Alexandra

This film makes a good accompaniment to Beaufort, which I saw the night before this at the Melbourne International Film Festival. While both are very different stories, they use similar visual techniques and are war films with subtle anti-war messages. Aleksandra is an elderly woman who visits her grandson, a Russian army officer, at his army camp inside Chechnya. The entirety of the film follows Aleksandra, including her lengthy journey on the train with other soldiers, her arrival and her interactions with various incidental characters.

The film is very observational, capturing the strength of character of this feisty woman who is intimidated by neither the macho Russian soldiers questioning her identity and what she is doing in this godforsaken place (in the middle of a scorching summer), nor by the hostile Chechens whose towns have been obliterated by the Russian army.

Any critique of war is subtle and in passing. Even if this was the director's primary intent, he keeps the audience focus on the humanistic elements of the film. There is excellent character development, and the naturalistic depictions of camaraderie and bonding of unlikely friends is very moving. This is a well-written, original and quietly accomplished film that will appeal to audiences who are not fond of war films.

Thought proving even then when the film was made, rising questions as to 'why we are here' to present day what conditions must be on both sides of this tragic almost faded from media war, having sound acting without political intervention from its director 'Aleksandra' played by Galina Vishnevskaya in itself reflects truth behind all wars as she roams through the film trying to grasp what the world has come to.

Aleksandra is the movie that Putin disliked and Chechen banned. It's a movie about temperamental old lady who travels from Russia to Chechen to see her grandson in military base. The movie combines greatly aging and military. Story about a woman who doesn't want to get old while the others spend their aging time killing. There isn't any set decorations used, all is authentic. The military base, ruins, soldiers and the common people. Aleksandra is a great movie from one of Russians most interesting film-maker at the moment. If you aren't scared of slow and lifelike drama. This is very easy to recommend. It is humane, it is insightful.

I don't know many grandmothers that would take a troop train across Russia, then get on top a troop transport to visit their grandson (Vasily Shevtsov), an Army Captain in Chechnya. But this grandmother (Galina Vishnevskaya) did. It was certainly an arduous journey for the elderly woman.

The films color is appropriate for the hot and dirty climate where here grandson is stationed. The soldiers are all shirtless and just sit around waiting. The other soldiers watch her with fascination, probably thinking of home and their own grandmothers.

She makes her way to the market where cigarettes are priced depending upon you rank. The locals look at the Russians with disgust. She manages to connect with a local, Malika (Raisa Gichaeva), who treats her like a sister.

It is not a place for a grandmother, but she manages to connect again with her grandson before he goes off on a five-days mission, and she boards the troop train home.

It was only anti-war in a subtle sense. The futility of it all was visible, but not exaggerated. Maybe the futility was finally recognized as the Russians are to leave Chechnya soon.

A very good story.

A Russian film, which isn't in English, told from the perspective of a seventy or so year old woman, whose attitude towards the dilapidated world she sees is positively existential and whose tale is set during a war very few will have even heard of, was never going to be a box office bank breaker. 2008 film Aleksandra might not be the easiest sell to a young, white, heterosexual male between the ages of 16 and 30; the very definition of the Western 'mainstream', but in Aleksandra, whose director is Aleksandr Sokurov, we can credit a really well made; thought provoking drama which explores and examines a woman of another era coming into contact with a world she is unfamiliar with. The film coming to mutate in a thoroughly well made minimalist piece with wondrous attention to character and to the breaking down of preconceived archetypes.

We begin with the titular Aleksandra, played by Galina Vishnevskaya, an elderly woman on her way to meet with her grandson who's currently located within a military barracks on the front-line of Chechnya. The film implements us within her perspective upon our first interaction, her stepping off of a bus followed by her looking around at what has become of the world as she ventures nearer and nearer the wartime hostilities of the Chechnyan front-line an inviting of the audience to see the world as she sees it. After some difficulty, she eventually arrives at the base camp and meets her grandson Denis (Shevtsov); a soldier looking well worn and with some very blistered feet suggesting he has seen some action. The camp is dry, hot and stagnant; whilst there, Aleksandra gives time to look upon the implements of warfare she sees before her and our alignment to her continues when she ventures around a locale that ought to be as alien to us as it is to her. She observes all of the living, eating and sleeping conditions as well as the men doing certain other things such as polishing their rifles. On another occasion, she is invited to sit inside one of many parked tanks, the film going so far as to have her highlight little things such as the smell of the interior of the thing; all of it eventually coming to have her exclaim her disdain towards it.

The film's predominant covering of the character of Aleksandra sees it cover the sorts of territory that comes with a very frail and rather worn individual seeing the world they inhabit around them. It's eventually established that Aleksandra once had a husband, and so it's put across that she has already had prior negative involvement with men, something which becomes more evident later on. Her observing of the world nearer the front-line is effectively a result of men fighting men and one later scene sees her journey out to a nearby market to collect specific items for the Russian troops she occupies the base with. Here, a young boy causes some irritation by jostling with her in this very public place whereas another man working behind a stall will not sell her any cigarettes, but will carry a look of disdain, both much to her discomfort. The surroundings at the nearby market sees entire rows of apartments torn open from shelling; the people within reduced to living inside of places of dwelling which sport large craters from about the tenth floor and upwards. It is here Aleksandra meets another woman of similar age, and they get along as if they had known one another for many years.

The film finds a quite remarkable balance nicely set between two differing films and their core thesis', namely 2007 Israeli film Beaufort and James Cameron's 1991 sequel to his film The Terminator. Where Beaufort took the item of warfare and distilled it through a dangerously stagnant perspective, exploring the grim absurdities of war by placing a handful of troops at a post and have them merely absorb disjointed and sporadic enemy missile attacks, Aleksandra tells a similar tale of people just inhabiting the outskirts of a war-zone in a deliberately fragmented and stagnant manner reflecting the slow and painful process everything entails. If Aleksandra is the better film, then it's because we have a stonewall lead in the elderly woman around which greater depth is explored; Beaufort's equivalent in an explosives expert in said film introduced to proceedings and tactfully removed twenty minutes in.

A key scene in Cameron's iconic science-fiction/war feature Terminator 2: Judgement Day saw its lead female Sarah Connor sit atop a leading technician's kitchen counter and berate him, indeed the male gender, for being able to do little within the field of creativity but come up with implements dedicated to fighting and warring. Sokurov's film is part extension of this item, and additionally the gradual bringing around of the lead so as to have her come to respect men after a back-story involving an oaf of a husband as well as the destruction and chaos men have brought about to the region she's in. It is something that, with the scene involving a local Chechnyan woman and Aleksandra getting along with her, is suggested wouldn't happen had the women made all the decisions. We feel she comes to really connect with her grandson, revealing secrets about his grandfather that were previously wholly buried and in the other soldiers on the base, an observing of males whom are regimental Russian soldiers but respectful of, instead of dismissive of, the elderly through their experience with warfare which has rendered them worn and lethargic. Refreshingly, Sokurov steers clear of politics; the film's stance on Chechnya remaining positively liberal throughout. His film is more a focusing on just how terrible and seemingly unnecessary the conflict is, rather than just how humanistic and normalised Russians are in comparison to Chechnyans. With a really well executed, minimalist approach to character and his hypothesis, Sokurov executes a taut and engaging film.