At least we all now know which film Gus van Sant watched over and over again prior to heading into production on his ill-disciplined 2005 film Last Days; itself a wondering, pondering piece about fumbling, mumbling characters (one of whom was perilously near to death) occupying a space which wasn't quite a jungle but carried with it an eerie humidity that didn't have it feel like a straight up forest. Like Aleksandr Sokurov's 1998 film Mother and Son, it even has an extended take of its character standing before a train track as a train rumbles past, said Russian picture a film I wanted to like more than I did, in that despite the overpowering atmosphere of dread; the distinct style its director applies to such an idea and the generally affecting content, it is quite remarkable how little Mother and Son actually amounts to. It is a frustrating film, straddling the line between feature and short, which still doesn't quite go down as well as you'd like but isn't entirely indigestible – you gnaw at it, searching for the flavour and the taste which has excited many others but eventually just end up with a bit of an ache and a sense of bafflement.
The exploration of the ties of the titular mother and son begins with the opening shots and will continue on through to the last; both parties initially occupying a bedroom and laying down beside one another. They are Aleksei Ananishnov's character, simply named 'Son' and his similarly simplistically named 'Mother', payed by Gudrun Geyer. Given this first sighting of them, we sense they're close; the speaking over of one another in murmured tones about each of their respective dreams at once insinuating that this is perhaps how it is they sleep come the evenings since they may very well have just awoken; while the idea that either of them speak over one another dismisses what would commonly be highlighted as rude, instead suggesting a deeply rooted bond that sees them acknowledge one another through verbal confirmations that are played unorthodoxly. The film's bulk is a collection of sequences seeing them stick together through the thickest and the thinnest, the recognition of Mother's slowly decaying health and Son's acknowledgement that he will be here for its now seemingly short duration.
Where it is they are both based for the duration of the film is at Mother's residence; a small, wooded house which has been overtaken by the greenery around it. She is a woman whom possesses very little; a shed not so far away housing a few other items the only other structure in the area. They occupy a world which looks as if it has just fallen out of a nuclear war; the skies constantly greyed out by rolling clouds, vast fields of grass and pastures of nothingness playing host to the majority of what's on the ground as rumbles of thunder plague the above. Mother's home even looks as if it has taken the odd shelling, its worn and decrepit state seemingly uninhabitable and yet they stay on, leading one to wonder if it is one of very few structures left. Sokurov even goes to further lengths to disorientate the audience by capturing the majority of the compositions of the surrounding area through an array of lens' not always fit for the crispest of focus.
Most of the film will consist of the pair of them speaking to one another on issues of a highly philosophical and rather theological nature, jarring given the spaced out timbre of both the piece and their mannerisms; the item which sticks out the most is just how little the majority of it seems to refer or indeed contribute to anything else. He must provide her with medicine and for the most part of the film, must carry her around as they journey from place to place, all the while speaking in hushed and mournful bleats. Most of Mother and Son is indeed surface, but what a surface packed full of drained cinematography; the acknowledgement from two lonely parties that an immense bond of many-a decade is on the verge of ending and a really downcast, incoming doom-laden sensation as everything appears to play out in a post-apocalyptic world; a mythical backdrop somewhat unnecessarily destroyed by the odd background shot of the rest of civilisation operating.
I read it is a part of an ongoing trilogy, the sorts of trilogies filmmakers rather than studios produce; proper trilogies, that are linked by thematics and undercurrents rather than continuations of slight stories and protagonist misadventures. Oddly, and admittedly in hindsight, the film appears to have more in common with a recent 2008 Sokurov effort entitled Aleksandra. Said film was about a bond between a young man and an elderly female relative whom appears worn and withered by life, but where Aleksandra followed a woman whom had travelled to meet with her grandson whose job might see him precariously close to death on occasion, the premise here is reversed: Ananishnov's character the outsider travelling to his mother's rural and cut-off place of dwelling to spend time with her as she nears her respective 'time'. Aleksandra eventually had both characters come to inhabit a locale in which instruments of warfare such as tanks and rifles were lined up in rows of a dozen-or-so, but made to look quite beautiful or poetic by way of composition despite their purpose - in Mother and Son, extended shots of items more commonly associated with the peaceful or tranquil are given an uncanny edge in the form of expansive fields and woodland rendered quite unnerving through cinematography and such. There just seems to be a core idea here that Sokurov has left out; there is very little meat on the bone which inexplicably in turn, leads to a gristly experience; something which is easy to admire but difficult to recommend nor get overly excited about.
