Mother and Son

A mother dying in a house in the country and the son who cares for her. That is the whole film. He carries her outside in his arms, walks among the trees, reads to her, brings her back. The talk is brief and whispered. The film ends before death arrives. Its real concern is the image itself. Sokurov put hand-painted panes of glass in front of the lens and distorting mirrors at the sides; shot with special lenses, the scenes give the feeling of looking at a painting. The reference is explicit: the German painter Caspar David Friedrich. Cloud, hill and horizon take up as much room as the people. Aleksandr Sokurov directed, with Aleksei Fyodorov as cinematographer. It runs 73 minutes. It screened at the Berlin Film Festival on 20 February 1997 and was the first of Sokurov's features to bring him international recognition. Almost nothing is given in narrative terms: who they are, where they are, what the illness is, none of it is stated. The withholding is deliberate and the entire effect comes from it. Who it is for: anyone who thinks about cinema alongside painting and likes quiet, slow work. Who it is not for: anyone wanting events or dialogue. The film is nearly static, the treated image will strike some viewers as mannered, and despite being under eighty minutes it feels long.