Mother and Son (Widescreen)

The soul of the film is the deep love between a dying mother and her loyal son. We begin with a frame of the mother laying in bed beneath a blanket, her stomach gently undulating, as she savors her final breaths. Her son lays beside her, caressing her hair, carefully pampering his ill stricken mother. They begin to speak about dreams, their voices slowly and mysteriously intertwine. We watch, listen, and think: "This all seems too private."

Mother wishes to go for a walk, perhaps she knows it will be her last. The kind hearted son carries his mother, in his arms, across magnificent landscapes that captivate our soul. Sokurov has developed unique lenses which embrace rather then deter the 2-dimensional character of the cinema. Perhaps the first person to do so. What an enchanting result! The images, unlike any we've ever seen, resemble epic landscape paintings of 16th and 17th century masters.

The sound design is outstanding. Pure sounds of acoustic ecology - birds, winds, water, leaves, fire, wood... I believe Sokurov was trying to capture G-D's glory in this film. There is one particular frame of the skies, with clouds filling the top of the frame, and distant snowy mountains on the bottom. This frame is G-D looking down on the mother and her son, she is being summoned to the heavens.

To place this work in the cinematic universe is challenging. Sokurov, like his Russian predecesors, Tarkovsky and Parajanov, are conservative artists commited to the glorification of G-D, which does not agree with what most world auteurs are doing, even the greatest ones. Unfortunately, there are very few of the spiritual filmmakers left. Tarr, Angelopolous, Hou Hsiao Hsien, Kiarostami, perhaps a few more. There seems to be little place for these films in the current state of our world but thankfully there are still those of us, albiet few of us, who watch and appreciate these masterpieces. Let us hope the future will be a better one for cinema.

The portrayal of the soul-deep love between a son and his mother by the two actors is a moving one. We are left with more questions than answers about their personal situations, their lives apart or together, the locale in which they live - but we are left with no doubts at all about the devotion they feel for each other.

I watched this film once on my own, then again a few days later in the company of my best friend. She drew things from the film that I had missed, and offered some valuable insights. I would strongly suggest watching it more than once - I feel certain that each viewing will reveal something new, something that will touch and move the viewer on a very deep level.

Sokurov was a student (and a close friend) of Andrei Tarkovsky - but his work shows that he is anything but derivative, and a genius in his own right. This film is truly one of the great treasures of modern cinema.