The exploration of the ties of the titular mother and son begins with the opening shots and will continue on through to the last; both parties initially occupying a bedroom and laying down beside one another. They are Aleksei Ananishnov's character, simply named 'Son' and his similarly simplistically named 'Mother', payed by Gudrun Geyer. Given this first sighting of them, we sense they're close; the speaking over of one another in murmured tones about each of their respective dreams at once insinuating that this is perhaps how it is they sleep come the evenings since they may very well have just awoken; while the idea that either of them speak over one another dismisses what would commonly be highlighted as rude, instead suggesting a deeply rooted bond that sees them acknowledge one another through verbal confirmations that are played unorthodoxly. The film's bulk is a collection of sequences seeing them stick together through the thickest and the thinnest, the recognition of Mother's slowly decaying health and Son's acknowledgement that he will be here for its now seemingly short duration.
Where it is they are both based for the duration of the film is at Mother's residence; a small, wooded house which has been overtaken by the greenery around it. She is a woman whom possesses very little; a shed not so far away housing a few other items the only other structure in the area. They occupy a world which looks as if it has just fallen out of a nuclear war; the skies constantly greyed out by rolling clouds, vast fields of grass and pastures of nothingness playing host to the majority of what's on the ground as rumbles of thunder plague the above. Mother's home even looks as if it has taken the odd shelling, its worn and decrepit state seemingly uninhabitable and yet they stay on, leading one to wonder if it is one of very few structures left. Sokurov even goes to further lengths to disorientate the audience by capturing the majority of the compositions of the surrounding area through an array of lens' not always fit for the crispest of focus.
Most of the film will consist of the pair of them speaking to one another on issues of a highly philosophical and rather theological nature, jarring given the spaced out timbre of both the piece and their mannerisms; the item which sticks out the most is just how little the majority of it seems to refer or indeed contribute to anything else. He must provide her with medicine and for the most part of the film, must carry her around as they journey from place to place, all the while speaking in hushed and mournful bleats. Most of Mother and Son is indeed surface, but what a surface packed full of drained cinematography; the acknowledgement from two lonely parties that an immense bond of many-a decade is on the verge of ending and a really downcast, incoming doom-laden sensation as everything appears to play out in a post-apocalyptic world; a mythical backdrop somewhat unnecessarily destroyed by the odd background shot of the rest of civilisation operating.
I read it is a part of an ongoing trilogy, the sorts of trilogies filmmakers rather than studios produce; proper trilogies, that are linked by thematics and undercurrents rather than continuations of slight stories and protagonist misadventures. Oddly, and admittedly in hindsight, the film appears to have more in common with a recent 2008 Sokurov effort entitled Aleksandra. Said film was about a bond between a young man and an elderly female relative whom appears worn and withered by life, but where Aleksandra followed a woman whom had travelled to meet with her grandson whose job might see him precariously close to death on occasion, the premise here is reversed: Ananishnov's character the outsider travelling to his mother's rural and cut-off place of dwelling to spend time with her as she nears her respective 'time'. Aleksandra eventually had both characters come to inhabit a locale in which instruments of warfare such as tanks and rifles were lined up in rows of a dozen-or-so, but made to look quite beautiful or poetic by way of composition despite their purpose - in Mother and Son, extended shots of items more commonly associated with the peaceful or tranquil are given an uncanny edge in the form of expansive fields and woodland rendered quite unnerving through cinematography and such. There just seems to be a core idea here that Sokurov has left out; there is very little meat on the bone which inexplicably in turn, leads to a gristly experience; something which is easy to admire but difficult to recommend nor get overly excited about.