Karl Ericsson Oh, see the poor woman so depressed over, well, nothing really. The man, so confused by the swinery that we call society, does not understand. But he is to blame, yes sir. And the confusion lives on and there can be no understanding because that means that the woman must give up her feminist preoccupation and try to imagine the slavery of her man and who wants to do that? Instead she wallops in her own confusion and finds a way to blame the man for her suicide that she cannot avoid in her fantastic preoccupation with herself. A feminist field-day indeed - total and utmost confusion.

Raymond First off I'm gonna say there are a few reviews without a tag which do spoil a bit. The movie has a couple of scenes which make the plot, and it's far better viewing if you don't know about them. I'm not gonna go into details, but I'm still putting the spoiler tag on.This movie had pretty much everything for me to like it. It's a Russian film, I catch one every time I can. It was nominated in Cannes, it's slow paced, it's got great cinematography and it's a movie that requires you're brain to be turned on, rather than off. Even if slow, you really need to be awake for the whole duration.Still it didn't turn out quite as good as I hoped. I had no problem with the duration, it never felt too slow or dragging. Very little actually happens plot wise. The tension and atmosphere are hand felt. Acting top notch, lot's of symbolic references. Scenery and images are amazing. There are a couple of scenes where the camera work really goes into Tarkovsky territory.The story is intriguing and gripping, but never really hits it. It's a mystery and a lot of stuff remain unsaid on screen and off screen. May require repeated viewing, but I felt the story left a bit too much in the shadows. I have nothing against clues and symbolism, but here the story is just too enigmatic. You also start to question the characters actions after a while. If in a horror movie you say "why is she going there alone", in this movie you say "why don't they just talk".Might also be cultural differences, but I had a bit of trouble connecting to anyone in this movie and if you have to question every characters actions, the viewing experience becomes a bit heavy after a while. You're never really sure why they do what they are doing.Speaking of cultural differences, I try to catch a Russian movie every time I can, because it's amazingly difficult to find a subtitled Russian movie in Finland. I was a bit disappointed how universal this movie was. It could've happened anywhere and reading from IMDb, the shooting locations were not in Russia. Without the dialogs I would've never guessed it's a Russian movie, in my book that's not a good thing for a movie.Still definitely worth viewing, I'm gonna try and catch the directors earlier movie and will keep an eye on him in the future.

