Krotkaya

This incredible movie was hard to watch but it was well worth it. The original story of Fyodor Dostoyevsky was adapted by the director to Putin's time, so much so that I thought that the movie (filmed in 2017) was made after the start of the present Ukraine war. The un-named woman leaves her residence and travels to the prison where her husband is held, without knowing that she enters a kafkaesque maze where the individual is a prisoner of the whim of the authorities. The reader is advised to remember all the passersby because they will be back towards the end. A very unusual movie, worth watching by all means despite its length.

A woman struggles to access her imprisoned husband, to get him a parcel, to check on his wellbeing: not in the 19th century, but modern day Russia - a damning film about corruption and the devastation it leaves, the tragic effects it has on the innocent and the sour taste it leaves behind.

I never read Dostoyevsky's short story that inspired the 2h20 film, so I'm not sure if the written story also reveals a large country where corruption is the dominating rule. If you are the usual movie fan, be prepared for long quite shots, raw characters, sophisticated narrative and humor. The story takes the viewer through a Kafkaesque and labyrinthine sequence of incidents and misfortunes where promises are broken and hope lives faraway. I guess it's all about Putin's Russia but also about Czar's and Stalin's nation. I like the movie but some creative solutions are a bit excessive.

When I first read the premise of this movie (the returned package) I wasn't sure if this would be a horror movie or not.

What I got is decidedly not a horror movie but it is indeed terrifying in its own way.

An ineffably strange and atmospheric odyssey of one woman through a prison town, meeting vivid character after vivid character, each cartoonish in their own way yet at once, almost too real, like a sort of modern day urban Alice in Wonderland.

Valentina Makovtseva plays this unfortunate wife with a quite, smouldering intensity that makes me sure I would recognise her in anything else I see. Even in her resting face she is hard to forget. The candid, episodic narrative tells a story of modern Russia in the numerous people that make it up; a world composed of those desperately trying to make the best of a system that no one seems to have seen coming and those who are part of the system and where the petty criminals and the law enforcement are alike in brutality and apathy.

Although it is not a horror movie, it is envisioned exactly as one should be: the seductive cinematography, the candid angles, the way it always lingers on action even when the scene is effectively at its close; I hope the director of this does direct a horror one day. No need to write it, just give a good script their treatment.

This movie is sort of like a Russian turnip. Not sweet and definitely unsavoury, but on some level I suspect its good for you. Though it's never aggressive, it never relents, it takes no short cuts yet it never drags. It leaves a bitter taste in the mouth that I don't think I'll ever forget.

No that's not what this is about. Well on the surface it is about prisons. But generally speaking it's about a goverment, about a land keeping their citizens at check. And them going along with it. We see our main actress who just wants to send something. But the package never gets delivered. So she goes and tries to solve that issue, so the male this is supposed to reach gets it.

It's not even about the package or what is in it. It is about everything working against the ordinary citozen. In this case a woman who seems determined to get answers, but also easily swayed to not to. But circumstances don't let her go, even when she is warned and accepts to leave. This is harrowing and quite draining. To call its pace slow would be quite the understatement. Like saying, the main character doesn't talk much. She probably is us - the viewers ... viewing! Watching and trying to figure out what's going on.

Get out - one may think multiple times. But as I said that's easier said than done. And leads us to quite the memorable ending - even though expected - is it actually what happens? Do we know? And how dreamy does it get after it is quite "real" at the beginning. There is dreadfulness, there is pain and there is horror of the mind (and body) ... and there is maybe also the question: how come the director has not been arrested yet? Did he get lucky? Maybe Putin isn't aware of this or does not think this will reach a lot of people anyway ... and even if ... it's just a story, righ? Right?