Ovsyanki

This was a fairly interesting movie.

Just to correct errors in two of the previous reviews above: this is not a Scandinavian movie, but Russian. It is not located in remote Northern Scandinavia, either, but in central Russia, and thus actually quite far from Scandinavia. Although the movie tells about traditions of a people ethnically related to Finns, there is really nothing in the movie that would resemble anything in Scandinavia. These Meryan people merged with Slavs about a thousand years ago, and their own language disappeared in the 16th century. Apparently some of their ancient customs still live, if this movie is to be believed.

Silent Souls. A fitting adapted English title to this film. In short, Aist and Miron serve as the guides to a desolate portrait into the life of the Merya people of Russia. The journey is centered on the grieving of a husband for his wife, and on the the associated death rites. As such, the film gives viewers a passenger's perspective into the customs and thoughts of a people whose rituals have been disappearing. All in all, Silent Souls is informative and simple, dragging viewers slowly into a surprising and symbolic conclusion. It is a film best observed through the gaze of an anthropologist or ethnographer, and taken in with the intention to learn and absorb a culture that to most will be new and foreign. In sum, one ought not to expect Hollywoodian diversions.

Started as typical Iranian movie, then forget to gain the momentum and after express straying finished as typical Scandinavian movie. It seems like an attempt to create the film about instinct tribe in the instinct or spoofed film-making tradition. But I think I can explain it's festival popularity. Since those talks about sex are still considered as ambiguous and vulgar, "Sex in the city" have no perspective as festival movie, but when you have filmed the tribe that have such age-old tradition, and this tradition is also packed into sacramental funeral ritual, you get an highest level indulgence and also you can redistribute this indulgence between all those highbrowed festival critics. I want that the story would be continued and the Russian "central region" get such get deep developed mythology. More better then hobbit village in the NZ.

I saw this film 8 hours ago on a big screen and I'm still spelled.

The camera work was very precise and poetic just as the structure of the story line and acting. This movie is very slow, yet very intense. Every scene generates so much thought in the viewer and leaves room for imagination, so that after the first few scenes my mind was swinging in the shamanic rhythm of the movie. I actually saw some older people lightly dandling themselves in that rhythm.

It's much more than just a story of a nation that is disappearing. It is a story of all the human culture and the mortality of it. The mortality of our beloved paradigms. Yet this film looked at life from the brighter side. Everything disappears, but so what? Nothing lasts, but nothing is lost.

Somewhere up north in Scandinavia a young woman dies. Her husband wants to cremate her, following the rites of the land he lives in. One of his workers comes with him and together they start on a road trip through life itself.

A short introduction is used to define the world of the film - a desolate town in the middle of nowhere that is filled to the rim with people that follow a somewhat strange set of rites and rulings, but that are perfectly happy with them. The main theme in their life is a large river that flows through their country and that is more or less the base of their lives.

As it starts rolling it is mostly just two players working their ways around each other, portraying their odd lives with perfection. The story is amazing, the way they go through it is maddening and reminding of a lot of other strange road trips. The Straight Story and Cargo 200 come to mind. It has some fleeting moments where the pace drops to a stand still though and thus it isn't entirely satisfactory. It's good, but not very good.

7 out of 10 bottles of vodka