Otets i syn

Alexander Sokurov's Mother and Son had a sense of joy and love tempered by a setting in an ominous dark forest. The second part of the trilogy, Father and Son has no such ambivalence. It is drenched in sunlight and bathed in a glow of greens and browns. The film opens with the image of two male bodies in bed, their naked bodies intertwined in a rapturous embrace. One is breathing rapidly; the other is trying to comfort him. We think these must be gay lovers, but soon discover that it is a father comforting his son after a nightmare. Though the film feels homoerotic, Sokurov chafed at the suggestion calling it the product of sick European minds. According to the director, "Their (father and son) love is almost of mythological virtue and scale. It cannot happen in real life", and the film is "the incarnation of a fairy tale. Shot in Lisbon, Portugal, Father and Son is not attached to time or place. A soldier's uniform is depicted in the latest style, while women's dresses and hairstyles are of the 40s, 50s and 60s.

Father (Andrei Shetinin) and son (Alexei Nejmyshev) live together on the top floor of an apartment house and have done so for many years since the death of their mother. Their world looks like a sanctuary but may be a prison. It was while attending a school for air cadets that the father met his wife and bore his son, now 20. His son's physical appearance reminds the father of his late wife and their bond is intense and emotional. Alexei attends military school like his father who left military service against his will and wants his son to pick up where he left off. He has a girl friend but there is a distance between them. She is jealous of his relationship with his father that to her appears overprotective and he does not want to give up his father's closeness.

Alexei's father is conflicted about looking for a job in a different city and seeking a new wife. They must decide whether to continue their lives together or independently. The struggle for freedom and independence is mutual but they are held together by a transcendent love. Father and Son is an enigmatic but deeply poetic film about the complex bond that a son has with his father. While the film is open to interpretation from different cultural, psychological, or religious points of view (the film says, `A father who loves his son crucifies him. A son who loves his father sacrifices himself for him'), for me, the best approach is to avoid the temptation to analyze and just bathe in the warmth of its loving glow.

Time has passed before seeing a film that was so heart warming and involving. I have ever loved slow and sometimes annoying movies. But for some reason I wasn't intrigued by the genre anymore (just know one of my favorite is 'Aliens''86).

I started watching it and I felt so charmed by it all. The story is practically inexistent but you won't mind.The visual aspect and how things are going in this lovely and simple way can't let you indifferent.

As some others said it is although sensual and homo erotic. Such a relationship between father and son is almost unthinkable but not impossible. This in fact is not that important seen the poor story 'content'.

If you watch this movie in a relaxed way you will feel very good in the end, especially if you're not going with the idea of expecting great things.

I've seen this film a week ago, it still lives on my mind. It was a beautiful cinematic experience. It was a modern language of Father & Son relationship, by only through cinematography. It was a sensational work, brave enough to starting off with the scene of physical bonding between 2 males (Not homosexual, it is purely artistic expression). How long we've been neglecting the fundamental love between Father & Son. While we are pretty much focused on Mother & Son relationship(Blame Proust for that matter).

It could have some elements can be analyzed as a homosexual content but it is purely how much we are exposed too much and damaged by cultural sensitivity in sexual content in the normal, pornographic movie and lost its pure sense to enjoy art. So objection to all other viewer's seen this movie as homo-erotic movie, the see it again how this is all well portrayed in poetical way.

How two are created their own world under the rooftop apartment under the frozen Russian sky, based on father's full sacrifice for his only son,through his agony as an adolescent young boy who is still not fully grown up as an adult, forming 'love','freindship' and 'independency', yet but still going under.

There are sub-contents such as 'male-female' relationship, which are totally based on emotion and built on the sexual difference and desire. Also there is a crash between 'musculinity' and 'sensuality'. Also, of course 'agony' as lover, and who need to separate themselves from the love to achieve its true 'love' statues.

The camera works and metaphors are the extreme beauty of this movie. The close-ups of actors are exploring emotions. Sometimes not quite in the center of the angle demonstrates their unsettled moods.Also the metaphors such as 'wooden bridge', 'football' and 'wrestling' etc, all deliberately building up the story masterfully.

The music contribute those fiercely beautiful sadness into the movie, and it also reflects their sensuality at the same time.

Men's world is not full of 'muscline' but also there are so much depths in it, as shown here in the movie. Father loves son and son does same. But they need to separate as to grow and give.

I still not sure if there are any mythology injected here, but it's all my guess, so fill me in.

It is a sensation, in its subject matter and also in depth as an art film. Not many films in decent years has passed beyond the expectation in how to tell a story. This film is a proved evidence of what film could achieve a state of art.

Maybe if I had seen the first film in director Aleksandr Sokurov's trilogy, "Mother and Son," then "Father and Son (Otets i syn)" as Part 2 would have made some sense.

Instead, I found the beautiful imagery contradicting the limited dialogue. The camera loves the two lead actors to the extent that I simply could not figure out if paternal love was crossing over into incest or just homo-eroticism.

Andrei Shchetinin is one handsome, presumably widowed father and he spends a lot of time shirtless and working out. Aleksei Nejmyshev as his 20 year old son has mesmerizing blue eyes who understandably makes his possibly current or ex girlfriend weak in the knees by his penetrating stare.

And that's about all that happens.

The lead characters and their male friends spend a lot of time urgently telling each other they need to talk and then staring into space, or down at their shoes, or at each other. They do kick around a ball like such a pair would in American films, but they don't even talk about sports as a substitute for real interchange.

I was sorely reminded of Andy Warhol films, let alone satires of Ingmar Bergman films, but the cinematography was warm and lovely.

At least I got to see some of St. Petersburg and Lisbon, which I think is standing in for parts of St. Petersburg, while they are wandering around emoting and inarticulate. (At least all the final credits were in English.)

The intensity of the central relationship is shown very effectively as they enter each other's dreams, but the repeated parables about father's and son's roles in crucifixion sounded pithier than was demonstrated metaphorically.

Father and Son is a film about a special relationship. one who has not explanations, definitions or a precise form. one who remains, always, out of words. so, the work of Sokurov is more than admirable. because he propose a translation of so personal links that only a father and a son could understand the reality beyond the images. like each translation, the film is far to be perfect. maybe for the sin to be too abstract or too sentimental or to direct, or too poetic. in fact it is only a honest confession. about a special form of love. about duty. about solitude. about looking of fundamental answers for become yourself. a film about past. about ages. about meaning of life. about the best manner to discover the other as part of yourself and as different man. this is all. the homoerotic references, the army, the ambiguity of relation