Chris Knipp Not as strong as Zvyagintsev's haunting 2003 debut 'The Return'/'Vozvrashcheniye' (grand prize at Venice--I reviewed it when it was shown theatrically in the US the following year), this adaptation of William Saroyan's 1953 novella, "The Laughing Matter," is recognizable for its intense, slow-paced style and beautiful cinematography (by Mikhail Krichman). 'Izgnanie' (the Russian title) takes us out to a remote country house where there are thin roads, grassy fields over gentle hills, herds of sheep -- and old friends, because this is the childhood home of the protagonist Alex (Konstantin Lavronenko), who's brought his family out there for summer vacation. But before that (and a signal of a certain disjointedness of the whole film) we observe Mark (Alexander Baluev), Alex's obviously gangsterish brother, getting him to remove a bullet from his arm. this is also the first of a series of failures to seek adequate medical treatment. Now we move to Alex with his wife Vera (Maria Bonnevie) taking their young son Kir (Maxim Shibaev) and younger daughter Eva (Katya Kulkina) out to the country by car.Zvagintsev certainly takes his time with every action of the film. It's as if he thought he was writing a 500-page novel rather than making a movie. The effect is not so much a sense of completeness as a kind of hypnotic trance. Everything is marked by the fine clear light, the frequent use of long shots, and the pale blue filters that give everything a distinctive look. Some of the long landscape shots are absolutely stunning, and the interior light and the way shadows gently caress the faces are almost too good to be true.When another family comes into the picture and they all spend a day outdoors, the sense of familiarity, summer listlessness, and vague unease made me think of a play by William Inge or Tennessee Williams. That may seem odd for a Russian movie, but the names are only partly Russian, the location is deliberately indeterminate, and Saroyan's source story is set in a long-ago California, not in Russia. Zvyagintsev doesn't seem to work in the real world but in some kind of super-real nether-land. Whether it is unforgettable or simply off-putting seems to vary. In 'The Return' it as the former; here it is more the latter.Vera drops a bombshell, when she announces she's pregnant and that the child isn't his. The tragedy that slowly but inexorably follows arises from a derangement in the wife and a misunderstanding by the husband. To deal with the problem Alex wants the children out of the way and he is happy to have them stay at the friends' house, where they're putting together a large jigsaw puzzle of Leonardo da Vinci's painting, 'The Annunciation'. I'm indebted to Jay Weissberg's review in 'Variety' for this identification; Weissberg adds, "That... isn't the only piece of heavy-handed religious imagery on offer. There's Alex washing his brother's blood off his hands, Eva/Eve offered an apple, and a Bible recitation from 1 Corinthians about love ("It does not insist on its own way"), handily set apart by a bookmark depicting Masaccio's 'The Expulsion From the Garden of Eden.' OK, we get it, but that doesn't mean the parallels offer a doorway into personalities who offer little emotional residue on their own." And he is right: Zvyagintsev's fascination with Italian painting, and here also with the Bible, doesn't change the fact that the characters nonetheless remain, this time, troublingly opaque. Mark is an adviser and stimulus to action for Alex. Robert (Dmitry Ulianov) is a third brother who enters the picture later. I will not go into the details because the chief interest of the film is its slow revelations.And yet the revelations don't quite convince, because for one thing they do not fully explain. The wife's behavior remains unaccountable. And a long flashback in the latter part of the film seems to come too late, and to explain too much, yet without explaining enough. None of this is the fault of the actors, who are fine, including the children.Zvyagintsev's second film, then, is a disappointment and a puzzlement. I began to think after a while that the whole thing would be much more effective if it were done in a very simple style, with simply workmanlike photography, in a film trimmed of all externals, down to the bone, something noirish like Robert Siodmak's 'The Killers' or Kubrick's 'The Killing.' We are left to figure things out anyway, so why all the flourishes? Yet Zvyagintsev's style is nonetheless beautiful, and one only hopes he finds material that works better for him next time. I was thrilled with 'The Return' and wrote of it in my IMDb Comment: "This stunning debut features exceptional performances by the talented young actors, brilliant storytelling in a fable-like tale that's as resonant as it is specific, and exquisite cinematography not quite like any one's ever seen before." The excitement I felt about the first film is why the new one feels like such a let-down.Seen as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center series Film Comment Selects 2008 (February 25) at the Walter Reade Theater, NYC.__________________

shusei In "The Return" we saw a citation from renaissance painting by Andrea Mantenia,"The Lamentation over the Dead Christ", which had been cited also by Tarkovsky in "Soryalis". Then we saw also black and white photography,resembling in texture to that in "The Mirror(Zerkolo)",and tracking back into the forest from open space with the water("The Mirror" and "Sacrifice"). All these citations or reminiscences naturally reminded us of Tarkovsky's cinematographic tradition. So it's not strange that Zvyagintsev was then mentioned as his successor. But in "Izgnanie" we can see also reminiscences of another,religious and one of the greatest director;Robert Bresson. Children with a little donkey from "Au hasard, Balthazar",the use of windows and doors as symbols of human isolation,framing of shots which make us feel not too close,not too distant form characters... As far as I remember, Bresson wrote about "ironed"shots as his ideal material for editing.For him,and for Zvyagintsev,cinema is not an instrument to "move" viewers' soul,but only a key, through which every viewer's mind must find the way to the higher Order. I would say that Bresson made religious novella in laconic prose, but Zvyagintsev makes religious fable with poetic language.In this time too, we see reminiscences of Tarkovsky(the composition and camera movement of the first shot,for example),but here an another tradition,which the director follows, is clearly shown.