Madre e figlio

The prior commentator went a little overboard. The film is surely not the greatest of all time. It is, perhaps, the greatest LOVE FILM of all time. The beauty of the landscape (note that this is Russia in deep summer -- deep winter would have produced a much different effect - but then the mother is dying, and the contrast between her physical state and the lushness of the fields and forests is necessary to keep one from being overwhelmed by sorrow ) is itself commentary on the beauty between these two. No pretty girl, no surging music, no reasons even for the love. It is just there. Titanic. Not tied to sex or gratitude. JUST EMOTION. The dialog is spare. There is no third person. Though everything moves very sluggishly, this fits perfectly. This is not a movie. It is a poem. Extremely fine too as an essay on what the core of love looks like.

This relatively short film is about as far from mainstream cinema as you could get. It was reassuring for me to see that films like it are being produced somewhere, by someone -- especially after the experience of watching `Mission to Mars' on the same evening. An art-house goon like myself will at least have an idea of what he's getting himself into, but it's hard for me to imagine an habitual consumer of mainstream cinema watching it unless by accident or at the urging of others. If such is the case, however, and you find it confusing or uninvolving, please don't jump right into the act of declaring it `boring and pretentious.' At the very least, give it a day or two, try to think a bit about what you saw, and what others have seen in it. I hate to see a work of fine art dumped-on publicly because of a quick impression. While I wouldn't necessarily call `Mother and Son' entertainment, if anything can be called a work of art, I think it can.

Just about every frame of this film is beautifully composed and rendered. It almost looks like a series of living oil paintings. For anyone who has ever drawn or painted, even as a hobby, it gives you an urge to try to make something as beautiful as what you're seeing. But the look, sound, and essential content of the film combine to make a powerful impression, if you're receptive to it. It is an especially strong and significant experience to anyone who has an elderly parent with whom they are still close, but it seems to me elemental to anyone human who cares for another human. I've often thought there is too much dialog in many modern films, making long stretches of them seem like some form of color radio instead of real cinema, which I think of as primarily a visual medium. `Mother and Son' speaks volumes with little talk, in the manner of some of the great silent film artists. Per the DVD, the actors in this film have almost no other film credits, and to me are completely unknown. No matter. I would love to have participated in the creation of a fine work of art like this once in my life.

I wouldn't presume to recommend a film like `Mother and Son' to everyone, but if you've read the comments posted here and think you might be receptive to this film, as I did, see it by all means. You'll probably appreciate its power and beauty, as I did.

Aleksandr Sokurov in MAT I SYN (MOTHER AND SON) has succeeded in capturing those brief, breathing moments that surround death, freezing them in an timeless mold like a shell in a crystal mass, something that goes beyond the passage of time and captures the essence of extended farewells. This brief film is one of the most probing and tender embraces of the meeting/meaning of life and death, of the continuity of a mother's soul in the form of her son, and most important, it is an elegy about the quiet power and beauty of nature.

A son (Aleksei Ananishnov) comforts his terminally ill mother (Gudrun Geyer) with gentle caresses, combing her hair, sharing dreams that are identical, and providing solace in every way imaginable. The mother asks for a walk and the son carries her in his arms to a vantage of the sea and through the gnarled trunks of the woods, a path marked by poplars. He carries her back to the little house, and as she sleeps he walks by himself, observing a little train (a departure) in the distance, a sole ship (a departure) gliding on the ocean, and amidst all this natural beauty he clings to an old tree in a tearful embrace. He returns and his mother has died: the cycle of life is complete.

Throughout this seemingly simple film Sokorov concentrates on silence, the little dialogue that is spoken is from the gentle script by Yuri Arabov. The 'actors' are appropriately not actors (Ananishnov is a Professor of Mathematics!). The sounds are of nature - rumbling thunder, wind in the trees - and the minimal music is appropriately by Mikhail Glinka and Otmar Nussio with original music by Mikhail Ivanovich. The cinematography by Aleksei Fyodorov is likely greatly influenced by Sokurov's vision: each frame is a still life of nature both with and without the two characters, and with the use of filters, mirrors and broken glass the images are indescribably beautiful. Filmed on the island of Rügen close to the coast of Germany the atmosphere is pure and unhindered by peripheral marks of civilization. Sokurov's 1997 film and his subsequent films OTETS I SYN ('FATHER AND SON') and RUSSKIY KOVCHEG ('RUSSIAN ARK') have established him as one of the most creative filmmakers of today. Highly recommended, especially for those who appreciate art, nature, and the humbling magnificence of the cycle of life.

Grady Harp

I've never seen a film like Mother and Son and I think I've been looking for something like it my whole life. It is a hypnotic dream, part myth, part fairy tale, a sad reverie. It's hard to tell from critical response what kind of distribution it got in the West unless it was next to none. Obviously, the subject of death is not what they're looking for in Kansas. But in the few "professional" reviews there is a sense of respect about Mother and Son. Even the most negative of critics ("maddeningly slow and self-conscious, the most rarefied, decadent, overripe kind of 'genius' elitist art") remark about the visual and aural impact it makes.

In Barry Lyndon, Kubrick held those beautiful scenes so the eye could luxuriate in ideal landscapes, the perfect counterpoint to Barry's character. Here Sokurov doesn't just pause but allows us to move into the scenes where faces, bodies, trees hillsides are distorted by life. My favorite scene in Mother and Son, is the one when the son decides to leave his mother on the bench as he returns home for a book of postcards. The son says to wait here. And that is what we do in what seems real time. We wait back in the forest with slumbering mother while the camera slowly adjusts our perspective. I wish I had the chance to be with my parents at their deaths. In a sense Sokurov has given me that opportunity in an idealized form.

In just over an hour, Sokurov achieves in ‘Mother and Son' a wholly satisfying balance between the aesthetic, emotional, and spiritual elements that inform this simple but extremely profound film. In many ways the film is reminiscent of Andrei Tarkovsky, but where Tarkovsky was more specifically Christian in his metaphysical leanings, Sokurov suggests a kind of "humanist mysticism", an elegiac hymn to the natural rhythms of life and death, and the fragile poignancy of human love. As a celebration of life in the face of death, ‘Mother and Son' portrays the journey we must all eventually face with a simple naturalistic acceptance, and is perhaps the closest thing one might find in cinema to what I can only describe as a sort of "non-religious sacredness".

Sokurov's approach here is very ‘pared-down'. While the dialogue is kept to an absolute minimum, the soundtrack is extremely expressive and is an essential element of the work - the wind, the sea, the "music" of the earth, provide a brilliant counterpoint and commentary to what is seen. The look of the film is remarkable, inspired by the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich, but while the images are indeed beautiful, they are never merely "picturesque". From beginning to end, Mother and Son is a work of genius.