered what happened to its director. Well, he eventually made Tango and Cash; which has its time and place, but he also made this bonafide work of greatness. It isn't a kinetically fierce work of cinema like Runaway Train, but there is so much else here for the viewer to mull over. A character driven story where none of the characters are wholly endearing, but all of them are vulnerable and forgiveable. While the movie grips you with its stark examination of colliding cultures, it never for a moment lets you forget that everyone involved is a real person.

Barbara Hershey won Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival for her performance in Andrei Konchalovsky's "Shy People". The movie portrays a magazine writer (Jill Clayburgh) and her daughter (Martha Plimpton) taking a trip to the Louisiana boondocks to meet a distant relative (Hershey). As the movie progresses, we learn not only about the relative's various kinds of superstitions, but also about the secrets that the great uncle held, and how they relate to some current rifts in the family.

Probably the movie's best aspect is how it dignifies country people. While making it clear that these folks have some backwards notions about things - namely that the deceased man is still watching - Konchalovsky never makes them look stupid. Also, we get to see rural Louisiana (although it may have changed in the past twenty years, especially after Hurricane Katrina).

If anything mildly disappointed me about the movie, it's that I didn't get to hear more about Cajun culture. But then again, it's probably best that the movie didn't lose its main focus. I would suspect that the one boy was right when he accused the oil companies.

All in all, worth seeing.