Father and Son

Alexander Sokurov's Mother and Son had a sense of joy and love tempered by a setting in an ominous dark forest. The second part of the trilogy, Father and Son has no such ambivalence. It is drenched in sunlight and bathed in a glow of greens and browns. The film opens with the image of two male bodies in bed, their naked bodies intertwined in a rapturous embrace. One is breathing rapidly; the other is trying to comfort him. We think these must be gay lovers, but soon discover that it is a father comforting his son after a nightmare. Though the film feels homoerotic, Sokurov chafed at the suggestion calling it the product of sick European minds. According to the director, "Their (father and son) love is almost of mythological virtue and scale. It cannot happen in real life", and the film is "the incarnation of a fairy tale. Shot in Lisbon, Portugal, Father and Son is not attached to time or place. A soldier's uniform is depicted in the latest style, while women's dresses and hairstyles are of the 40s, 50s and 60s.

Father (Andrei Shetinin) and son (Alexei Nejmyshev) live together on the top floor of an apartment house and have done so for many years since the death of their mother. Their world looks like a sanctuary but may be a prison. It was while attending a school for air cadets that the father met his wife and bore his son, now 20. His son's physical appearance reminds the father of his late wife and their bond is intense and emotional. Alexei attends military school like his father who left military service against his will and wants his son to pick up where he left off. He has a girl friend but there is a distance between them. She is jealous of his relationship with his father that to her appears overprotective and he does not want to give up his father's closeness.

Alexei's father is conflicted about looking for a job in a different city and seeking a new wife. They must decide whether to continue their lives together or independently. The struggle for freedom and independence is mutual but they are held together by a transcendent love. Father and Son is an enigmatic but deeply poetic film about the complex bond that a son has with his father. While the film is open to interpretation from different cultural, psychological, or religious points of view (the film says, `A father who loves his son crucifies him. A son who loves his father sacrifices himself for him'), for me, the best approach is to avoid the temptation to analyze and just bathe in the warmth of its loving glow.

Just a short note: It seems that a lot of people don't know what to make of Aleksandr Sokurov's "Father & Son". Though more accessible than the monumental "Russian Ark", "Father" is still a baffling, hard film to grasp. Looking like an archival photograph from beginning to end and lacking a traditional story, it very much resembles a dream. There's a lot of vague poetic talk about abandonment, security, being saved, and such. Largely abstract, one of the few concrete elements of the film is the fact that both father (Andrej Shetinin) and son (Alexei Nejmyshev) are beautiful. Shetinin especially is stunning. It's not unexpected for people to see some homoerotic angles. When a film is this abstract I guess the tendency is to latch on to the most obvious, most concrete aspect. And we can never underestimate the fear—possibly homophobia?—of seeing men getting emotional with each other, much less 2 attractive ones. It's a taboo so strongly ingrained in some cultures that it surpasses the simple fact that the 2 men in question are father and son. It's rare for me to see explorations of paternal bonds on film, especially one this deep so I had to readjust my mindset. If one can go beyond these obstacles you may just see an intense, poetic look into the relationship of two adult men, father and son.

The second film in the trilogy director Alexander Sokurov (Russian Ark) began with Mother and Son (1996) focuses on the obsessive, intimate love between a youthful father and his teenage son. They play sport and tousle together, confide in and are everything to each other – but now the son is close to adulthood, it's time to separate.

Apparently Sokurov intended to show that the ambivalence of their lover-like relationship is due to the father's unresolved feelings for his dead wife, but the film is not entirely successful in communicating that. Their closeness inspires jealousy in the son's girlfriend, a neighbour and a visitor, yet the homo eroticism in Father and Son is not just between them, but in the way the camera views other men, particularly soldiers. Although this allegedly unintentional subtext could offend, it does not, due to the hyper-real, mythic tone. The slow pace of the film is offset by a pervasive, abstract sensuality, emphasised by Alexander Burov's beautiful cinematography. Whispering kettles and dripping taps form an industrial ambiance that helps to slow time down and frame the background – a dark quiet house that is as insular as this familial relationship.

Although Father and Son will frustrate those seeking a more plot-driven film, it is memorable. The indefinable closeness between the two men is never threatening. It merely emphasises the similarity between what philosopher CS Lewis described as the Four Loves – storage (familial love), love between friends (philia), eros (sexual love) and agape (spiritual love).

***/***** stars.

Father and Son is a film about a special relationship. one who has not explanations, definitions or a precise form. one who remains, always, out of words. so, the work of Sokurov is more than admirable. because he propose a translation of so personal links that only a father and a son could understand the reality beyond the images. like each translation, the film is far to be perfect. maybe for the sin to be too abstract or too sentimental or to direct, or too poetic. in fact it is only a honest confession. about a special form of love. about duty. about solitude. about looking of fundamental answers for become yourself. a film about past. about ages. about meaning of life. about the best manner to discover the other as part of yourself and as different man. this is all. the homoerotic references, the army, the ambiguity of relation

This is an extraordinary film that explores an area still barely touched by artists and other, academic psychologists: the father-son bond, its complexity, ambivalence, pathos, and depth. All are illuminated by the director, Alexander Sokurov. The text is spare; the cinematography is heartbreakingly beautiful. (I have not seen a man's face explored as intimately on screen since Olivier Martinez was filmed in THE CHAMBERMAID ON THE TITANIC.) Every man who has had a father must see this film. It speaks of what Nicole Oxenhandler calls the eros of parenthood but now at the level of the male's late adolescence. Sokurov understands the tension between love and rivalry that is at the core of the son-father relationship. Like the relationship itself, the audio is quiet, with the occasional outburst. Sokurov confirms that a young man learns how to love (women, other men, eventually his own sons and daughters) by loving his father, in early boyhood (which we only have hints about in the film) and then again at the time when son and father must separate. Fathers, take you son to see this film.